Dominican Republic

Santo Domingo, founded in 1496, was the first permanent European city in the Americas and the base from which Spain launched the conquest of the mainland. The Indigenous Taíno were destroyed within decades by disease and forced labour, and enslaved Africans were brought to work sugar and cattle estates. As Spain's attention moved to Mexico and Peru, the colony became a poor backwater.

The western third of Hispaniola became the rich French colony of Saint-Domingue, which after its slave revolution became Haiti in 1804. Haiti occupied the whole island from 1822 to 1844, when Dominican rebels declared independence — celebrated as the founding of the nation. The nineteenth century brought a brief return to Spanish rule, chronic instability, and, from 1916, an eight-year US military occupation.

Rafael Trujillo seized power in 1930 and ran one of the most brutal and bizarre dictatorships in Latin American history for 31 years, until his assassination in 1961 — a period that included the 1937 massacre of thousands of Haitians at the border. After further US intervention and civil conflict in the 1960s, the country settled into democratic politics and, from the 1980s, built the Caribbean's largest tourism industry.

Dominican culture is a blend of Spanish, African, and Taíno elements, with music at its heart: merengue, the fast national dance, and bachata, the guitar-driven style born in the country's bars that is now global. Both fill radios, colmados (corner shops), and street parties, and Carnival in February is a riot of diablo cojuelo devil costumes, especially in La Vega.

Baseball — pelota — is close to a religion. The Dominican Republic supplies more Major League players than any country outside the United States, winter-league games are a major social event, and small-town academies feed the pipeline.

Religion is mostly Catholic, with growing evangelical and some Afro-syncretic practice. Family and the extended household are central, and relations with Haiti — sharing an island, a long history of conflict, and a large migrant labour force often in a precarious legal position — remain a charged national issue.

Greater Santo Domingo holds around a third of the country's roughly 11 million people; Santiago, in the fertile Cibao valley, is the second city and the centre of the tobacco and cigar industry. The coasts are increasingly shaped by tourism and foreign residents, while the mountainous interior stays agricultural.

The economy is the largest and one of the fastest-growing in the Caribbean, built on tourism, free-trade-zone manufacturing, mining (gold), remittances from the large diaspora in the US, and agriculture. Growth has not erased sharp inequality, and power cuts, water supply, and the cost of living are constant concerns.

Daily life runs on the colmado as social hub, the guagua, dominoes, baseball on the radio, and merengue from every direction, with a strong Sunday of church and family meals.

Dominican cooking is filling and unfussy. The everyday lunch, la bandera ("the flag"), is white rice, red beans, stewed meat, and salad, often with fried plantain (tostones) or tajadas. Sancocho, a thick stew of several meats and root vegetables, is the celebratory dish, and mangú — mashed green plantain, classically served for breakfast "los tres golpes" with fried cheese, salami, and eggs — is a national favourite.

Street and beach food includes chicharrón, yaniqueques (fried dough), empanadas, and chimichurris (the local burger). Habichuelas con dulce, a sweet cream of beans, is an Easter tradition, and dulce de leche and coconut sweets are common.

Rum is the national spirit, drunk in a Cuba libre or straight, and mamajuana — rum, red wine, and honey steeped with bark and herbs — is the folk tonic. Presidente is the ubiquitous beer, and strong sweet coffee punctuates the day.

Santo Domingo's Colonial Zone, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is the essential history stop: the first cathedral, first university, and first hospital of the Americas, the fortress of the Ozama, and the Alcázar de Colón, all within a few walkable blocks of restored streets.

The east has the country's famous beaches — the long white strands and coconut groves of Punta Cana and Bávaro, backed by huge all-inclusive resorts — and the protected mangroves and Taíno caves of Los Haitises National Park, reached by boat. The Samaná Peninsula in the northeast adds El Limón waterfall, the beaches of Las Galeras, and, in winter, the humpback whales of Samaná Bay.

Inland rises the Cordillera Central, with Pico Duarte, the highest peak in the Caribbean, the cool "Dominican Alps" around Jarabacoa and Constanza, and river rafting and canyoning. In the southwest, far from the resorts, lie the salt lake of Lago Enriquillo with its crocodiles and iguanas, the pale-sand crescent of Bahía de las Águilas in Jaragua National Park, and the sand dunes of Baní.