Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
BIG SUGAR
After the island's gold reserves were quickly exhausted and the native population decimated, Spanish
colonists harvested the first sugar crop in 1506. While the tropical climate and topography rendered it
an ideal physical environment, labor was in short supply. Slaves imported from Africa rebelled and
fled to the western part of the island - soon after, Spain discovered sugar was being sold to France and
Holland and so decided to burn all they could.
It wasn't for another several hundred years, when in the mid-19th century prosperous Cuban planta-
tion owners began to seek out new territory, that sugar took root once again in the DR. Cuba's failed
10-year war of independence only accelerated the migration, and only when slavery was abolished in
other Spanish colonies like Cuba and Puerto Rico in the 1870s could the DR begin to compete in
terms of production costs.
The first steam-powered sugar mill (ingenio) was opened in 1879 near San Pedro de Macoris on the
southeast coast. This commercial port town was soon booming, with more than a half-dozen modern
plants in operation by 1920. San Pedro, which would later become synonymous with baseball, became
a relatively elegant and cosmopolitan town known for its poets as well as sugar wealth. When the
European sugar industry was destroyed by WWI, Caribbean suppliers stepped into the void. Sugar be-
came the DR's leading export and the US its leading buyer.
But Dominicans, able to survive with their own small plots of land, were largely uninterested in the
backbreaking, low-paying work. Companies started turning to workers from the British-speaking
Caribbean islands, who were more eager for seasonal labor and disinclined to push for better pay or
improved working conditions. These migrant workers from the eastern Caribbean came to be called
cocolos and where they lived bateyes . A backlash was inevitable - in 1919 a law was passed banning
non-Caucasians from immigrating to the DR. Though thousands of cocolos and their families re-
mained around San Pedro working for the mills, Haitians began to replace them during the harvest, in
part because it was easier for the companies to 'repatriate' them when the work was over.
When the bottom dropped out of the price of sugar on the world market in the 1930s, around the
same time Trujillo came to power, the financial well-being of the industry in the DR was inextricably
tied to quotas obtained through negotiations with the US. Just as he did in other sectors of the eco-
nomy, Trujillo consolidated control and ownership in his family and coterie and was able to influence
many members of the US Congress into supporting his regime through continued trade in sugar.
Search WWH ::




Custom Search