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Editors' Picks Great books about your topic, Dominican Republic, selected by Encarta editors Related Items Facts and Figures Encarta Search Search Encarta about Dominican Republic | Page 7 of 9 Article Outline
The Dominican Party was the only legal party between 1930 and 1961, when it was dissolved and new parties were established. The principal parties are the Partido Revolucionario Dominicano (Dominican Revolutionary Party, or PRD), the Partido de la Liberación Dominicana (Dominican Liberation Party, or PLD), and the Partido Reformista Social Cristiano (Christian Social Reform Party, or PRSC). The conservative PRSC draws support from the peasant and middle classes, and the PRD is composed largely of landless peasants and urban workers. The two have been archrivals since the 1960s. The left-wing PLD was formed by breakaway members of the PRD in 1973.
The Dominican Republic is divided into 31 provinces plus the Distrito Nacional (National District), which encompasses Santo Domingo, the capital. The provinces are subdivided into municipalities and townships. The 31 provinces of the Dominican Republic are administered by governors, who are appointed by the country’s president. Each municipality and the Distrito Nacional elect a mayor and a municipal council as the administrative body.
Different administrations have sought to raise health standards in the Dominican Republic, and various government programs provide health services. A law passed in 2000 created universal health-care insurance. One of its aims was to improve maternal and child health. Malnutrition is common among the children of poor families. Health care is provided by both public and private institutions, but facilities for the urban and rural poor are inadequate. Migration from rural areas to large cities, where unemployment remains high, has created slum conditions on the edges of the cities. Clean water and adequate sewage facilities are largely lacking in these urban slums. In 2004 the country had 532 inhabitants for every physician.
In 2004 the armed forces of the Dominican Republic comprised an army of 15,000, a navy of 4,000, and an air force of 5,500. Military service is voluntary.
Christopher Columbus landed in 1492 at the island he called Isla Española (Spanish Island), a name that later turned into Hispaniola. He left about 40 men at a fort, La Navidad, that he built in what is now northern Haiti. On his return in 1493 he found that the settlement had been wiped out by natives. Columbus established a new settlement farther east, near present-day Puerto Plata, and left his brother Bartholomew in charge while he continued his voyage. In 1496 Bartholomew Columbus, acting on instructions from his brother, founded the city of Santo Domingo on the southern coast. It became the first permanent settlement established by Europeans in the Americas. The native inhabitants whom Columbus encountered on his arrival in Hispaniola were Arawak-speaking Taíno people. The Taíno lived in villages, headed by chiefs, and engaged principally in farming and fishing. By the mid-1500s the Taíno people had died out in the Dominican Republic as a result of smallpox and brutal treatment by the Spanish settlers who tried to enslave them. In the late 1990s the paved plazas and walls of a large Taíno city were uncovered in the Dominican Republic’s East National Park. After the Taíno people died out, the Spanish brought Africans into Hispaniola to work as slaves in place of the Taíno laborers. In time the Spanish settlers migrated from Hispaniola to South America, and for about a century the island was sparsely populated. Although Spain claimed the entire island of Hispaniola, the Spanish were unable to prevent French encroachment on the western end. In 1697, by the Treaty of Ryswick, the western third of Hispaniola was formally ceded to France and became known as Saint-Domingue; it is now Haiti. The remaining Spanish section of the island was called Santo Domingo. It is now the Dominican Republic.
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