The origins of the Dominican Republic, its people and culture consist predominantly in a European basis, with Native Taíno and African influences. The majority of Dominicans reside in the Dominican Republic, while there is also a large Dominican diaspora, mainly in the United States and Spain.
In modern days and according to genealogical DNA testing, the genetic makeup of the Dominican population is estimated to be 52% European, 40% Sub‐Saharan African, and 8% Native American‐Taino (Montinaro et al. 2015). The general population of the country is divided into three ethno‐racial groups.
The majority of the population (around 70 per cent) are of mixed African and European (Spanish) descent, with the remainder black (around 16 per cent) and white (14 per cent). During the early colonial period indigenous Taíno-Arawak communities were also part of the overall population.
The majority of white Dominicans have ancestry from the first European settlers to arrive in Hispaniola in 1492 and are descendants of the Spanish and Portuguese who settled in the island during colonial times, as well as the French who settled in the 17th and 18th centuries.
The Dominican Republic is one of the few countries in Latin America where the majority of the population is made up of multiracials of predominately European and African descent, with a lesser degree of Amerindian admixture.
Long before Columbus' arrival in the Caribbean, it was populated by indigenous people, the Taíno Indians. Arawak refers to the language and culture that those populations shared. They lived in Venezuela and throughout the Caribbean, Central America, and Florida.
The majority of Dominicans have sub-Saharan African ancestry,1 which would make them "black" by historical United States one-drop' rules.
Few people realise that the Dominican Republic was home to the first black people in the Americas, who were initially brought here from present-day Senegal and The Gambia in the 1490s by Christopher Columbus.
Most White Dominicans are descendants of European settlers of French and English stock.
Dominicans are primarily a mix of West African, Spaniard, and indigenous Taino descent. The percentage of each can vary greatly by person, of course. But culturally, our heritage consists largely of those three.
NOTE: Hispanic or Latino refers to a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race. This includes people who reported detailed Hispanic or Latino groups such as: Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Dominican Republic, etc.
The majority of the Dominican population is tri-racial, with nearly all mixed race individuals having Taíno Native American ancestry along with European and African ancestry.
Although the majority of the population is Christian, Muslims have formed local organizations such as the Círculo Islámico de República Dominicana (The Islamic Circle of Dominican Republic) and the Islamic Center of the Dominican Republic (located in Miami).
English is mostly spoken by tourists visiting the country and expatriates. The most common native languages spoken in the Dominican Republic are as follows: Dominican Spanish (85% of the population) Haitian Creole (2%)
The Dominican Republic was explored and colonized by Christopher Columbus on his first voyage in 1492. He named it “La Hispaniola”, and his son, Diego, was its first governor.
It inaugurated both the colonial plantation and New World African slavery, the twin institutions that gave blackness its modern significance. On this island in 1503 black maroons first rose their subversive heads, and there too the hemisphere's first black slave insurrection took place on December 27, 1522.
I welcomed the idea of living in a country where most people looked like my family members and me, as 90 percent of the Dominican population has black ancestry. However, it wasn't long before I encountered a familiar, yet foreign, racism.
Modern Taino Heritage
Groups of people currently identify as Taíno, most notably among the Puerto Ricans and Dominicans, both on the islands and on United States mainland.
Most Dominicans nowadays rarely resemble what the Taino looked like, and only a few families have some Taino blood in their generations. Preserved in time, still many artifacts and stone pottery can be found in the island, and their simple art they left behind in caves.
In appearance the Taino were short and muscular and had a brown olive complexion and straight hair. They wore little clothes but decorated their bodies with dyes. Religion was a very important aspect of their lives and they were mainly an agricultural people although they did have some technological innovations.
The Dominican people and their customs have predominately European cultural origins consisting basis, with both African and native Taíno influences. The Dominican Republic was the site of the first European settlement in the New World, namely Santo Domingo, founded in 1493.
OMB defines "Hispanic or Latino" as a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race.
Ethnicity. The population of the Dominican Republic is predominantly of mixed African and European ethnicity, and there are small Black and white minorities.
According to a 2019 Latinobarometer survey, the population is 49 percent Catholic, compared with 55 percent in a 2016 Latinobarometer survey and 68 percent in 2008. The same survey indicates 26 percent of the population is evangelical Protestant, compared with 12 percent in 2008.