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| The island of Hispaniola (La Isla Española) was the first New World colony settled by Spain. As such, it served as the logistical base for the conquest of most of the Western Hemisphere. Patriotic Dominicans under the leadership of Juan Pablo Duarte defeated Haitian invaders in the 19th century. From 1916 through 1924 U.S. infantry troops occupied the nation. The same again occurred in 1965 under the false pretense that the April 24th military coup to reinstate Juan Bosch as president was a communist plot. Bosch had won the first democratically held election after the 31 year dictatorship of Rafael L. Trujillo. A new (European) invasion followed at the end of the 20th century. Many thousands of vacationers discovered the sandy beaches of the Dominican Republic. |
