Is it possible in the excesses of colonialization and authoritarianism for the Spirit of God to steal the show? Yes, it is because several Dominican prophets did it in the long history of the Dominican Republic.
The modern Dominican faith situation started with an assassination
On May 30, 1961, seven assassins’ bullets struck down dictator Rafael Trujillo who was on his way to visit his mistress in San Cristobal in the Dominican Republic. Since 1930, he had ruled with an iron hand that pushed God to a secondary place in society. He loved cruising by a blinking neon sign that at first proclaimed, Dios y Trujillo, but then was changed to Trujillo et Dios. The sign got bigger and bigger. It was merely a matter of time that only “Trujillo” would be declaring ultimate leadership. He pushed the Catholic church to serve him and suppressed Protestants. His rule was as sacrilegious as it was savage.
In a letter, a year before the assassination of “El Jefe,” the de facto CIA station chief at the United States Embassy, wrote, “If I were a Dominican…, I would favor destroying Trujillo as being the first necessary step in the salvation of my country and I would regard this, in fact, as my Christian duty.” The Dominicans put up a plaque near the spot where Trujillo died saying, “ajusticiamiento,” justice was done here. Soon after, a religious revival started in the island republic. We don’t know if the CIA was watching that day, but as sure as anything that while the participants were beetle-eyed on Trujillo and his driver, God’s eye may well have been looking to the future. The whole story started a long time ago.
The Taino
The early history of Hispaniola, the Spanish name of the island that today encompasses the Dominican Republic and Haiti, is not well known. The Taino people were predominate, but they likely had displaced earlier Carib or other peoples. At the time of the Spanish arrival in 1492, the Carib were expanding and driving the Taino out of other islands and taking slaves. The Caribs had a reputation for eating their victims. The self-appellation of the Tainos means “the good people,” they told the Spanish as they urged the taking down of the Caribs.
A Taino creation story recounts an almost virginal birth about the time when they came from out of the caves in a sacred mountain (see Rouse 1992, p. 16). The Tainos were spiritually centered on the worship of zemi, spirits or ancestors, associated with natural and supernatural features of the world.
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The arrival of Columbus
When Columbus arrived at Hispaniola on December 6, 1492, many Taino leaders actually saw an opportunity to form an alliance against the Caribs. However, Columbus himself was a representative of an empire that was trying to consolidate control in Europe and overseas. Further, he was doing this while possessed of a messianic vision of the future of the new world. He was a little blind to the real potential of the Tainos, seeing them as defenseless and cowardly. He thought that they would merely make good servants.
The first small group of Europeans that Columbus left were encamped at a fort that was located within a Taino chief’s main town. The settlement was called La Navidad, meaning The Nativity, because it was established right around Christmastime. However, after Columbus returned to Spain, he discovered that La Navidad was wiped out, evidently not by the town’s Taino but by greed and lusts fights among the Europeans.
Columbus wrote that from the Taino chief Guacanajari, he discovered that the men whom he had left behind started quarrelling over women and gold. Contrary to Columbus’ orders, one group tried to attack a Taino gold mine, which led to a total destruction of the colony. The explorer seems to have accepted this story as the truth and even adopted the chief’s son as his own son, though he established a new community on the other side of the island. (Exactly what happened is still a matter of conjecture.)
The exact location of La Navidad was lost to history until a couple of missionaries started looking for it. In 1977, a medical missionary William H. Hodges honed into what appeared to be the correct location. An archaeological team from the University of Florida started excavating. Clark Moore, a Baptist missionary who built a local school and a hydroelectric plant, started to search based on his builder’s feel for the land. Under the guidance of Yale University archaeologist Irving Rouse, he had an uncanny sense of terrain and also had good relations with many local people who helped him. He also pointed toward the right area. The end result was the discovery of the probably correct location, the Haitian village of En Bas Saline.
Columbus came back with 17 ships and a large contingent of soldiers. Though he still had high religious hopes, his focus was switching to the conquering of the natives and the plundering of the land. The shift can be seen in move from naming the first settlement after a Christian redemptive moment to a name that emphasized the political leader Queen Isabella. On the one hand, Columbus thought that Hispaniola was the Biblical land of Sheba; but he also sold the Spanish backers on the idea that he was also going to find King Solomon’s gold mines. The early Columban expeditions were rippled with tensions between God, Power and Money.
The origins of institutional Christianity in Latin America and the Caribbean had its official beginning on the northern coast of Santo Domingo in the city of La Isabela. Here, the very first Catholic mass in the New World was held on January 6, 1494.
Two of Columbus’ subordinates peeled off from the main expedition to take revenge and slaves from the killers of their comrades. Starting in 1495, the conquest of Hispaniola was brutal.
Exactly how many were killed or died from epidemics that were spreading around the world from Asia is uncertain. Some have put the figure of Caribbean-area deaths associated with the Conquest in the millions. However, these figures were generated to serve fierce contemporary polemics. Some claimed only 10,000 died. A DNA analysis published in Nature journal in 2020 indicated that the true figure may have been between 24,000-80,000. There is no doubt that the arrival of the Spanairds was catastrophic to the Hispaniola natives and that atrocities were committed. Today, over half of the DNA of Dominicans comes from Europeans, about 40% from sub-Sahara Africans, and the rest from Amerindians and Asians.
Friar Bernardo Buil objected ineffectually against the methods. Soon, there would be a massive theological debate within European Catholicism over how to proceed.
The Protector of the Indians: Bartolome de las Casas
The first officially appointed “Protector of the Indians the legendary priest Bartholeme de las Casas (1504-1566), who was a great admirer of other reformers like Erasmus (and perhaps Martin Luther but admitting that would have had deadly consequences). De las Casas had his hands full in battling for full rights for the native Indios, the Taino people. The Spanish church took seriously its missionary task and started building in 1514 the first cathedral of the Americas, the Catedral Santa Maria La Menor, finishing it in 1541. They were also worried about the Protestants gaining support among the Indians and prohibited the distribution of the Protestant Bible.
Photo: Mario Roberto Duran Ortiz, CC BY-SA 4.0
Las Casas was a remarkable defender of the non-European right to full access to Christian faith and church recognition. He documented the mistreatment of the Indians, as they were called, following the teaching of the Apostle Paul that in Christ, all humans were equally dignified and had access to God. He framed his defense also within the Catholic theological tradition that went back to Thomas Aquinas.
However among other Catholic theologians, there were also philosophical ideas associated with Aristotle’s Politics, Book 1, that underlay a more cruel historical narrative about the Indians and Africans. Aristotle distinguished between conventional slaves and natural slaves. So, Catholic Europeans in Las Casas time saw captives in war as fair game to be made “conventional” slaves (supposedly as long as they weren’t Christians). However, one Aristotelian interpretation of social development categorized Black Africans and Indians as lower in the scale of human evolution. They were either pre-humans who were only capable of appreciating being beasts of burden, or primitive human beings incapable of full spiritual understanding until they have receive thousands of years of “tutelage” through slavery. As Aristotle’s Spanish translator Juan Gines de Sepulveda declared, the Indians were “natural slaves.”
De las Casas won a great international debate but lost the battle. The Spanish businessmen and the royalty back home profited off the misuse of the native peoples. So, they had the priest recalled to Spain, though he did not give up the fight.
In 1646, Las Casas took his last stand by issuing 12 Rules for confessors that denied absolution of sins and communion until a colonial pillager of the Indians made restitution. In reaction, the Spanish king banned the Rules and had them publicly burned. However, Puritan reformers in England, the Netherlands and Germany celebrated Las Casas expose of the mistreatment to the Indians.
In the 1550s, Las Casas wrote The History of the Indies which he hoped would be the last critical word in the argument. It was widely circulated in Spanish and French and was finally published by Protestants in the late 16th Century after the priest had already passed away. It was a very popular book because it seemed to match up to the experience of persecution that the Protestants had endured. Many could remember when the Kings of Spain would have thousands of Protestants killed at one time on Plaza Major in Madrid. Catholicism took a long time to develop Las Casas’ idea into a democratic expression.
For years, the populace lived under oppression. Still, the ideas of freedom, dignity, and faith lived within the Dominican Republic traditions. In 1913, political reformers inserted at the center of the Dominican flag, a Bible open, it is commonly believed, to the Gospel of John, chapter 8, verse 32, which reads “Y la verdad os hará libres” (And the truth shall make you free).
The Holy Spirit arrives
Adding to the messianic visionary tradition of Columbus and Las Casas, the Pentecostals started to develop their presence in the Dominican Republic in the early 20th Century.
Saloman Feliciano Quinones and his wife Dianicia were the first known Pentecostals in the Dominican Republic. In 1913, he became imbued with the Holy Spirit after working in the plantations of Hawaii and returned to the Dominican Republic in 1916 with the new Pentecostal teaching. His friend in Hawaii, Juan I. Lugo, founded the Pentecostal Church of God in Puerto Rico.
Feliciano went to the city of San Pedro de Macoris. This was a city in tremendous growth and overflowing with new ideas and inventions. Cuban immigrants had brought modern sugar cane cultivation methods which promoted an agricultural boom. The onset of World War I, then, caused a high demand for sugar. Other peoples were arriving also, disrupting stale habits and old ideas. Afro-Caribbeans came to work in the sugar cane fields. Europeans came fleeing World War I. The result was a sense of opportunity, innovation, and growth. The military occupation of the Dominican Republic by the United States provided some political and legal stability.
The city became known for its first-ever telephone and telegraph center in the Dominican Republic. The free-flowing city gave birth to a new generation of intellectuals, artists, and writers. Multiple newspapers were started. And the first national baseball championship games were held here. Many great National League players come from this city: Joaquin Andujar; Hector Carasco; Daniel Cabrerra, and Robinson Cano, to name a few. Into this mix, came a new religion, or at least, a new style of religion called Pentecostalism. Feliciano was able to establish the first Pentecostal church in the Dominican Republic. In 1918, the congregation birthed a new denomination, evangelical with Pentecostal characteristics, the Dominican Evangelical Church.
However, there was at least one last battle between the Sword and the Bible before spiritual renewal could take off. The dictatorial rule of Rafael Trujillo that started in 1930 made it very dangerous to preach Christian values. Although there was spiritual progress, it could be quite dangerous.
Francisco “Pancho” Hernandez Gonzalez too heard a call from God to leave Puerto Rico to preach to the Dominicans in the 1930s. But like the Biblical prophet Jonah, he did not have an easy feeling about doing so. His experience has caused people to call him the “Dominican Jonah.”
Like the Biblical prophet Jonah, Hernandez was afraid of the persecution being meted out by the Trujillo government and perhaps didn’t feel that much kinship with the Dominican people. He arrived in the country on September 2, 1930. But after a few weeks, the Pentecostal pastor fled the country and shut his ears to God’s call.
Then, Hernandez was struck by tuberculosis. As he prayed and lay in bed, the evangelist had time to reflect. It dawned upon him that he was a modern re-figuration of the example of Jonah. The Old Testament prophet didn’t really like Babylonians and was afraid that they would kill him. So, he sailed back home. He was punished for his temerity by being swallowed by a whale. In the darkness, he too had time to reflect on his cowardness and lack of love for foreign peoples. Later, the death and resurrection of Jesus were retold as another Jonah-like episode that led to global revival.
So, Hernandez returned to the Dominican Republic to preach a message of hope and the second coming of Christ to rescue Dominicans who were buried by Trujillo suppression so that they could hear from God. He also preached that the Spirit would physically heal the body and restore social peace to the nation, wrote the journalist Beinvenido Alvarez-Vega. Essentially, Hernandez shifted authority for body and soul to God away from Trujillo.
His work was very successful in starting many churches in Dominican cities. Several Pentecostal churches then coalesced into the Assembly of God in the Dominican Republic, holding their first conference on February 4, 1942. It grew into the largest Pentecostal denomination in the land.
Because of episodes like this, the dictator really clamped down on religion before people started feeling independent and empowered.. In 1954, he used his recognition of Catholicism as the official religion in 1954 as a tool of state control. Protestants were persecuted. His cult of personality expanded to operatic heights. The capital was renamed Ciudad Trujillo. Every church was required to post a sign, “God in heaven, Trujillo on earth” (Dios en cielo, Trujillo en tierra.” Personally, Trujillo practiced folk religion which posed no institutional threat.
Although the dictator was suspicious of the Pentecostal organizing, he allowed them some social space to hold rallies as large as 15,000 people in the 1950s. However, their total numbers were still relatively small. So, these churches were able to start attracting public attention from the newspapers like El Caribe and to develop charismatic leaders like the evangelists David Garcia and Jaime Cardona. Luis Urbaez, a local gangster, was converted and became an evangelist in his own right and well-known all over Latin America. However, the relationship with El Jefe Trujillo was always delicate.
To those who he came to see as dangerous enemies of the regime, Trujillo imposed a theater of cruelty. He jailed, tortured, or killed them. He actually assassinated several opponents right here in New York City. He was a goat leading his sheep to the slaughter.
After his death in 1961, he left a nation stunned and bruised psychologically and spiritually. But the gates were opening to more religious explorations. For many, the first step toward religious freedom came by leaving the traditionalistic rural areas.
Dominicans rushed to the cities to breathe freely and earn an easier life. The movement into the Dominican cities was the fastest in Latin American history. This uprooting from the rural cake of custom gave an opportunity to the migrants to have a moment of freedom to look around to see what worldview into which they could root their lives. Practically, this meant that city life had an evangelical/Pentecostal sound. The return to religious roots was long overdue, delayed by years of stasis.
Soon after Trujillo died, the Catholic church’s interests also diverged from the conservative establishment to a renewed social concern. In 1961, the Catholic Relief Services started with the goal to improve the conditions of poor Dominicans. Charismatic Catholicism also grew. Large crowds of charismatic Catholics gathered to receive the work of the Holy Spirit.
The growth of Charismatic Catholicism was a response to a proliferation of Protestant denominations in the Dominican Republic. The Baptists started the Convencion Bautista Dominicana within a couple of months of Trujillo’s death. Then for over twenty years, 1-4 denominations were started almost every year.
This effervescence of enthusiastic faith bubbled up into New York City. Five of the new Protestant denominations have their roots in New York City:
Iglesia Pentecostal Misionera Circulo de Oracion (1969);
Iglesia Pentecostal de Jesucristo Internacional (1970);
Concillo de Iglesias Carismaticas Espiritu de Hermandad (1980);
Concilio Latinoamericana de Nueva York (1980); and
Iglesia Evangelica Pentecostal Cristo en las Anatillas (1982).
In Washington Heights, the Dominicans have enriched the tradition of New York City as an international center for religious innovation with deep historical roots.
Go in-depth into Dominican Faith
Crassweller, Robert D. 1966. Trujillo: the life and times of a Caribbean dictator. London: Macmillan.
Deagan, Kathleen and Jose Maria Cruxent. 2002. La Isabela: Columbus’ outpost among the Tainos 1493-1498. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Ibid. 2002. Archaeology at La Isabella: America’s First European town 1493-1498. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Delaney, Carol. 2011. Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem. New York: Free Press/Simon and Schuster.
Davidson, Christina C. 2018. Analysis of Evangelical Christianity in the Dominican Republic.
Keegan, William. 1992. The People who met Columbus: The Lucayan Taino. Gainesville: University of Florida Press.
Llosa, Mario Vargas. 2012. The Feast of the Goat. London: Faber and Faber.
Rouse, Irving. 1992. The Tainos: rise and decline of the people who greeted Columbus. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Santana, Samuel. 2006. Los Carpinteros de Dios. Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic: Concilio Evangelico Asambleas de Dios de la Republica Dominicana.
Santana, Samuel. 2010. Marcados por la Unción : La Crónica de un Gran Avivamiento desde David García hasta Luis Urbáez, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic: Concilio Evangelico Asambleas de Dios de la Republica Dominicana.
Stevens-Arroyo, Anthony. 1988. Cave of the Jaqua: mythological world of the Tainos. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Wilson, Samuel. 1990. Hispaniola: Caribbean Chiefdoms in the Age of Columbus. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.
