Today we celebrate the Dominican Restoration Day. You may be wondering if this is the same as independence, and well, it is, but there’s a lot more to this story.
First thing you should know is that the Dominican Republic and Haiti share the same island, Hispaniola. But they were controlled by two different countries: Haiti was a French colony, while Dominican Republic was a Spanish one.
There were different stages in their struggles and at a point in time, the Dominican Republic was claimed by Haiti’s newly independent government. But in 1844 the Dominican people rebelled and declared independence from Haiti. So, then we had two independent countries in the same island.
Not for long though! The Dominican president, Pedro Santana, signed a treaty to restore the status of Colony under Spain’s dominion for political and economic reasons, which in turn led to dissatisfaction within the country and ultimately Santana’s resignation in 1862.
On August 16th, 1863, 15 men led by Santiago Rodríguez made a raid from the city of Dajabon and raised the Dominican flag on the Capotillo hill. This is known as the ‘grito de Capotillo’ and it was the beginning of the Dominican Restoration War against Spain, which was fought until 1865. You see, it is “restoration” instead of independence, because they were independent before, unlike most other countries in Latin America.
The war ended when a decree of Queen Isabel II of Spain repealed the Dominican Republic’s reinstatement to the Spanish Monarchy, and the last troops left the territory, thus restoring the free republic.
Have fun learning!
