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Pedro Santana y Familias, 1st Marquess of Las Carreras (June 29, 1801June 14, 1864) was a Dominican soldier and politician who served three times as the president of the First Dominican Republic (1844–1861) and was the first governor-general during the period of annexation of the Dominican Republic to Spain (1861–1865), accomplished at Santana's request. Called "Libertadores de la Homeland" in life, Santana is today considered a dictator because of his authoritarian rule.
Santana was one of the signatories of the Manifesto of January 16, 1844 that proclaimed Dominican independence on February 27, 1844. He would assume the leadership of the southern expeditionary army and gain prominence for his victory in the Battle of Azua. He led a coup d'état against the Central Governing Board and was named president on a provisional basis. During his government, the first constitution of the Dominican Republic was promulgated, and he was designated the first constitutional president of the Dominican Republic. However in 1848 Santana resigned due to political intrigues and popular discontent.
Following the death of Haitian President Jean-Baptiste Riché in 1847, General Faustin Soulouque became President of Haiti and led an expedition into the Dominican Republic in March 1849. Due to the inaction of Dominican president Manuel Jimenes, the Dominican congress called on Santana to repel Soulouque. Santana led the successful defense against Haitian forces at the Battle of Las Carreras in April 1849. He then deposed Jimenes and served as head of state under the title of Supreme Chief until a new president was elected. Congress made him General in Chief of the armies of the Dominican Republic and gave him the title of Liberator of the Fatherland.
In 1853, he returned to the presidency, promulgated a new constitution in 1854, obtained recognition of the independence of the Dominican Republic by many countries and resigned again in 1856. Half a year later, he was banished from the country by president Buenaventura Báez, but he returned after the start of the Cibaeño Revolution and joined the rebels. In 1858 he took the capital and deposed president José Desiderio Valverde, assuming the presidency for a third time.
Unlike his political opponents who wanted an independent Dominican state, Santana sought to reintegrate the Dominican Republic to the Spanish Empire. He oversaw the reestablishment of the Captaincy General of Santo Domingo, exiled and imprisoned a number of nationalist dissidents who had fought with him in the Dominican War of Independence. In 1862, queen Isabella II of Spain granted him the title of Marquess of Las Carreras for the reincorporation of Santo Domingo to Spain. He died during the Dominican Restoration War, after which the country regained its independence in 1865.
Santana had a twin brother, Ramón, and a younger brother, Florencio (b. 14 November 1805), who was disabled, mute and mentally ill.
Santana's father became a militia captain and fought at the 1808 Battle of Palo Hincado under general Juan Sánchez Ramírez, during the Spanish reconquest of Santo Domingo. The elder Santana beheaded Jean-Louis Ferrand's body after his suicide and took his head as trophy.
In Sabana Perdida, Pedro and Ramón Santana frequently traveled to the city of Santo Domingo to sell firewood. In El Seibo, Santana's father acquired the El Prado herd in partnership with Miguel Febles, who had also migrated from Hinche. After the deaths of his father and Febles, Santana married Febles' widow, Micaela Antonia Rivera de Soto, who was 15 years his senior, while his brother Ramón married Febles's daughter, Froilana Febles. Because of these marriages, the Santana brothers acquired moderate wealth and great influence in El Seibo, although they never had an education.
Following the fall of Boyer in 1843, the Dominican organization La Trinitaria conspired to proclaim independence. On May 3, 1843, the Santana brothers were approached by Juan Pablo Duarte and Vicente Celestino Duarte, the latter of which had commercial activities in Los Llanos, near El Seibo. Duarte offered the rank of colonel to Ramón Santana, but he declined in favor of Pedro. According to Ramón, "The boss must be my brother Pedro, who likes to command and knows how to understand people well; I am content to serve under his orders." Juan Esteban Aybar y Bello relied the independence plan to Pedro, who replied "Yes, I am willing to contribute to the Revolution, but I command." Despite joining the Trinitarios, Santana did not share their political beliefs.
Due to a conflict with the Haitian Richiez family, the new president Charles Rivière-Hérard forced the Santana brothers to go daily to the Palace in Santo Domingo's Plaza de Armas, but the Santanas fled to Sabana Buey, near Baní, and hid in Los Médanos on the property of Luis Tejeda and Rosa Pimentel, from there they went to Loma del Pinto. Hérard offered a reward of 200 for the Santanas.
Santana then headed west with 3,000 men to meet the advancing army of Haitian president Hérard. On March 19, Santana defeated Hérard's army of 10,000 at the Battle of Azua, which helped Dominican morale. However, Santana cautiously fell back to Sabana Buey, allowing Hérard to enter Azua unopposed. After this Hérard did not advance further.
Juan Pablo Duarte returned from exile in Venezuela and was named general and joint chief of the southern army with Santana. Differences between the two emerged; Duarte wanted to go on the offensive, Santana to defend until France established a protectorate over the Dominican Republic, which had been requested on 8 March by the Central Government Board led by the conservative Bobadilla, before Duarte came to the country. Bobadilla then recalled Duarte to Santo Domingo.
On May 26, 1844, following the deposition of Hérard, Bobadilla publicly called for the establishment of the French protectorate, creating disagreement among the Dominicans. On June 9, the Trinitarios under Duarte expelled the conservatives from the governing board. The presidency passed to Sánchez, and Duarte was sent to Cibao to get support for the new government. In Santiago, the Trinitario Matías Ramón Mella proclaimed Duarte president of the Republic. Santana first remained cautious and submitted his resignation citing poor health, but when the Junta sent colonel Esteban Roca to replace him, the troops incited by colonel Manuel Mora proclaimed obedience to Santana. Santana then marched to Santo Domingo to overthrow the Junta. The head of the capital's garrison, José Joaquín Puello, did not resist and the Board was deposed. Some Trinitarios were imprisoned, and a new Board was formed under the presidency of Santana. Cibao recognized the new government and Duarte was expelled from the country with his closest companions.
Santana's brother Ramón died on June 15, during the war of Independence.
Some liberals tried to remove the secretaries of state, which was considered a conspiracy by Santana, so he ordered the establishment of special courts which sentenced to death María Trinidad Sánchez, aunt of Francisco del Rosario Sánchez, his brother and two other people. All were executed on February 27, 1845, the first anniversary of independence. In 1847, a new conspiracy led by the then Secretary of the Interior, José Joaquín Puello, was discovered, intended to depose Santana. Puello, his brother Gabino Puello, and others were shot. Small theft was also punished with the death penalty, as exemplified when an elderly man named Bonifacio Paredes was shot in El Seibo for stealing .
Santana also rejected the Catholic Church's request to return their properties confiscated by the Haitians, despite being a practicing Catholic himself. General Manuel Jimenes, Secretary of War and a Trinitario, led another conspiracy. Faced with growing discontent, Santana took refuge in El Prado and then offered his resignation on August 4, 1848.
Santana gathered another troop of Seibanos and defeated the Haitians in the Battle of Las Carreras on the banks of the Ocoa River, on April 21, 1849. A few days later, the chambers impeached Jimenes and named Santana leader of the nation. In gratitude for his services, he was awarded the title of Libertadores, the honorary Sword of the Liberator, and his portrait was placed in the government palace along with those of Christopher Columbus and Juan Sánchez Ramírez. Santana was also granted the exploitation of Saona Island and a house in Santo Domingo. However, Santana was not interested in resuming the presidency, so the chambers focused on appointing Jimenes' replacement. Santana's favorite was Santiago Espaillat, representative of Santiago de los Caballeros, but Espaillat declined. Báez, who had led the opposition to Jimenes, was elected instead.
Between 1849 and 1853, Báez developed an efficient administration and obtained diplomatic recognition by the United Kingdom (1850), Denmark (1851), France (ratified in 1852, though informally recognized in 1848), and the Netherlands (1853).Gallego Cosme, M. J. (2014). Contexto histórico e internacional de las relaciones diplomáticas de la república dominicana con españa durante la segunda mitad del siglo xix. REIB: Revista Electrónica Iberoamericana, 8(2), 90-110. Santana decided to return to the presidency after Báez's four-year term ended; shortly after his reinstatement, he attacked Báez and expelled him from the country, polarizing the nation between them. A third Haitian invasion followed at the end of 1855, commanded again by Soulouque. Although Santana did not go to the front this time, he used the war to reaffirm his authority with constitutional reforms in February and December 1854. The latter strengthened the Executive even to a greater degree than article 210.
During Santana's second presidency, the Dominican Republic was recognized by the Kingdom of Sardinia, the United States, Spain, and the Free City of Bremen. The Dominican delegate to Spain, Matías Ramón Mella, offered the choice between annexation and recognition (showing that Santana was already considering annexation at the time), but the Spanish government, fearing the opposition of France and Britain, chose recognition.
General Duvergé conspired with the Baecists, was tried in El Seibo and shot with his son. After this the Baecists of Santo Domingo flocked to the Spanish consul Antonio María Segovia, who arrived at the end of 1855. Segovia granted Spanish nationality to any Dominican who requested it, which was used by the Baecists to protect themselves against Santana. As demonstrations against Santana proliferated, Santana chose to resign rather than come into a conflict with Spain. Santana also negotiated the lease of the Samaná Peninsula to the United States, but he canceled it due to the pressures of the consuls of Great Britain and France.
In September, Santana's third presidency formally began. After almost a year of civil war, Dominican paper money was devalued with a price of more than 500 pesos for each peso, and discontent grew rapidly. General Domingo Ramírez defected to Haiti along with some of his subordinates. Conspiracies proliferated again. Francisco del Rosario Sánchez, a supporter of Báez, was involved in one and had to march into exile.
Santana promised that reintegration would be easy because of cultural ties: "Religion, language, beliefs, and customs, all we preserve with purity."Doyle, D. H. (Ed.). (2017). American Civil Wars: The United States, Latin America, Europe, and the Crisis of the 1860s. UNC Press Books. pgs. 147-167.
Santana and Antonio Peláez de Campomanes negotiated the conditions for annexation in Los Llanos: Santo Domingo would be an overseas province, granting full rights to Dominicans as subjects of the Spanish monarchy; slavery, which still existed in Cuba and Puerto Rico, would not be reestablished; Santana would be the head of the local administration with the title of captain-general and the ranks of the Dominican military would be recognized, with their salaries and pensions; finally Spain would exchange the Dominican currency for Spanish currency as if it had the same value. At the end of 1860, Francisco del Rosario Sánchez and José María Cabral, who had been part of Báez's presidency, launched a manifesto in Saint Thomas denouncing the annexation and calling for the deposition of Santana. Sánchez formed a Revolutionary Junta made mostly of Baecistas and moved to Haiti.
Santana issued his own counter-manifesto:
A conspiracy led by José Contreras was discovered in Moca and the instigators were shot. Sánchez returned to the country in June, but the population did not rise against Santana and he was captured, tried in San Juan de la Maguana on July 4, and shot along with twenty of his companions.
Spanish officials disapproved of Santana's autocratic rule and executions. They also clashed over their attempts to set up a bureaucracy not controlled by Santana's supporters, and because of the placement of Santana's troops and officers in the reserve, which the latter saw as discriminatory to Dominicans despite earning better salaries. Unable to oppose Spain, Santana offered his resignation as governor citing health reasons. It has been speculated that he expected queen Isabella II to reject the resignation, but this didn't happen. Instead, the Spanish courted Báez by naming him field marshal. In compensation, Santana was granted the title of Marquess of Las Carreras and the position of senator with a salary of 12,000 pesos. Santana returned to his ranch in El Prado.
In February 1863 uprisings against Spanish rule broke out in Neiba, Santiago, and Guayubín, a prelude to the beginning of the Dominican Restoration War in August. In September, a Dominican provisional government was formed in Santiago.
Santana offered his military service to the Spanish, who made him head of an expeditionary army bound for Cibao. The Santiago government sent an army under Gregorio Luperón to intercept Santana. Before departing, Luperón demanded that the government declare Santana an outlaw and a traitor, and sentence him to death. Santana lost precious time not marching on Cibao before resistance was properly organized, deciding to consolidate his position in Guanuma instead. This allowed Luperón to take the strategic mountain Sillón de la Viuda before Santana. In the ensuing Battle of Arroyo Bermejo, Luperón prevailed and Santana fell back to Guanuma.
José de la Gándara y Navarro was appointed Spanish governor on March 31, 1864. He clashed with Santana, who disobeyed orders to retreat to Santo Domingo, and he had Santana summoned to the capital on charges of contempt, with the intention of taking him out of the island. However, just days after his arrival, on June 14, Santana died.
Santana was buried in Santo Domingo's Fortaleza Ozama. In July 1865, as the Spanish were preparing to leave Santo Domingo, prime minister Ramón María Narváez and the conservative deputy Antonio Cánovas del Castillo unsuccessfully requested that Santana's remains be taken to the Iberian Peninsula:
On January 9, 1879, during the presidency of Cesáreo Guillermo, at the request of Froilana Febles, Santana's remains were exhumed and transferred to the Regina Angelorum Church. In 1890, they were moved to the bell tower of the Cathedral by order of Archbishop Meriño. In March 1931, during the presidency of Rafael Trujillo, they were transferred to El Seibo.
In 1978, his remains were moved to the National Pantheon of the Dominican Republic by president Joaquín Balaguer. Protesters led by the Duartiano Institute have pressured to remove the remains from the Panteón along with others.
Also historian and professor José Vásquez emphasized the phrase by indicating that Santana “is not a traitor because he never believed in independence.” In fact, he never used that word, but rather he spoke of separation.” Both are in favor of Santana's remains being removed from the National Pantheon, so that they are next to those of the same people he killed. The first to speak was Senator Dionis Sánchez, proponent of a bill that is being considered in the National Congress so that the remains leave the National Pantheon. In addition to citing the events that occurred on March 19, 1844, which earned Santana fame, the legislator also recalled decrees 2140 of 1972 and 1383 of 1975, with which the then government of Joaquín Balaguer ordered the transfer of the remains of Santana from El Seibo to the National Pantheon, an event that took place on February 27, 1976. "Pedro Santana was a son of his time, he committed crimes and carried out persecutions and betrayed more than one, he was relentless, brutal and atrocious, but there is no doubt that his actions in defense of the country in such critical moments were transcendental."
Álvaro Caamaño, with a similar position, recalled that the three-time president of the country was not the only one who fought in the Battle of Azua, and that he always acted with a wrong vision of what the Republic was. He questioned the military glory and the idea of an invincible figure attributed to him, which he described as a myth. While the historian Cassá elaborated on the fact that Santana enjoyed a historical mystification, a “sort of extraordinary blundering falsification” that began from his dictatorial administration and contributed to the annexation of 1861. He considers that the invincibility of the character is not necessary and that it is nothing more than a myth constructed by a political current. He believes that the claim made by Balaguer was due to a strategy of political legalization of the chain of autocrats who have governed the country and of which the reformist leader was a part.
Teachers Henry Cuello and Manuel Otilio Pérez spoke in favor of Santana. The first insisted on the need to study the character based on the events that surrounded his life, while the second highlighted his military glory and questioned the biased data given on the subject. He recalled that during the Battle of Las Carreras, Santana was called from “emerging to score a lost game and won it.” That is why he defends that his remains remain in the National Pantheon.
After the death of his wife on December 12, 1854, Santana married Ana Zorrilla, another older, wealthy widow. They had no children.
By Ramón Santana's marriage to Froilana Febles, Pedro Santana had 3 nephews: Manuel (b. 24 March 1833), Francisco, and Rafael Santana (b. 1834-5), and a niece, María de Los Ángeles Santana (b. 1844), who inherited many of Santana's properties.
Among Rafael Santana and his wife Paula Bobadilla's descendants are Cardinal Octavio Beras Rojas and comedian Freddy Beras-Goico. Actress is the 3rd-great-granddaughter of Rafael Santana and 4th-great-grandniece of Pedro Santana.
Descendants of his niece, María de los Ángeles Santana Febles, and her husband Isidoro Durán include Minister and former senator José Ignacio Paliza, diplomat Patricia Villegas, and congressman Orlando Jorge Villegas.
In 1963, the Fortaleza México de San Pedro de Macorís was renamed Fortaleza General Pedro Santana.
In the province of Elías Piña, the town of Pedro Santana is named after him.
In August 1861, Santana offered the Sword of the Liberator that had been given to him by the Dominican Republic, to the captain-general of Cuba Francisco Serrano. Serrano refused to accept the sword in life of Santana, but agreed to do so after his death. Thus upon Santana's death in 1864, the Sword passed to Serrano as written in Santana's will. In February 1865, colonel José María Velasco gave the Sword to Serrano in Madrid, who gave it to queen Isabella II in March 8, and placed it on the Royal Armory as a memory of the annexation of Santo Domingo.
On October 17, 1936 after the inauguration of the General Santana and Juan Sánchez Ramírez bridges, Santana's sword was awarded to president Rafael Trujillo by the former archbishop Adolfo Alejandro Nouel. When placing the sword on Trujillo's hands, Nouel said: "I say to you. Hail Father of the Country! Keep this sword so that tomorrow, if necessary - and God forbid - you can defend the homeland of our ancestors."
Brigadier Antonio Peláez de Campomanes, who visited him in 1860, said of him:
In the early 1860s the American W. S. Courtney described him in the following way:
Gregorio Luperón, his opponent in the Dominican Restoration War, wrote in the 19th-century:
His longtime archrival Juan Pablo Duarte dedicated a poem to Santana.
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