Juan Pablo Duarte

Who was Juan Pablo Duarte?

Juan Pablo Duarte Díez is one of the founding fathers of the Dominican Republic. He was a visionary and liberal thinker, who along with Francisco del Rosario Sánchez and Matías Ramón Mella, is widely considered to be the architect of the Dominican Republic and its independence from Haitian rule in 1844. He would help create the political-military organization La Trinitaria to fight against the Haitian occupation, achieve independence, and a create a self-sufficient nation established on the liberal ideals of a democratic government.

Duarte helped supervise and finance the Dominican War of Independence, paying a heavy toll which would eventually ruin him financially. His then radical views would also make him a controversial figure among fellow Dominicans of the time, and he would be exiled at various occasions after the founding of the new nation. His liberal views went against the conservative elites who sought for heavy-handed control of the nation, and wanted to maintain the traditional regionalisms of the past. Duarte had strong disagreements with Pedro Santana in particular, who he saw as a tyrannical figure directly opposed to his ideals of liberty and independence. Ultimately, he would spent his last days away from the nation he helped shape and would die in exile, this made him a political martyr in the eyes of subsequent generations.