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THE ITALIAN LEGACY IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
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lishing a factory, and the Genoese were willing to finance their importation to the Caribbean. These Genoese
traders were very capable of providing the labor force that the new planters in Española needed, since their
allotment of 4,000 slaves was exhausted far before the eight years for the license expired. Charles V granted
new licenses to various courtiers, as well as members of the colonial elite of Española. The King granted them
the privilege of importing African labor through his own resources, which ranged in number from a dozen to
400 slaves. Nevertheless, the Genoese continued to be the primary brokers of Caribbean sugar in Northern
Europe. There were various Genoese last names found throughout Santo Domingo during those years, in
addition to the Centurións and the Vivaldos, including the Castellóns, Grimaldis, and the Justiniáns. All were
connected with the sugar business and slave trade.
The human cruelty that occurred in Central America and the Caribbean, and foremost in Española, did not
go unnoticed by Girolamo Benzoni, a young Milanese adventurer who resided in Santo Domingo between
1542 and 1544. His memoirs titled
Historia del Mondo Nuovo
narrate his experiences as a traveler accompanying
various explorers and Spanish conquistadors throughout South America and the Caribbean. Although it was
poorly written and contained obvious factual errors, Benzoni’s text had thirty editions, translations, and re-
prints during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and it has continued to be used as a valuable source on
the atrocities committed during the Conquest of the Americas.
In his book, Benzoni confesses that because he came from a poor family, he did not receive an academic
education. However, he learned how to compensate for his lack of schooling with a wide range of experiences
during his trips throughout Europe, Central America, and the Caribbean. Due to his significance, his biogra-
phy was published in 1992 by the Dominican Society of Bibliophiles with a scholarly preface.
Benzoni opens his work with the following words: “Being young, only twenty-two, and desiring to see the
world like so many others, and having heard word of the new countries many call the New World, I decided
go and set off fromMilan in the year 1541 with the aid of the Lord our God, ruler of the universe.”
4
After many
years of traveling throughout Central America and the American continents, Benzoni came to Española, to
which he dedicated a substantial description in his account. His naïve approach to the island’s nature and his
acceptance of an oral history alive in the memory of the inhabitants of Santo Domingo offer the readers a
firsthand view of early Dominican colonial life that complements that of other chroniclers of the Americas.
During the two centuries following Benzoni’s stay, aside from the visit in 1589 to Santo Domingo by the
famous military engineer Battista Antonelli to examine and propose a reform to the city’s fortified walls, there
are no other mentions of any Italians within Dominican historiography. Yet there were of course others,
though their presence remained hidden within the archives, and it was necessary to wait until the middle of
the nineteenth century to again discover them. This lapse would seem justifiable, since the Spanish colony
fell into a long period of decline that lasted the entire seventeenth century. Rather than attracting new immi-
grants, the pervasive suffering forced colonists to try to leave the island. Not even the slow economic recovery
of the colony during the eighteenth century was able to attract other immigrants aside from Spaniards.
The Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) and its aftermath of over fifteen years of wars, military invasions,
changes in government, and massive emigration acted as a deterrent to European immigration until at least
after 1822. During that year, the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo ceased to exist due to being annexed by the
Republic of Haiti, which is a very well-known fact. For the ensuing twenty years, the island’s population, re-
duced during previous decades by wars and emigration, started its demographic recovery while the economy
entered into a phase of structural transformation. At that time, sugar cane, cotton, and indigo had disappeared
as important items for exportation. In their place, tobacco, wood and coffee became the primary products
exported.
Even though engagement in trade in Haiti was legally prohibited to foreigners, little by little European and
American merchants began to establish themselves and to buy these products intended for exportation at the
main maritime ports such as Port-au-Prince, Cap-Haïtien, Santo Domingo, and Puerto Plata. In turn, these
merchants imported manufactured goods from both the United States and Europe. Most of the coffee pro-