Wednesday, October 11, 2017

Up with Geography: Dominican Republic

Country Name:
Dominican Republic

Capital:
Santo Domingo

Continent:
None - it's an island; closest continent is South America.

Maps:

Island of Hispaniola, featuring both Haiti &
Dominican Republic.

A close-up of Dominican Republic & its neighbor.

Neighbors:
It shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti; Puerto Rico, which is a U.S. Territory, is to the east.

Water Borders:
Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea

Total Area:
18,704 square miles

Five Largest Cities:
Santo Domingo, Santiago de los Caballeros, Santo Domingo Oeste, San Pedro de Macoris, La Romana

Famous Geographical Point:
Cordillera Central (“Central Mountain Range”)

Famous Person:
Jose Gabriel GarcĂ­a, writer, publisher, politician & co-founder of the Dominican Republic's first cultural society

Book Set In/About:
In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez

A fictionalized account of four sisters who were some of the leading opponents of General Rafael Trujillo, Dominican Republic's brutal dictator from the 1930s to the 1960s.

Movie Set In/About:
"La Lucha de Ana (Anna's Struggle)" (2012), directed by Bladimir Abud

When Anna's son is murdered, the humble flower seller fights against the system to get justice.

Headline of the Day:
"Dominican Republic Deports Thousands of Haitians in September" on telesurtv.net.

2 comments:

Patricia said...

There's a lotta "saint" going on with their city names.

I find myself wondering what the border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti is like. A quick google search tells me that it's very deforested on the Haiti side, and not deforested on the Dominican Republic side.

I checked to see if I'd read that book, because it sounded familiar, but I had not. Matt's mom did though. She gave it five stars and said it should be a good book for a discussion series.

balyien said...

Poor Haiti, they've got it rough. Dominican Republic is the much more successful country on Hispaniola, and it's not as though they haven't also had serious struggles. There's lots of "Saint"s in the Caribbean in general. Some quick & not very thorough Googling seems to indicate its the influence of French colonists.