History

History/Government

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History

     The Dominican Republic is located on the Carribean island, La Hispaniola. La Hispaniola is west of Puerto Rico and east of Cuba and Jamaica. Over the years, the Dominican Republic has been governed by a Spanish Colony, a French Colony, Haiti, and the United States from 1946-1924. The Dominican Republic was first settled by Tainos. The Tainos left various cultural signs, which include cave paintings around the country, which have become touristic and nationalistic symbols of the Dominican Republic. Words such as hurricane and tobacco came from the Tainos' language.
     The Europeans arrived on December 5, 1924, and were warmly welcomed by the Tainos. The Tainos were suprised to see the excessive amount of clothes that the Europeans wore. The Tainos' gave the people the speical name of "guamikena", which means the covered ones. The Europeans believed the Tainos to be weak or misleading, so they started mistreating them. Some Europeans even took some of the Tainos' wives. This led to a rebellion against the Europeans, lead by Canobo, who was a very important Taino chief. The Tainos attacked the Europeans and destroyed the fort they had built on the island. The Tainos thought that they would be free at last, but the United States was already interested in governing the island.
     The americans arrived during the twentieth century. They wanted to take control over the island, because of the island's strategic location in the middle of the Caribbean Sea. During the World Wars, the islands of the Caribbean were used as stop-off points for German U-boats.
     During the Cold War, Soviet and capitalist ideologies clashed openly on the island. The Americans invaded the island in 1965, in the midst of a Dominican civil war. This civil war was caused beacause of an attempt to restore the republic's first democratically-elected president of the 20th century, Juan Bosch. Juan Bosch had been overthrown in 1963. Following this civil war, and America's placement of troops in Operation Power Pack, Joaquín Balaguer (1966-1978) was democractically elected, winning by 57%. Juan Bosch's constitutional government never returned to power. The Johnson administration justified the 1965 intervention by saying that they suspeceted that many of Bosch's supporters were pro-Cuban Communists. read more...

Government

The Dominican Republic has a representative democracy, in which a president is elected for a four-year term.The same president could also be reelected. The national powers are divided into an executive, legislature, and judicial branches.The Legislature branch is known as Congress of the Republic, which consists of senates and chamber of deputies. The Supreme Court is in charge of the judicial branch, along with the laws stated in the Constitution. The Court consists of sixteen members whom have the authority over rebellions against the president, members of the cabinet, and members of Congress. All judges are chosen by the senate, instead of the president. The president appoints the state governors and the counties are governed by elected mayors or municipal councils. All twenty-nine provinces are governed by a state governor appointed by the president.
There are three major political parties in the DR. These are PLD(Liberal Dominican Party), PRD(Dominican Revolutionary Party), and PRSC(Christian Social Reform Party). Leonel Fernandez is the president of the Dominican Republic until May 2008, which is when elections will begin. He belongs to the Liberal Dominican Party. The president appoints the cabinet, executes laws passed by the legislature, and is commander in chief of the armed forces.

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