With a $ 1. 92-billion-a-year tourism industry, Costa Rica stands as the most visited nation in the Central American region, with 1. 9 million foreign visitors in 2007, thus reaching a rate of foreign tourists per capita of 0. 46, one of the highest in the Caribbean Basin, and above other popular destinations such as Mexico ( 0. 21 ), Dominican Republic ( 0. 38 ), and Brazil ( 0. 03 ).

Merengue típico and Orchestra merengue have been popular in the Dominican Republic for many decades, and is widely regarded as the national music.

A romantic style is also popular in the Dominican Republic from vocalists such as Angela Carrasco, Anthony Rios, Dhario Primero, Maridalia Hernandez and Olga Lara.

Prune ice cream is popular in the Dominican Republic.

The first record of the painting's existence is in 1556, when Archbishop Alonso de Montufar, a Dominican, preached a sermon commending popular devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe, a painting in the chapel at Tepeyac, where certain miracles had lately been performed.

Dominican President Leonel Fernandez gave a speech in front of other regional leaders in which he said Aristide commanded " great popular support " within Haiti and called for his inclusion in the country ’ s democratic future.

The areas of Uptown Port Jefferson and Port Jefferson Station have become increasingly popular areas for immigrants from Dominican Republic, Mexico, Puerto Rico and El Salvador since the early 1990s.

While members of the mendicant orders of the Franciscan and Dominican Orders are some of the first to commission panels representing this subject matter, such works quickly became popular in monasteries, parish churches, and homes.

Dominican music: Merengue had been popular in the Dominican Republic for decades since evolving out of confusing folk origins, but did not truly become a form of pop music until the early 1960s, when legends like Johnny Ventura brought the music to new audiences at home and abroad.

In addition to Mexico, Memín remains a popular magazine in the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Peru, Chile, Panama, Colombia, and other countries.

The music of the Dominican Republic is known primarily for merengue, though bachata and other forms are also popular.

In spite of the changes, merengue remained the most popular form of music in the Dominican Republic.

Dominican rock is also popular among younger and not so younger crowds of the Dominican Republic.

Bocatabu is a new Dominican rock group who is very popular, too.

These bands were the stars of the cadence-lypso scene, which was the first style of Dominican music to become popular across the Caribbean.

Their music was a dance-oriented version of many kinds of Caribbean and Latin popular music, such as Cuban bolero, Brazilian samba, the merengue from the Dominican Republic, Trinidadian calypso, and American funk.

Religious music, influenced by American gospel, has become an important part of Dominican popular music in the 1990s.

Merengue became popular in the United States, mostly on the East Coast, during the 1980s and 90s, when many Dominican artists, among them Victor Roque y La Gran Manzana, Henry Hierro, Zacarias Ferraira, Aventura, Milly, and Jocelyn Y Los Vecinos, residing in the U. S. ( particularly New York ) started performing in the Latin club scene and gained radio airplay.

Bachata, a form of music and dance that originated in the countryside and rural marginal neighborhoods of the Dominican Republic, has become quite popular in recent years.

Baseball is by far the most popular sport in the Dominican Republic.

Other popular dance music groups, Tropicalisimo Apache from Mexico and Los Hermanos Rosario from the Dominican Republic covered the song in 1988.

Merengue is a type of music and dance originated in Dominican Republic, which has become popular all over Latin America-even in those countries which formerly had their own type of music traditions.

When the Spanish conquistadors sailed across the Atlantic they brought with them a type of music known as hesparo, which contributed to the development of Dominican music.

Haiti has a rich blend of African and European music ; Cuban and Dominican influences also blend to create Haiti's diverse music.

" Cuban and Dominican immigrants and recent Puerto Rican migrants in New York have used the term analogously to swing or soul music.

But in addition, throughout the 1970s, salsa groups from Colombia, the Dominican Republic, and Venezuela, among other Latin American nations, emerged, composing and performing music that related to their own specific cultural experiences and affiliations, which posited salsa as a cultural identity marker for those nations as well.

In other cases, such as Cameroon and the Dominican Republic, no revival was necessary as the music remained common, and was merely popularized and adapted for mainstream audiences at home and abroad.

It was because of all this that merengue became and still is the Dominican Republic ’ s national music and dance.

Palo is a Dominican sacred music that can be found through the island.

Palo music is played on long drums termed palos. The word palos means trees, and therefore all Dominican palos drums are instruments made from hollowed out logs.

Conservatorio Nacional de Música is the academy of music of the Dominican Republic.

Dominican music can refer to:

It was developed in the 1970s by groups from Dominica, and was the first style of Dominican music to find international acclaim.

Popular music is widespread, with a number of native Dominican performers gaining national fame in imported genres like calypso, reggae, soca, kompa, zouk and rock and roll.

Like the other Francophone musics of the Lesser Antilles, Dominican folk music is a hybrid of African and European elements.

Dominican folk music is an oral tradition, learned informally through watching others perform.

Rafael Trujillo, the often blood-thirsty dictator of the Dominican Republic for 31 years, perhaps deserved his fate in an even-handed appraisal of history.

The recent history of the Dominican Republic is an almost classical study of the way in which even a professedly benevolent dictatorship tends to become oppressive.

While relations between the islands have had difficulties, mainly due the huge exodus of illegal immigrants from the Dominican Republic due to the nation's history of economic woes, the islands still, with the assistance of the United States Coast Guard and the Dominican Navy have worked hard to reduce the number of Dominicans crossing the Mona Passage in recent years.

* Three Wise Men Day, or Epiphany, in Latin America, Spain, Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic, and is, although not celebrated as widely or in the same way as in countries with a Spanish history, an official holiday in many European countries, for example Austria, Italy, Sweden, Finland, Liechtenstein, Slovakia and Croatia, as well as in parts of Germany and Switzerland.

* May 30 – Rafael Leónidas Trujillo, totalitarian despot of the Dominican Republic since 1930, is killed in an ambush, putting an end to the second longest-running dictatorship in Latin American history.

When Balaguer left office that year, it marked the first time in the Dominican Republic's history that an incumbent president peacefully surrendered power to an elected member of the opposition.

The campaign was one of the nastiest in Dominican history.

The history of organized religion in the province of Nueva Vizcaya dates back to the year 1607 when the Dominican Order arrived at the hinterlands of the province to preach their beliefs.

* Overview of modern Dominican history

Merengue típico symbolizes the traditional and rural life of the Dominican Republic, relating to its dance movements, and religious aspects, thereby creating musical history for the U. S. because of Merengue's rapid and vast expansion that can still be explored today.

He devoted himself to writing and his two-volume history of the Dominican Republic, Naboth's Vineyard: The Dominican Republic, 1844-1924 appeared in 1928.

In 1964, the Cuban impresario Angel Guinea insisted on Johnny Ventura to create his own orchestra, the " Combo Show " which is known as an important part of the history of popular Dominican music.

Thus Munio played a significant role in the history of the Dominican Order.

The resulting depositions survive, to form the basis of a highly readable history by Peter Linehan ( 1997 ) that lays open more than just the social history of Dominican friars and nuns in 13th-century Castile.

The Bosch administration was very much an oddity in Dominican history up to that point: a freely elected, liberal, democratic government that expressed concern for the welfare of all Dominicans, particularly those of modest circumstances, those whose voices had never really been heard before in the National Palace.

Category: Military history of the Dominican Republic

Fernández was elected to a second term of office in the presidential election held on 16 May 2004 with an absolute majority and the second highest percentage ever in Dominican history ( 57 %).

The church and adjoining convent served at various times throughout its history as the Dominican Order's headquarters.

When Balaguer left office that year, it marked the first time in the Dominican Republic's history that an incumbent president peacefully surrendered power to an elected member of the opposition.

Peña Gómez was one of the most popular leaders in recent political history in Dominican Republic, especially among the poor masses.

The storm also caused 7 deaths in Puerto Rico, 18 in the Dominican Republic and at least 4 in Florida, bringing the total number of deaths to at least 3, 025 ; Jeanne is the 12th most deadly storm in the Atlantic hurricane history ever.