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The Italian community comprised more than thirty families in this coastal city during the republican
period in the nineteenth century. Two families who trace their ancestry to the first half of that century were
the Arzenos, first with Sebastián Arzeno (1781 – 1851), a native of Zoagli, and husband of María del Carmen
Rodríguez,
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and the Bonnellys, with the Corsican Francisco Ulises Bonnelli Coutín (1825-1870), who emigrat-
ed from Saint Thomas and married Buenaventura Carmen Arnaud Portes (1848 - ?) in Santiago, giving rise to
the family of this surname in the country.
President Carlos Morales Languasco was the grandson of Agustín Languasco, a native of Oneglia (today
Imperia) in Liguria,
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who had already settled in Puerto Plata in 1810, where he was a landowner.
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One of his
sons, Teófilo Languasco Subalier
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or Chevalier, was the first president of the Sánchez city council in 1886.
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Another noteworthy figure in Puerto Plata of Italian descent was the businessman Frank Rainieri Marran-
zini, grandson of Isidoro Rainieri Carrara and Bianca Franceschini Galletti, natives of Emilia-Romagna (the
former from Ronchetti, San Secondo Parmense, Parma, and the latter from Castello d´Argile, Bologna), and
Orazio Michelo Marranzini Inginio and Inmaccolatta Lepore Rodia, both from Santa Lucia di Serino, in south-
ern Italy. President of the Punta Cana Group, Rainieri Marranzini owns a famed resort in the town of that
name in the eastern end of the country, which has put the Dominican Republic on the world tourism map.
From his grandfather Isidoro Rainieri he inherits his connection with the hotel industry; Isidoro Rainieri was
involved in the hospitality industry in Puerto Plata and Santiago beginning in 1898 with the Hotel Europa. It is
worth noting that Isidoro Rainieri had come to Puerto Plata from Colombia (where he was married in Bogotá
in 1896) with his wife Bianca Franceschini in 1898. Later, in 1908, he opened the Hotel del Comercio in Puerto
Agricultural School of
Moca (1928), where
Dr. Raffaele Ciferri
worked.
© Edwin Espinal
THE ITALIAN PRESENCE IN THE CIBAO REGION AND IN SANTIAGO DE LOS CABALLEROS