The Dominican Republic, the largest economy in the Caribbean, is a currently democratic country with an unfortunate history of dictators. The United States intervened militarily three times in the last century, though relations are now close and cooperative. Nearly a million Dominican immigrants reside in the U.S., mainly on the east coast, though far more attention is garnered by the several hundred Dominicans who play baseball in the major leagues, including such stars as Pedro Martinez, David Ortiz, Albert Pujols and Manny Ramirez.
Lay of the Land: Located on the eastern two-thirds of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, which it shares with Haiti, the Dominican Republic has a generally mountainous terrain with tropical rain forests covering the eastern lowlands and valleys. Hispaniola is the second largest island in the Caribbean, second only to Cuba, which lies to its west. Due east of the Dominican Republic is Puerto Rico, only 79 miles away, while 450 miles of open ocean separate the Dominican Republic from Aruba to the south. The Turks and Caicos lies to the north and the Bahamas to the northwest, while Jamaica is west of Hispaniola. With an area of 18,815 square miles, the Dominican Republic is about the size of New Hampshire and Vermont combined. The capital and largest city of Santo Domingo, where 2.2 million Dominicans reside, is the oldest continuously inhabited European city in the Americas. The principal agricultural areas are the El Seibo coastal plain in the northeast and the San Juan Valley in the west.
Hispaniola was inhabited by the Taínos, a native people who may have arrived around 600 AD. The Taínos, who engaged in farming and fishing, and hunting and gathering, numbered anywhere between 100,000 and 2 million. Christopher Columbus explored and claimed the island on his first voyage in 1492, naming it La Española (Little Spain), and it became a springboard for Spanish conquest of the Caribbean and the American mainland. By the late 16th century, the Taínos had largely died out, their numbers ravaged by disease, forced labor, torture, and war with the Spaniards, though most Dominicans today are at least in part descended from them.
Dominican Republic’s Newsapers
Perhaps the first significant point of contact between the U.S. and Dominican Republic occurred in 1870, when the U.S. Senate came within one vote of annexing the country to the United States, a plan supported by U.S. President Ulysses Grant and Dominican President Buenaventura Báez. Relations between the U.S. and the Dominican Republic have been marred by a long history of U.S. military intervention in Dominican affairs, which began in 1906, when U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt sought to prevent European intervention to collect Dominican debts by sending the U.S. military into the Dominican Republic and taking over administration of Dominican tariff collections, which were the chief source of income for the government. The U.S. agreed to use part of the customs proceeds to reduce the foreign debt of the Dominican Republic, and assumed responsibility for that debt. A period of relative political stability ended in chaos, and in 1916, President Woodrow Wilson ordered another U.S. occupation of the Dominican Republic. Dominicans widely repudiated the military government established by the U.S., which censored free speech and responded brutally to perceived threats. Opposition to the occupation continued, however, and it ended in 1922, followed by elections in 1924. Finally, in 1965, the United States intervened yet again, ostensibly to halt a “communist” revolution, but in reality to prevent former president Juan Bosch, a democratically-elected socialist who had been deposed in a right wing military coup, from regaining power.
Noted Dominican-Americans
In 2009, US imports from the Dominican Republic totaled $3.3 billion, while US exports to the Dominican Republic totaled $5.3 billion.
The Dominican Republic is a representative constitutional democracy. With this, as the government's human rights record continues to improve, serious problems still remain: unlawful killings; beatings and other abuse of suspects, detainees, and prisoners; poor to harsh prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention of suspects; a large number of functionally stateless persons; widespread corruption; harassment of certain human rights groups; violence and discrimination against women; child prostitution and other abuses of children; trafficking in persons; severe discrimination against Haitian migrants and their descendants; violence and discrimination against persons based on sexual orientation; ineffective enforcement of labor laws; and child labor.
- reject the current formulation of constitutional Article 30 “since conception to death";
- take all necessary measures to ensure that safe and legal abortion services are available, accessible, and of good quality for all women who require them in all cases where the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest and when the pregnancy poses a risk to the life or health of the woman.”
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- Overview
- Basic Information
- History
- Newspapers
- History of U.S. Relations with Dominican Republic
- Current U.S. Relations with Dominican Republic
- Where Does the Money Flow
- Controversies
- Human Rights
- Debate
- Past Ambassadors
- Ambassador to the U.S.
- Embassy Web Site in the U.S.
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U.S. Ambassador to Dominican Republic
President Barack Obama’s recent nominations of several openly gay men to serve as ambassadors have been welcomed by the proposed host nations with a combination of praise and indifference, but little or no anger or hostility. That is because the host nations—including Australia, Denmark and Spain—are economically advanced countries where popular movements for gender and sexual equality have made great strides in recent decades.
The president’s nomination of James “Wally” Brewster to be the next ambassador to the Dominican Republic, however, has been greeted with an ugly example of homophobic hostility—with the nation’s highest ranking Catholic official as the ringleader. During a press conference last week, Cardinal Nicolás de Jesús López Rodríguez, who is currently archbishop of Santo Domingo, referred to Brewster as a “maricón”—a derogatory terms that is usually translated in the U.S. as “faggot.”
Meanwhile, Monseñor Pablo Cedano, who is an auxiliary bishop of Santo Domingo, issued a veiled threat against the nominee. “I hope he does not arrive in the country because I know if he comes he is going to suffer and will have to leave,” Cedano said. Terming it “a lack of respect” that Obama “sent…a person of this kind as an ambassador,” he incongruously added, “[W]e don’t despise the person.”
Responding to what sounded like threats and attempting to defuse the situation, embassy spokesman Daniel Foote said that Brewster was nominated because of his ideas about democracy and that when he arrives, “Brewster arrives as an ambassador, he’s not coming here as an activist for the gay community.”
Brewster was one of Obama’s top “bundlers” during the 2012 campaign, raising more than $500,000 from other contributors for the Obama/Biden ticket. If confirmed by the Senate, Brewster would succeed Raúl Yzaguirre, who left the post in May due to health problems.
Born circa 1960, Brewster earned an A.A. in Marketing at Tyler Junior College in Texas in 1980 and a B.A. in Business Administration at Texas A&M University in 1983.
Brewster began his career with management and marketing positions in the Dallas, Texas, area at the Jim Collins Company and Carla Francis, Inc., eventually landing at The Rouse Company, where he was group marketing manager from January 1995 to January 1996, managing the marketing strategy for three area shopping malls.
Brewster spent the bulk of his career at Chicago-based General Growth Properties (GGP), a real estate investment trust where he was regional vice president of marketing for the southwest region from January 1996 to January 1999, vice president for corporate communications from January 1999 to January 2001, and executive officer and senior vice president from January 1999 to June 2010. During that final stint, General Growth bought Brewster’s former employer, The Rouse Company, in 2004. It was the largest retail real estate merger in American history, and GGP grew to be the nation’s second-largest shopping mall operator.
Since June 2010, Brewster has been managing partner at his own company, SB&K Global, a strategy consulting firm specializing in consumer dynamics, global retail strategy, marketplace positioning and brand expansion.
A lifelong Democrat, Brewster served Obama for America as national LGBT co-chair and national co-chair of the Obama Leadership Circle from April 2010 to November 2012, engaging mainly in fundraising to re-elect President Obama.
Brewster is not married, although he does have a long-term partner, Bob Satawake, with whom he lives in Chicago.
-Matt Bewig
To Learn More:
Biography (LinkedIn)
Obama Announces Two More Gay Ambassadorial Nominees (by Trudy Ring, The Advocate)
Gay Nominee for US Ambassador Criticized, Praised in Dominican Republic (by Ezra Fieser, Miami Herald)
Gay Ambassador Nominee Sparks Controversy In The Dominican Republic (by J. Lester Feder, Buzzfeed)
more
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