Biography of Juan Pablo Duarte | Dominican Liberator.

(Santo Domingo, the Spanish, 1813 - Caracas, Venezuela, 1876) Dominican Liberator. La Trinitaria society founder and chief ideologist of independence, twice saw Juan Pablo Duarte triumph the cause that fought throughout his life: in 1844, when the country attained independence from Haiti, and in 1865, when, after the Spanish annexation, the Dominican Republic was restored. In none of them, however, agreed Duarte to power, nor won more recognition than the exile and oblivion. After his death, had to wait eight years before his remains were repatriated and only then is paid him honours he deserved a father of the nation.

Biography

Born in a Spanish family of humble origin, at the age of fifteen he was sent by his parents to England via New York to complete their studies; from there he went to France and later to Spain.

Juan Pablo Duarte

In Europe, convulsed in those times by romanticism, liberalism, nationalism, and the Utopian socialism, it permeated revolutionary environments of the time. Juan Pablo Duarte was witness to the new regimes of freedoms and rights arising after the French Revolution; It showed special interest in the changes produced in Germany and France, but above all by the events in Spain and the reforms that had tried to enter the Court of Cadiz. Stage in Spain it is known that he lived in Barcelona, where it is possible to study law.

It was then that he began to sharpen his political ideology, in which nationalism and liberalism melted on a romantic background: Juan Pablo Duarte understood that the Dominican people had its own identity and had the right to political independence. Achieved this, and according to liberal thinking, the nation should organize on the basis of the institutionalism of representative democracy. In 1833, he returned to his country willing to put these ideas into practice.

The ancient island of Hispaniola, currently island of Santo Domingo, had been colonized by the Spaniards, which, little interested in it, they gave at the end of the 17TH century the Western half of the island (the current Haiti) to the French. The independence movement, initiated with the 19th century, had suffered numerous ups and downs. In 1821, when Duarte was still a boy, José Núñez de Cáceres proclaimed the independence of the eastern half of the island (today Dominican Republic). But the new State was occupied and a year later by Jean-Pierre Boyer, President of Haiti, which had attained independence in France many years before.

La Trinitaria

Unlike, then, other liberators, Juan Pablo Duarte there was no fight against a European metropolis to achieve the independence of the former Spanish part of the island, but the Haitian domination. It was at the heart of the urban middle class where the approaches of Duarte found greater echo. But, by then, almost all the aristocracy and other group leaders were compliant with the Haitian regime, reason why it was impossible to obtain, in the early years, their cooperation.

As the movement was widening, Duarte understood that it was essential to create an organization that, following the model of the European societies of the sans-Culottes, assumed the responsibility of leading the activities. Thus arose the society La Trinitaria (1838), whose purpose was to rid the country of the domain of Haiti. "God, homeland and liberty" was the theme of this society. Then came the philanthropic society, which was an important work of propaganda by the representation of plays.

Meeting of La Trinitaria

Meanwhile, President Jean-Pierre Boyer had become enormously unpopular by the elevation of taxes, whose destiny was a payment demanded by France to accept the independence of Haiti. In 1843 Juan Pablo Duarte supported the revolution that succeeded in overthrowing Boyer. But the aim of Duarte was the independence of the Spanish part of the island, so it continued its struggle after the fall of the President. Pursued by the new Government of Haiti, on August 2, 1843 it had to go into exile in Caracas.

The first Republic

Nonetheless, Duarte pro-independence ideas had permeated and continued gaining popularity, and on February 27, 1844 his followers declared the independence of the country. Under the leadership of Francisco de el Rosario Sánchez, and after chapter Haitian fittings in the capital and other cities, the pro-independence cause triumphed; the Haitians were expelled to the old French part of the island and shaped the current border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

On March 14, 1844, Juan Pablo Duarte was received by the new interim Government (the Central Governing Board) as a hero national and named general of the army. The triumph of the independence movement prompted the new Haitian President, Charles Hérard (1843-1844) to invade the newly created Dominican Republic with an army divided into two bodies, of which one penetrated by North and another to the South. The latter face and achieve a victory in Azua, March 19 corresponded to Pedro Santana.

Juan Pablo Duarte

Thus the things, the Central Governing Board ordered Duarte that directed to Bani, with a military force organized by Pedro Alejandrino pineapple, in order to reach an agreement with Pedro Santana on the strategy to be followed against Haiti. Not be possible this agreement, Duarte, required the Board the necessary authority to act on your behalf. But the Board was dominated by Tomás Bobadilla, representative along with Santana in the colonialist called sector, an independent Republic considered unviable and was subject to a European metropolis.

The Board responded by ordering to Juan Pablo Duarte to return with his troops to the capital: disagreement between the conservative colonial and the duartismo liberal and independence was evident, and ended with the triumph of the first. Pedro Santana was appointed first President of the Dominican Republic (1844-1848) and eliminated the rival faction declared traitors and sent to exile to Juan Pablo Duarte and his followers more meanings, among them Francisco de el Rosario Sánchez and Ramón Mella.

From exile to restore

After a first exile in Hamburg, Juan Pablo Duarte left for the Caribbean island of Saint Thomas; It was followed by heading to Venezuela, a country where he spent twelve years. Little is known of the life of Juan Pablo Duarte during this period. It is very likely that it had news of the Amnesty Decree which, on behalf of him and his companions, enacted at the beginning of September 1848 the Government of Manuel Jimenes (1848-1849), successor of Santana.

During the first Republic, Haitians tried numerous times to regain control on the Dominican side of the island, but were defeated again and again. Political power passed to the conservative group of cattlemen and former officials francized boyeristas, thanks to the control of the Presidency of the Central Administrative Board by Tomás Bobadilla and the Liberator army by general Pedro Santana, who ruled dictatorially over several periods. The alternation in power of Pedro Santana and Buenaventura Báez, cattleman and cutter wood in the South-West of the country, more cunning and annexation no less than the first, characterized this phase.

Pedro Santana served as two more times: between 1853 and 1856 and 1858 and 1861. At the end of this last term, President Santana decided to annex the country to Spain, putting an end to the first Dominican Republic. Intended to this end the Haitian threat and perpetuates in power, since it accepted to change the position of first Governor of the Spanish province of Santo Domingo.

Restoration war (1863-1865) broke out then call between supporters of maintaining the annexation to Spain and separatists, whose objective was to restore the Republic and which had its most skilled military leader in Gregorio Luperón. Juan Pablo Duarte returned to his homeland on March 25, 1864 and was responsible for touring South America in search of help for the independence cause.

In November he was in Venezuela, where would receive the news of the triumph of restoring Government and the birth of the second Dominican Republic. But after several short-lived Presidents, general José María Cabral took charge of the new Government, and Juan Pablo Duarte was again sentenced to banishment, this time by his own supporters, who failed to recognize his contribution to the independence cause. Sick of body and soul, his life was extinguished in his forced retirement from Caracas, where he died on July 15, 1876.

Extracted from the website: Biografías y Vidas