ABSTRACT
Dominican democracy has been described as both "fragile" and "crisisprone". That would appear to be true, for both economic and political reasons. President Joaquin Balaguer emphasized the Spanish legacy of culture, religion, and white racial purity, and he continued the policy of hating, fearing, and exploiting "negro" Haitians. Balaguer glorified the Spanish colonial heritage by means of an extensive and expensive program to restore colonial Santo Domingo and construct galleries and museums of high culture in the Plaza de Cultura. Once he returned to office after eight years of Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD) government, Balaguer was interested, first, in establishing control over the military and the government bureaucracy, and second, in trying to improve the economic situation, which had continued to worsen. The political side of democracy is clearly linked with and dependent on the economic, for political and economic development are interdependen.
