Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies

Dominican Republic: Historical Setting
Spain's first permanent settlement in the New World was
established on the southern coast at the present site of Santo
Domingo. Under Spanish sovereignty, the entire island bore
the name Santo Domingo. Indications of the presence of
gold—the lifeblood of the nascent mercantilist system—and a
population of tractable natives who could be used as laborers
combined to attract Spanish newcomers interested in acquiring
wealth quickly during the early years. Their relations with
the Taino Indians, whom they ruthlessly maltreated, deteriorated
from the beginning. Aroused by continued seizures of
their food supplies, other exactions, and abuse of their women,
the formerly peaceful Indians rebelled—only to be crushed
decisively in 1495.
Columbus, who ruled the colony as royal governor until
1499, devised the repartimiento system of land settlement and
native labor under which a settler, without assuming any obligation
to the authorities, could be granted in perpetuity a large
tract of land together with the services of the Indians living on
it.
In 1503 the Spanish crown instituted the encomienda system.
Under this system, all land became in theory the property of
the crown, and the Indians were considered tenants on royal
land. The crown's right to service from the tenants could be
transferred in trust to individual Spanish settlers (encomenderos)
by formal grant and the regular payment of tribute. The
encomenderos were entitled to certain days of labor from the
Indians, and they assumed the responsibility of providing for
the physical well-being of the Indians and for their instruction
in Christianity. Although an encomienda theoretically did not
involve ownership of land, in practice it did—ownership was
just gained through other means.
The privations that the Indians suffered demonstrated the
unrealistic nature of the encomienda system, which the Spanish
authorities never effectively enforced. The Indian population
died off rapidly from exhaustion, starvation, disease, and other
causes. When the Spanish landed, they forced an estimated
400,000 Tainos (out of a total Taino population of some 1 million)
to work for them; by 1508 the Tainos numbered only
around 60,000. By 1535 only a few dozen were still alive. The
need for a new labor force to meet the growing demands of
sugarcane cultivation in the 1520s prompted an increase in the
importation of African slaves, which had begun in 1503. By
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