ETHNICITY, GENDER AND HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
This research paper discusses ethnicity, gender and human rights in the Dominican Republic. The ethnic origins of its peoples have played an important role in shaping its social, political and economic institutions. Racial tensions have uniquely bedeviled relations between the dominant mulatto majority and blacks, especially those of Haitian origin.
Gender conflicts have not been especially significant because of the dominance of machismo culture, but women have a degree of economic power. Human rights have been largely ignored and are emerging as a significant issue as the Republic begins to modernize and to strive for greater political maturity and social justice during the post-Trujillo period.
Ever since Columbus landed in 1492 on the eastern half of the island, which he named Espanola (Hispaniola), which today comprises the Dominican Republic, it has been subjected to a variety of foreign influences. The island was situated for many centuries at the crossroads of important trade routes between the Old and New World. In the 20th century it has been of strategic importance to the United States because of its proximity to the Panama Canal and Fidel Castro's Cuba. The most important influences on the development of Dominican culture and society have, however, been of European (primarily Spanish) and Afro-Caribbean (the descendants of slaves brought from there after the early 16th century to provide cheap labor for the sugar cane plantations) origin.
The original inhabitants, the Arowak or Tainos and Caribe indians, were stamped out by the Spanish by the early 16th century through killings, malnutrition and disease. Little vestige of them remains.
The current population of the Dominican Republic is about seven and a half million, roughly 73 percent of whom are mulatto, 16 percent white and 11 percent black in 1989 (Haggerty, 1991, p. xxviii). The great m...