The Italian Legacy in the Dominican Republic

THE ITALIAN LEGACY IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

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Background: Modern Schools and Agricultural Education

Until the last third of the nineteenth century, in the industries related to agricultural production for domestic

consumption as well as those involved in exportation (tobacco, cacao, sugarcane), the specialists who provided

practical expertise had little more than affinity and interest to guide them, rather than any sort of education or

formal knowledge of agriculture. In general, it was another cultural element, rooted in rural society, that filled

that space. From the mid-nineteenth century until well into the twentieth, most of the

campesinos

turned for

planting advice to the

Almanaque de Bristol

(Spanish edition of

Bristol’s Illustrated Almanac

) which, “in the days

when communication was minimal and information was scarce, was considered fundamental in countries

without a weather service and with limited medical and healthcare services, when other types of calendars

were hard to find”; therefore, “The

Bristol Almanac

informed fishermen about the coastline, while also provid-

ing advice about agriculture.”

The situation varied little with the passing of years, and the

Almanac

was still

available in the late twentieth century.

Eugenio María de Hostos, who was responsible for founding Dominican schools in accordance with mod-

ern pedagogical methods, had called for the creation of agricultural farms in association with the normal

schools, as a way to establish a scientific basis for growing crops for local consumption and for export. As phy-

sician and historian Guido Despradel Batista has written:

The vast plan of reforms that Mr. Hostos decided to implement in our country was not limited exclu-

sively to the rational organization of education at both the primary and normal-school levels but aimed

further at the establishment of a number of agricultural farms to create a generation of young agricul-

turists with a consciousness of the cultivation of the earth—a condition that is indisputably the basis for

the existence and the progress of the nationality. As he expressed it to his privileged disciple, Professor

Joaquín Arismendy Robiou: ‘Let us begin with the normal schools, but we need that for each normal

school established in the city there should be a corresponding agricultural farm in the country.’

Hostos

had also advocated setting up agricultural colonies as a means of expanding modern agriculture.

There were likewise specific proposals referring to the still novel experience of several countries in Europe

and the Americas; such was the case of journalist José Ramón Abad, who was born in Santo Domingo but

emigrated to Puerto Rico at an early age. Abad was hired by the Dominican government to create a manual

about the Dominican Republic that would be taken to the Paris World’s Fair in 1889. He took advantage of

this opportunity to include many suggestions and opinions regarding the direction in which the Dominican

Republic’s economic and social development ought to move. Among various agricultural initiatives, he gave

his support and detailed analysis to the proposal for systems of agricultural colonies, already the object of

tentative efforts in the country. Abad proposed limiting the system of military colonies and added a call to cre-

ate “agricultural communities for correction and beneficence,” following the guidelines set by Pestalozzi and

The Agricultural School

of Moca (1936), where

Dr. Raffaele Ciferri

worked.

Nación. Courtesy of Edwin

Espinal