A.M. - Discovery

[NewsWhore]

This morning's A.M. column on page two of Diario Libre allows editor Adriano Miguel Tejada to look at just how the Dominican Republic seems to be late in many important areas. After noting that Columbus first went to Juana (Cuba) and THEN arrived on Hispaniola, Tejada says that just as happened with the Admiral, the country has had to wait for many of its important dates with history. While the country can lay claim to many firsts, most of them lost their glow after a few years, since the island was small and there was not as much gold as Columbus would have liked. Likewise, Dominican independence came thirty years after most of South America, despite the fact that Haiti showed the way forty ears earlier (1804). For a long time the country lived on a nearly primitive agricultural system, until the sugar industry started in 1870, and although Rome had an aqueduct from the time of the Caesars, Santo Domingo, the first capital in the New World, only got one in 1930. A complete account of all these defects, according to the editor, would fill several ledgers, but what he wants to point out is the fact that all the DR's governments have thought about development without education, public health and a respect for the law. Without these, he concludes, we will also be late for the modernity party.

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