406 / 540
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DR. RAFFAELE CIFERRI’S CONTRIBUTIONS IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Fellenberg; the latter had founded in Bern, Switzerland, “the first establishment for agricultural education of
which we have knowledge.”
5
This experience radiated through Europe and North America, and Abad noted
the continuation of the “agricultural conventions and conferences initiated in Germany and, more recently,
of the proliferation of agronomic stations, which are not, as some believe, mere chemical laboratories for the
analysis of soil and fertilizer, but rather centers that occupy themselves with all manner of agricultural experi-
ences… . The agronomic stations are currently one of the best auxiliaries to agriculture, because they provide
active propaganda for the well-confirmed progress that is being made… . Furthermore, in these stations the
new plants are acclimatized, and new crops are studied—the new crops that then begin to enrich our agricul-
ture.” Abad urged his fellow Dominicans: “Let us work to imitate this example.”
6
In 1907, Abad reiterated (in the agricultural journal
Revista de Agricultura
, published by the Secretariat of
State for Agriculture and Immigration) his proposal to install an Agronomic Station in the Dominican Repub-
lic. He based his argument on the successful example of the Instituto Agronômico de Campinas in the state
of São Paulo, Brazil. He indicated that it “has extensive and varied land for experimenting with plants and
seeds and for trying out work tools and procedures for cultivation. It also has a well-equipped laboratory for
analyzing plants, soils, and fertilizers and for making precise valuations of the produce.” He added that it also
had a “Phytology section” operating independently of the Instituto, where all types of insects were displayed,
having been collected by specialists; the section published studies on the harm done by insects to both plants
and animals. Naturally, these studies, financed by the government, devoted the greater part of their attention
to coffee—the principal product of that state—and other major crops such as sugarcane, cotton, and rubber.
At the end of his description of the positive experience of that scientific organism, Abad concluded with a
question: “The usefulness of institutions like the one that we briefly review here is indisputable… . When will
we decide to set forth on the path that others have trod with such excellent results?”
7
Roadblocks
En Route
to the Agronomic Station
Echoing the ideas proposed by Hostos in the early twentieth century,
Diputado
Eladio Sánchez introduced
a bill to create the first “experimental farm schools.” According to journalist José Ramón López in an arti-
cle published in June 1909 in the newspaper
El Dominicano
, there was a need to establish at least three such
schools: two for tropical crops, located in the north and in the south of the Republic, and another in the
center for subtropical ones.
8
The following year, in April 1910, Abad wrote in
Revista de Agricultura,
announc-
ing (with obvious satisfaction) that agronomic engineer A. E. Barthe, director of the Agriculture division of
the Secretariat of Agriculture and Immigration, was traveling through the Cibao region to select a site for the
Republic’s first agronomic station. Months later, in the “Miscellaneous Notes” section of the same journal,
a note appeared mentioning that Director Barthe was continuing his important mission through the Cibao
and the province of San Cristóbal. Early in 1911, President Ramón Cáceres gave the inaugural address for
the Farm School in San Cristóbal, the first of its type in the Dominican Republic, and the announcement was
made of an experimental station to be created in Santiago. A law regarding agricultural education had been
passed in 1910, and in 1911 training programs were approved for agricultural supervisors and agricultural en-
gineers.
9
The assassination of President Cáceres in November of the same year prevented the consolidation
of incipient plans for agricultural education; shortly thereafter, the project melted away under the pressure
of political battles and instability.
Noted Dominican engineer Octavio Acevedo announced in February 1919 that the “Department of Agri-
culture and Immigration is taking the necessary steps to establish a College of Agriculture on land contiguous
to the Experimental School” in Haina, San Cristóbal, just west of the capital city of Santo Domingo. The
Dominican Republic was at the time (1916–1924) under martial law imposed by the United States, which had
suppressed the country’s sovereignty and taken over its institutions. Tardy efforts by the intervening govern-
ment to rescue the agricultural college translated into a number of executive orders, but economic limitations