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THE ITALIAN PRESENCE IN SANTO DOMINGO, 1492-1900
49
operations, lending money to the Dominican government as well as individuals. The foreclosure of mortgages
enabled him to build a vast real estate portfolio in the city of Santo Domingo. Moreover, the increasing profits
obtained through his refineries allowed him to expand his plantations in the south and southeast of the coun-
try, by means of land purchases. By the time of his death on February 23, 1900, he held the largest fortune in
all of the Dominican Republic; his assets were three times the size of the national budget that year.
Other Ligurians who immigrated to the country during the years in which Vicini was expanding his com-
mercial and industrial empire were his cousin Angelo Porcella, his brother Andrea, and his first cousin Angio-
lino Vicini, who arrived in 1894. Also, from Zoagli, Angelo was brought by him to the Dominican Republic in
1878. Since then, the Porcellas and the Porcella-Vicinis have been important business families in the country,
and many of their family members have stood out as prominent professionals.
Among other families of Italian origin that came to Santo Domingo in the nineteenth century are the
Billinis. They are the descendents of a Piedmontese soldier who came with the troops sent by Napoleon Bon-
aparte in 1802 to stifle the revolt by the slaves on the western part of the island. Having survived the military
disaster that took the lives of over 50,000 soldiers, this serviceman named Juan Antonio Billini y Ruse took ref-
uge in Baní, where he married a young Criollo woman with whom he had a large family. Among them were
two priests (Miguel and Francisco Javier) and several patriots who became soldiers, politicians and writers.
One of his grandchildren, Francisco Gregorio, was the president of the Dominican Republic for nine months
in 1884 and author of a celebrated novel of manners,
Baní o Engracia y Antoñita
, and two plays, in addition to
numerous collaborations in the main newspapers from the era.
Until the end of the nineteenth century, the few Italian immigrants that established themselves in the city
of Santo Domingo came from the north of Italy, almost all of them from Liguria. Other cities, such as Puerto
Plata, Santiago and La Vega also welcomed some immigrants, but it was only at the beginning of the twentieth
century that their presence became significant. Edwin Espinal will discuss them after this chapter. We know
that the massive Italian immigration to North America and Latin America began with the inhabitants of the
northern regions of Italy following Italian Unification, and it was only after 1880 that the populations from the
south (so-called “Mezzogiorno”) started to leave their regions of origin.
With the gradual collapse of the feudal order following Italian Unification, the massive departure of poor
Italians to the United States, Brazil, and Argentina began. At that time, the population of the countryside and
towns in the south of Italy were mired in an unfortunate reality: the lack of arable lands, as well as malnutrition
and diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, and pellagra that made life intolerable. This is the reason that, despite
the initial efforts by the authorities to prevent the labor force from going abroad, the Italian population was se-
duced by popular stories that sold the idea of America as a land of plenty. Consequently, approximately five mil-
lion Italians left their homeland between 1876 and 1900, and roughly eight million did so between 1900 and 1915.
Most of the families of Italian origin currently residing in the Dominican Republic are the children of this
massive migratory movement, especially from the wave during the first two decades of the twentieth century.
In some cases, there were towns that lost a significant part of their population as their residents came to this
country, as is the case of the Calabrian town of Santa Domenica Talao, which brought to the city of Puerto
Plata an enterprising group of families that contributed to the economic and social growth of both this city and
the Dominican Republic as a whole.
ENDNOTES
1
See Consuelo Varela, “La financiación del primer viaje co-
lombino,” in
Cristóbal Colón y la construcción de un mundo nuevo. Es-
tudios, 1983-2008
(Santo Domingo: Archivo General de la Nación,
2010).
2
See Gabriel Barceló,
Colón y su empresa de Indias: ¿Comercio,
descubrimiento o cruzada?
(Barcelona: Editorial Arpegio, 2019).
3
See Chapter 21 by Julia Vicioso, “
Portò Firenze al Nuovo Mon-
do
The Viceregal Palace of Diego Columbus in Santo Domingo
(1511-1512).”
4
Girolamo Benzoni and Robert C. Schwaller,
The History of the
New World: Benzoni’s Historia del Mondo Nuovo
, trans. Jana Byars
(University Park: Penn State University Press, 2017).