After 22 years under Haitian control, Dominican revolutionaries led by Juan Pablo Duarte and the secret society La Trinitaria rose up in Santo Domingo and declared independence. The bloodless coup ended Haitian President Jean-Pierre Boyer's unification project and established the Dominican Republic, though the new nation would spend decades fending off further Haitian invasions and internal power struggles.
Haiti had occupied the entire island of Hispaniola since 1822, unifying it under Haitian rule and abolishing slavery throughout. But Dominican elites and ordinary citizens chafed under policies that redistributed land, imposed French as an official language in a Spanish-speaking population, and drafted men into military service far from home.
Juan Pablo Duarte, a young intellectual who had studied in Europe, returned home and organized La Trinitaria, a clandestine independence movement structured in cells of three so that no single arrest could unravel the whole network. In the predawn hours of February 27, 1844, rebels seized the Ozama Fortress in Santo Domingo, firing a cannon that signaled the uprising had begun. Remarkably, the Haitian garrison surrendered with minimal bloodshed.
Duarte himself was traveling abroad and returned to find more conservative figures, particularly Pedro Santana, had taken charge of the fledgling republic. Santana would go on to dominate Dominican politics, even briefly reannexing the country to Spain in 1861. Duarte, the visionary founder, died in relative obscurity in Venezuela in 1876, but is now celebrated as the Dominican Republic's founding father, his birthday and independence day both marked as national holidays.
Key people: Juan Pablo Duarte, Pedro Santana, Jean-Pierre Boyer