Dominican Republic

Geography & Population: The Dominican Republic occupies the eastern two-thirds of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, which is located west of Puerto Rico. Its only border is with Haiti. The Dominican Republic has an area of 48,400 kilometers, and its population was estimated at 8.4 million in 1999. For political and administrative purposes, the country is divided into three regions and seven subregions, which together contain the 29 provinces and the National District.

It was originally occupied by Tainos, an Arawakspeaking people. The Tainos welcomed Columbus in his first voyage in 1492, but subsequent colonizers were brutal, reducing the Tainos population from about 1 million to about 500 in 50 years. To ensure adequate labor for plantations, the Spanish brought African slaves to the island beginning in 1503.

In the next century, French settlers occupied the western end of the island, which Spain ceded to France in 1697, and which, in 1804, became the Republic of Haiti. The Haitians conquered the whole island in 1822 and held it until 1844, when forces led by Juan Pablo Duarte, the hero of Dominican independence, drove them out and established the Dominican Republic as an independent state. In 1861, the Dominicans voluntarily returned to the Spanish Empire; in 1865, independence was restored.

Political, Social, & Cultural Bases: Economic difficulties, the threat of European intervention, and ongoing internal disorders led to a U.S. occupation in 1916 and the establishment of a military government in the Dominican Republic. The occupation ended in 1924 with a democratically elected Dominican government.

In 1930, Rafael L. Trujillo, a prominent army commander, established absolute political control. Trujillo promoted economic development and severe repression of domestic human rights. Mismanagement and corruption resulted in major economic problems. In August 1960, the Organization of American States (OAS) imposed diplomatic sanctions against the Dominican Republic as a result of Trujillo's complicity in an attempt to assassinate President Romulo Betancourt of Venezuela. These sanctions remained in force after Trujillo's death by assassination in May 1961. In November 1961, the Trujillo family was forced into exile.

The Trujillo administration initiated a campaign to increase the literacy rate, which was no higher than 30 percent in the early 1950s. These efforts resulted in a number of primary schools being established in rural areas. Urban needs were also met, to the extent that at the end of the regime, at least one primary school had been established in each town. These schools, however, were overcrowded, and many of them had to operate on double shifts, problems that have persisted into the twenty-first century.

Trujillo had also signed a concordato (agreement) with the Catholic church that included all Catholic schools under the auspices of public support. The Catholic church initiated several institutes for technical instruction that raised the level of professional training within the country. During President Joaquin Balaguer's terms of governance (1966-1978, 1986-1996) the Catholic church played a key role as a recipient of international aid for running educational and social programs.

The period of 1967 to 1971 saw the intervention of the World Bank and other international agencies to create many of the most recent initiatives in the educational system. These years saw the creation of organizations to teach American English to Dominicans and the use of scholarships to create a professional elite formed in American university systems. The San Jose Reform of 1967-1969 emphasized vocational training to improve industrial capacity.

The Dominican economy has undergone profound changes since the 1980s. Until the mid-1970s, traditional export products, mainly from agriculture, represented 60 percent of the total value of the country's exports. Over the last two decades, the service sector has led the economy, particularly economic and financial services related to tourism and industrial free trade zones, which by 1995 accounted for more than 70 percent of exports.

In 1992 the gross domestic product (GDP) began to recover, and by 1996 it was maintaining an average annual growth rate of more than 5 percent. In 1999, the country was singled out as the best economic performer in Latin America after having sustained a growth rate of more than 6 percent for several consecutive years.

This stability and macroeconomic growth have improved the purchasing power of the working population, and absolute poverty appears to have diminished. Despite this, reduced public spending for education and health has affected family budgets, unemployment rates (which stood at 15 percent in 1996-1997), and the percentage of the population linked to the informal economy and nonwage-earning activities. There has therefore been a considerable increase in relative poverty and the number of people who are in need. The public domestic debt, estimated at about US$400 million in mid-1997, has been burgeoning, and this has tended to inhibit private domestic investment. A particularly vulnerable factor is economic dependence on the 43 free trade zones.

After a long history of authoritarian regimes, the Dominican Republic is entering a new era of democracy and social participation, including education. At the same time, the proportion of children in the overall population is shrinking. The vast majority of the population is of working age (15- to 64-years-old).

Although the Dominican Republic has one of the fastest growing economies in the world (average growth of 7.5 percent from 1997 to 2000), it has one of the lowest investments in education in the hemisphere. Public investment in education has increased since the 1990s, but it is still very low in comparison with other Latin American countries.

Nonetheless, the Dominican Republic shows enormous advances in education. The country developed its planning capacity and implemented some key programs. According to the Deputy Secretary of Education, Josefina Pimentel, there were developments in several areas: new education laws to replace the obsolete legislation of 1951; new curricula developed for Basic Education; new textbooks published and distributed throughout rural and urban schools; and an increase in the amount of compulsory education to nine years of basic education, including a preschool year.