Word: santos
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While the U.S. was occupied with the Civil War, Spain regained control of its former colony of Santo Domingo and France set up the Austrian Archduke Maximilian as Emperor of Mexico. But in 1865, shortly after Appomattox, the Spaniards cleared out of Santo Domingo; a year later France, under U.S. pressure, began pulling its troops out of Mexico, leaving Maximilian to die before a Mexican firing squad. In 1903, after Germany, Britain and Italy decreed a blockade of Venezuela to force the dictator of the day to pay claims due their citizens, President Theodore Roosevelt warned the Europeans away with...
Imbert appealed to the rebels holed up in downtown Santo Domingo to surrender their weapons, guaranteed their safe-conduct "without reservations." He called for peace, unity, bound himself "to cooperate totally" with the Organization of American States, and, with the U.S., struggle to bring at least a semblance of sanity to his battered, forsaken land. He claimed he had control of all 25 Dominican provinces and 90% of the capital district. He asked all public employees to return to work, promised that his government would start paying salaries promptly...
...troops hemming them in. One night a rebel motorboat in the Ozama River made life difficult for the 82nd Airborne. "Eventually," explained a laconic paratroop captain, "we got tired of that, so we sank it." In other action, the paratroopers blasted another motorboat and set fire to the freighter Santo Domingo, which rebels were using as a sniper's nest...
Hispaniola became Spain's first permanent colony in the New World, its key harbor and free port to all the Indies. From the Santo Domingo capital, Ponce de León sailed forth to Florida, Balboa discovered the Pacific, Pizarro invaded Peru, and Cortés conquered Mexico. It was the site of Latin America's first cathedral in 1514, its first university in 1538. Even then it was a land of violence, where men carried the law in their knives, and the captains from Castile thought nothing of shearing an ear from a disobedient Indian or letting...
...then the Spanish who had tried to reassert their dominion. No sooner had the Dominican Republic declared its independence in 1821 than it was invaded by neighboring Haiti, which occupied the country for 22 brutal years. The Haitians banned all foreign priests, severed papal relations, closed the University of Santo Domingo, and levied confiscatory taxes. Not until 1844, when Haiti was torn by one of its many civil wars, did the Dominican Republic finally break free?only to stagger through 22 revolutions over the next 70 years, including a brief period (1861-65) when it once again reverted to Spanish...