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THE ITALIAN LEGACY IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
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First Admiral of the Republic,” Juan Daniel Balcácer explains the Genoese merchant’s historical importance,
highlighting his family’s significance in the independence and development of the Dominican Republic.
I believe the Italian ancestry of two presidents of the Republic, Francisco Gregorio Billini and Juan Bautista
Vicini Burgos, is hugely relevant. Roberto Cassá as author of the chapter titled “Francisco Gregorio Billini.
President and Author” points out not only Billini’s political and patriotic but also cultural interests. The other
president of Italian ancestry, Giovanni Battista Vicini Burgos, is the subject of essays by Bernardo Vega, “Juan
Bautista (Chicho) Vicini Burgos,” and Alejandro Paulino Ramos, “The Provisional Government of Juan Bau-
tista Vicini Burgos.”
Diplomatic relations between Italy and the Dominican Republic are studied in the chapter in which Mu-
Kien Adriana Sang Ben reviews the events that took place between the foundation of the Republic and the
reopening of the Italian Embassy in 2017—“Diplomatic Relations between Italy and the Dominican Republic:
Notes for a Chronology: 1844-2017”—while I examine more recent developments in “Diplomatic Relations in
the Present: 2017-2020.”
Returning to the intersection of Italian stories in the Dominican Republic with the major junctures of
international politics and world history, the events involving Amadeo Barletta must be taken into considera-
tion. When I met his descendant and heir, Miguel Barletta, an entrepreneur with history studies at Princeton
behind him and one of the first to have appreciated and supported the idea of this book when I presented it to
him, Miguel told me the extraordinary story of Amadeo Barletta and his family. This is recalled in the chapter
titled “Amadeo Barletta” by Bernardo Vega in which the weft of politics, diplomacy, and great entrepreneurial
capability is brought to light.
The subsequent chapter also stems from a conversation, this one with the founder of Punta Cana, Frank
Rainieri, who told me an extraordinary story involving his father and the Italian diplomats who played a crucial
role during the turbulent and compromising moments following the death of the dictator Trujillo. I was imme-
diately convinced that this story should be told in the book, and I am grateful to Antonio Guerra for having in-
terviewed Frank Rainieri in Chapter 18: “Antonio Imbert Barrera Rescued: Italian Families Serving the Nation.”
I am indebted to the Italian ambassador to Mexico Luigi De Chiara for having introduced me to Giancarlo
Summa, a United Nations official engaged in studying the history of the “frogmen,” who were trained by for-
mer Italian soldiers and who died in Santo Domingo defending the constitutional cause. He wrote an interest-
ing piece on this also little-known event, despite it being well recorded in the diplomatic archives of the United
States, Italy, and Great Britain, which he studied and then published in this book “The Choice of Freedom: Ilio
Capozzi and the 1965 April Revolution.”
The testimony of Víctor Grimaldi, Dominican Ambassador to the Holy See for eleven years, entitled “Or-
igins of the Strong Relations between Italy and the Dominican Republic,” takes us out of Santo Domingo and
into the observational eye of Rome, allowing us to see how the restart of diplomatic relations between the two
countries and the importance of these relations were perceived from the Italian capital.
The strength of the links forged over the course of the political, military, religious, and diplomatic history
shared by the two countries is also reflected in the dialogue concerning architecture. These ties facilitated ex-
changes of individual professionals as well as ideas that have profoundly influenced the construction of build-
ings and the business of urban planning in the Dominican Republic. In this sphere, too, there are little known,
if not entirely unknown, stories brought by this book to the visibility their importance deserves. While speak-
ing to the Dominican diplomat Julia Vicioso, I discovered that one of the most symbolic buildings in Santo Do-
mingo owes its existence to Italian inspiration. Indeed, the section on architecture in the colonial period opens
with the surprising results of a study conducted by Julia Vicioso through The Medici Archive Project, “
He
brought Florence to the New World
: The Viceregal Palace of Diego Columbus in Santo Domingo (1511-1512),”
presented at the 62nd Annual Conference of the Renaissance Society of America in Boston in 2016, according
to which the famous Colombo house is the first work of the Italian Renaissance on the American continent.
Another little-known story of cultural cross-pollination between Italy and the Dominican Republic in-