Transportation in the Dominican Republic

Abstract

T >HE evolution of transportation facilities in the tropical Dominican Republic has been greatly affected not only by natural difficulties, such as rugged relief and heavy rainfall, particularly in the mountain areas which separate the regions of greatest density of population, but also by political and economic conditions. For a short while after discovery the island of Santo Domingo was the center of gravity of Spanish interests in the New World, but when greater riches beckoned on the continent it lost its importance, was badly neglected by the motherland and for well over two hundred years remained economically somnolent. Independence brought greater economic liberty, and also long decades of political turmoil, inimical to all progress. Only during the last two decades-with a stable government and the advent of the autonobile-has it been possible to attack seriously the major problem of the Republic: the sadly inadequate transportation facilities. The present Government, convinced as it is that prosperity for the small Dominican farmer depends largely upon a network of good roads, is doing its utmost to bring to completion what was started during the period of American occupation. The Dominican Republic occupies the eastern two-thirds of the island variously referred to as Santo Domingo, Hispaniola or Haiti. According to Vaughan the island lies at the convergence of two major axes in the West Indies, the Central Cuban and the Honduras-Jamaican axis. It is probably due to this convergence of major structural features that the island has within its borders the most extensive mountain massives and the greatest altitudes of the Antillean region. The Honduras-Jamaican axis or arc (according to the interpretation of the structure as primarily the result of faulting or of folding) occupies the long, narrow southwestern peninsula of the Republic of Haiti, with the La Hotte and La Selle mountains. While in Haiti these mountains trend in a westeast direction, near the Dominican border they bend southeastward and assume the name of Sierra de Bahoruco, a poorly known mountain region which attains altitudes of nearly 5,000 feet (Figure 1). These mountains are separated from the various representatives of the Central Cuban axis by a low narrow plain, the Cul-de-Sac-Enriquillo plain, which reaches from Port-auPrince in Haiti to Neiba Bay in the Dominican Republic, and portions of which are below sea level. To the north follow the three principal members of the Central Cuban axis: the Sierra de Neiba, probably continued in the Sierra de Martin Garcia northeast of Neiba Bay, the Cordillera Central or Cibao mountains and the Cordillera Setentrional or Monte Cristi mountains. Of these three the Cordillera Central is by far the largest and highest range. It begins in Haiti near Port-au-Paix as the Massif du Nord and rapidly increases in width and height east of the Dominican border. Its highest peaks are Monte Gallo (8,200 feet), Loma Rucilla (9,700 feet), and a little to the south of the main axis, Monte Tina (10,300 feet). Spurs of the Sierra de Ocoa, a southern extension of the Cordillera Central, reach the sea on the eastern shores of Ocoa Bay and leave only