Dominican Rep.

1883. Emilio Prud´homme writes the Dominican national anthem, with music scored by Jose Reyes in 1883, too. On August 17, 1883, the national anthem was played for the first time during a soirée organized by the national press in the Esperanza (Hope) Loggia in Santo Domingo.
The anthem was sung by a choir of youngsters accompanied by a small orchestra in which Jose Reyes himself played the cello. That particular musical composition was welcomed by the public and since then it started a slow process of catching on.

1861. The Dominican Republic is proclaimed. The nation had just requested to rejoin the Spanish realms in an effort to attain foreign support for the Creoles to control the African majority.

1844The country was made up of one self-governing State after independence was declared under the Puerta del Conde (Duke’s Door) and the current Dominican flag was hoisted. From that moment on, bloody domestic squabbles for power went all the way into the first half of the 20th Century. These internal rifts got bloodier during the U.S.-OAE joint intervention.

1844. Juan Pablo Duarte designs the Dominican flag by drawing a white cross over the Haitian flag.

1822. In 1822, Haiti’s black government won back all the island. The resistance put up by the Creoles –Spanish offspring- wound up with an uprising in Santo Domingo.

1813. Juan Pablo Duarte was born on January 26, 1813, one of the Dominican Republic’s founding fathers and staunchest freedom fighters.

1809The public was mad at France’s powerlessness to submit the Haitians, and so in many places the idea of returning to Spain’s tutorship picked up steam. Juan Sánchez Ramírez, a Dominican member of the military, led the new movement supported by Puerto Rico’s captain-general. The capital was hemmed in with the help of the British fleet until its final surrender. The Dominican Republic was once again Spanish-owned.

January 1802Three squads comprising 16,000 men in arms under General Leclerc’s orders and poised on winning back the lost land, defeated Toussaint’s troops. In Haiti, the French didn’t luck out. The country proclaimed its independence and tried to re-conquest the Dominican Republic. These efforts backfired lock, stock and barrel.