Afro-Dominicans
Afro-Dominicans are Dominicans of predominant or total Sub-Saharan African ancestry.
They are a minority in the country representing 7.5% or 642,018 of the population, according to the 2022 census.
In a previous estimate they were 7.8% of the Dominican Republic's population according to a survey published in 2021 by the United Nations Population Fund. About 4.0% of the people surveyed claim an Afro-Caribbean immigrant background, while only 0.2% acknowledged Haitian descent. Currently there are many black illegal immigrants from Haiti, who are not included within the Afro-Dominican demographics as they are not legal citizens of the nation.
The first black people in the island were brought by European colonists as indentured workers from Spain and Portugal known as Ladinos. When the Spanish Crown outlawed the enslavement of Natives in the island with the Laws of Burgos, slaves from West Africa and Central Africa were imported from the 16th to 18th centuries due to labor demands. However, with the decline of the sugar industry in the colony the importation of slaves decreased, leading to a rise in free blacks, which eventually became the majority within the Afro-Dominican demographic by the late 1700s. Many of these Africans eventually intermixed with the Europeans, Mestizos, and Natives creating a triracial culture.
In the 19th and 20th centuries black immigrants from the French and British West Indies, as well as the United States came to the island and settled in coastal regions increasing the black population. The Afro-Dominican population can now be found in most parts of the country, from coastal areas such as San Cristobal and San Pedro de Macoris to deep inland areas such as Cotui and Monteplata.
There is a lack of recent official data because the National Office of Statistics has not released racial data since 1960, though the Central Electoral Board collected racial data until 2014. The 1996 electoral roll put the figures of "black" at 8.6% and "mulatto" at 52.8% of the adult population. The 1960 population census placed it at 8.8%. According to a 2011 survey by Latinobarómetro, "The Adventure Guide to the Dominican Republic" the black population is estimated to be 35% of the Dominican population.
History
16th – 18th century
In 1502, the Spanish Crown finally acquiesced to the colonists' demands for enslaved Africans. The Santo Domingo colony, the only European possession yet in America, had already produced a devastating effect on the Taino, Lucayan, and Kalinga populations. A decade of intense exploitation and deadly waves of plagues had reduced the indigenous populations to levels that even the Spaniards considered dangerous. As the Hispaniolan Tainos declined during the first couple of years of colonization, the colonial administration run by Christopher Columbus had gone against the wishes of Isabel I of Castile and had begun the first European slave trade on the western side of Atlantic. Raids that cleared out from Santo Domingo under the disguise of pacification and to evangelize nearby islanders had brought in other Amerindians to the colony. They were a large number of enslaved Lucayos from the Bahamas and Kalingas from the eastern islands. Now toiling alongside native Hispaniolans, these war captives became the first enslaved foreign workers on the island of Quisqueya, one of the indigenous names for the island that Columbus called Hispaniola. By the turn of the century, not even the captured neighbors could supply the labor demands of the mines and plantations. Rudimentary mining techniques and the always backbreaking mass-production of food-stuff required an ever-growing number of coerced workers. Expanding the colonization project to Puerto Rico and requesting the Crown permission to purchase enslaved Africans were the only two solutions colonists seemed capable of conceiving. Ferdinand I of Aragon, widowed and freed from Isabel's more cautious hand, granted both wishes to the embattled colonists in the Indies. It was never a liberal expansion nor an open trade, however. Though unrestrained by religious piety, Ferdinand, who was the ideal Prince in Machiavelli's imagination, was wary in the extreme of potential Conquistador-owned kingdoms in his new possessions, and of slave rebellions in the colonies. So, the first group of enslaved Africans to arrive at the Ozama River were not Piezas de Indias purchased from the Portuguese traders, but a select group of seasoned Black Ladinos. They formed their own confraternities as early as 1502, and they are considered the first community of the African diaspora in the Americas. The profit too was meant to stay within his kingdom. Indian resistances, flights, and diseases, however, forced the crown to open the market to thousands of bozales, enslaved Africans directly from the continent.In 1521, the first major slave rebellion was led by 20 Senegalese Muslims of Wolof origin, in an ingenio east of the Santo Domingo colony. Many of the insurgents fled to the mountains and established what would become the first autonomous African Maroon community in America. With the success of this revolt, slave revolts continued and leaders emerged among the African slaves, such as Sebastían Lemba. This also included people already baptized Christian by the Spanish, as was the case of Juan Vaquero, Diego de Guzmán and Diego del Ocampo. The rebellions and subsequent escapes led to the establishment of African communities in the southwest, north and east of the island, including the first communities of African ex-slaves in western Hispaniola that was Spanish administered until 1697, when it was sold to France and became Saint-Domingue. This caused some concern among slaveholders and contributed to the Spanish emigration to other places. Even as sugarcane increased profitability in the island, the number of escaped Africans continued to rise, mixing with Taíno people of these regions, and by 1530, Maroon bands were considered dangerous to the Spanish colonists, who traveled in large armed groups outside the plantations and left the mountainous regions to the Maroons.
With the discovery of precious metals in South America, the Spanish abandoned their migration to the island of Hispaniola to emigrate to South America and Mexico in order to get rich, for they did not find much wealth there. Thus, they also abandoned the slave trade to the island, which led to the collapse of the colony into poverty. Still, during those years, slaves were used to build a cathedral that in time became the oldest in the Americas. They built the monastery, first hospital and the Alcázar de Colón, and the Puerta de las Lamentaciones. In the 1540s, Spanish authorities ordered the African slaves building a wall to defend the city from attacks by pirates who ravaged the islands.
After 1700, with the arrival of new Spanish colonists, the Atlantic slave trade resumed. However, as industry moved from sugar to livestock, racial and caste divisions became less important, eventually leading to a blend of cultures—Spanish, African, and indigenous—which would form the basis of national identity for Dominicans. It is estimated that the population of the colony in 1777 was 400,000, of which 100,000 were Europeans and Criollos, 60,000 African, 100.000 mestizo, 60,000 zambo and 100,000 mulatto.
19th century
Given the relative ease of manumission for enslaved Africans, some fugitive African slaves from Saint-Domingue, the western French colony of the island fled east to Santo Domingo and formed communities such as San Lorenzo de Los Mina, which is currently part of the "city" of Santo Domingo.. Fugitives arrived from other parts of the West Indies as well, especially from the various islands of the Lesser Antilles. Meanwhile, by this point, free blacks had consisted the majority of Afro-descendant Dominicans, who enjoyed some degree of social and political freedom in Santo Domingo. However, slavery remained legal, and remnants of colonial prejudices still persisted in Dominican society. These would become the underlying issues during the future struggles for Dominican independence until the 1840s.By the late 1780s, free people of color in the island were inspired by the French Revolution to seek an expansion of their rights, while also involving enslaved Africans to fight for their cause. Despite adhering to European royalist political views, Toussaint Louverture, the primary figure of what would become the Haitian Revolution, used the language of freedom and equality associated with the French Revolution. From being willing to bargain for better conditions of slavery late in 1791, he had become committed to its complete abolition. Inspired by Louverture's call for freedom and equality, which caused the Spanish to look with disfavor on his control of a strategically important region, both free and enslaved blacks in Santo Domingo sought to continue their fight for freedom in the colony. These would transpire into a series of slave revolts to bring about that began in 1795, which would intensify following the Treaty of Basel, which led to the cession of Santo Domingo to France that same year. Over the next five years, slave insurrection persisted in Santo Domingo, the most impactful of the revolts being the 1796 Boca de Nigua slave revolt, which greatly weakened the effects of slavery in Santo Domingo.
In 1801, Louverture seized the colony from France and abolished slavery, freeing about 40,000 enslaved persons, and prompting much of the planter of that part of the island to flee to Cuba and Puerto Rico. After he was deposed in 1802, the French officials reasserted its domain in Santo Domingo, although slavery still remained prohibited. Some time after this, another slave revolt erupted, but was once again suppressed.
Simultaneously, Jean-Louis Ferrand rounded his troops to engage in slave raiding along the border. This action would infuriate and spark the wrath of Haiti's self proclaimed emperor, Jean-Jacques Dessalines. Realizing Ferrand's intention to restore slavery, Dessalines ordered an invasion of Santo Domingo in February 1805. He managed to reach the capital, but it was protected by a large wall, built back in 1540s by the Dominican slaves, thereby preventing Dessalines from laying his siege on the capital. However, after learning of a French ship believed to be heading towards Haiti to attack the country, Dessalines called off his invasion, and retreated through the Cibao, practicing scorched-earth tactics along the way, one famous exemple being the events that came to be known as the massacre, or beheadings, of Moca.
In 1809, the French government was toppled by the Criollo leader, Juan Sánchez Ramírez. However, slavery was re-established when the Spanish recovered the colony that same year. This caused discontent among the black population.
In 1812, when the ruling Spanish government refused to abolish slavery and grant Spanish citizenship to free blacks, a conspiracy erupted. This ended in failure and its leaders, José Leocadio, Pedro de Seda, and Pedro Henríquez,, were executed. Some nine years later, in 1821, the Spanish was overthrow in a revolt, this time led by José Núñez de Cáceres, who renamed the independent nation as the Republic of Spanish Haiti. Tensions arose in the government, of which the topic of slavery was among the most divisive. Núñez de Cáceres, although he freed his own slaves, refused to abolish it in the new nation. Slavery remained intact until 1822, when it was again abolished by the mulatto Haitian president Jean-Pierre Boyer, during the unification of Hispaniola which began in February of that year. However, he maintained a system of indentured servitude, the Code Rural, on the newly-emancipated Dominican slaves.
In 1824, African American freed people began to arrive under the Haitian administered island, benefiting from the favorable pro-African immigration policy of Boyer since 1822, called the Haitian emigration. Called the Samaná Americans, they mostly settled in Puerto Plata Province and the Samaná Peninsula regions.
In 1838, the liberal leader Juan Pablo Duarte established the Trinitario movement. Duarte, a strong advocate for racial unity, sought to establish a nation that guaranteed equal rights to all Dominicans irrespective of race and color. Despite these principles, Duarte still had to endure the early distrustful sentiments from the black and mixed raced populations. From their perspective, they considered the Trinitarios as a white supremacist organization because it was composed strictly of white middle class Dominican men, and thus, initially refused to support them. However, at the suggestion of Jose Díaz, Duarte's uncle, he suggested reaching out to prominent black leaders to gain the confidence of the people and help make the movement a reality. Many Afro-Dominicans such as Francisco del Rosario Sánchez, José Joaquín Puello, Gabino Puello, Manuel Mora, Elías Piña, María Trinidad Sánchez and Petronila Gaú would go on to play key roles in the struggle for independence.
However, following the proclamation of Dominican independence in 1844, fears of the return of slavery still accumulated amongst many Black soldiers, especially those who had been former slaves prior to 1822. Such was the case when Santiago Basora, leader of the "African Battalion" of the Liberation Army, led a revolt on the dawning hours of February 28, 1844. After this, the abolition of slavery was announced through a decree by the new government.. After 1844, black laborers from the British West Indies were imported to work in the sugar plantations on the east of the island..
Over the next 20 years, the First Dominican Republic was ravaged with political instability as a result of authoritarian regimes, specifically under the dominiance of prominent cuadillo leaders such as Buenaventura Báez and Pedro Santana. Although both were periodically in competition with the other for power, both had plans to give the country's independence back to a European power. In the early 1860s, Santana, backed by the Creole elite, secured a deal with Spain to revert the Dominican Republic back to colonial status. The annexation also found support from Afro-Dominicans, including well-distinguished politicians and military leaders who had fought in the Dominican War of Independence. These included Juan Suero and Eusebio Puello. The former would later gain fame in the Spanish Army and was referred as El Cid Negro, and the latter,, left the island for Cuba, where he, still as a Spanish general, participated several campaigns to suppress the insurrection led by Carlos Manuel de Céspedes in the Ten Years' War.
However, discontent soon followed and revolts to overthrow the regime began to take erupt. During the Dominican Restoration War, in what started as a peasants rebellion, Afro-Dominicans who feared the return of slavery would play a central role in revolution. The war was characterized the first time where Black patriots united behind the rebellion to restore Dominican independence, and in the meantime, served in prominent positions of the revolutionary government and as high ranking military commanders. Some examples included José Cabrera, Marcos Evangelista Adón, Juan Nouesí, Felipe Mañón, and Eutimio Mambí.
Although politics remained unstable after the war, a dictatorship under Ulises Heureaux, had begun in 1882. His regime was marked by its dependency of foreign loans and corruption, which plagued the Dominican economy until his assassination in 1899.