The island of the Dominican Republic is located in the Caribbean Sea, and its part of the West Indies. The Dominican Republic shares the land with Haiti and the entire island is know as Hispanola. Hispanola as it was called when Christopher Columbus discovered it when he discovered it on his first voyage in 1492. The founding of this island was very important to European settlers and it played a major part in the economic growth that Europe had when the new world was discovered. The agriculture that is part of this island has help establish an economic structure that has led the Dominican Republic become what it has today. (Cambeira p12).
Economically Dominican Republic is a middle-income developing country that is primarily dependent on agriculture, trade, and tourism. The export of agricultural goods such as sugar, coffee, cocoa, bananas, rice, plantains, beef, and flowers are among the things that help this country prosper economically. 40 percent of the population makes their living farming and another 10 percent have occupations derived from agriculture. (Zakrzewski, p77).
Agriculture has always been the one thing that the Dominican Republic can depend on, but tourism earnings and re-admittance have helped build a foreign exchange. The tourist industry rivals agriculture as a source of foreign exchange and provides jobs in public service and constructions. (Velton, p135).
Historically the person in power has always controlled the Dominican economy. Between the 1930-1961 Rafael Trujillo completely dominated the Dominican government. During his reign Trujillo helped bring substantial development to the Dominican economy. Building irrigations canals roads and improvement of the agriculture and establishment of an industry were among things that Trujillo did. (Zakrzewski p128).
Rafael Trujillo paved the way for the Dominican economy, after his assassination in 1961 the economy began to falter because of some benefits of former prosperity had been funneled to the people to due to large scale spending by the government.