Jánico | |
---|---|
Coordinates: 19°24′0″N 70°48′0″W / 19.40000°N 70.80000°W | |
Country | Dominican Republic |
Province | Santiago |
Settled | 16 March 1494 |
Incorporated | 29 March 1881 |
Government | |
• Mayor | Hilario Fernández ( Dominican Liberation’s Party) |
Area | |
• Total | 235.03 km2 (90.75 sq mi) |
Elevation | 370 m (1,210 ft) |
Population | |
• Total | 16,993 |
• Density | 72/km2 (190/sq mi) |
• Urban | 1,730 |
• Rural | 15,263 |
Municipal Districts | 2 |
Jánico (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈxaniko]) is a municipality ( municipio) of the Santiago province in the Dominican Republic. Within the municipality there are two municipal districts (distritos municipal): El Caimito and Juncalito. [5]
Christopher Columbus established a stockade here in March 1494, to protect his gold mining ambitions. The prospectivity of gold was established earlier in the year by Alonso de Ojeda's expedition. [6]
Jánico is part of a region known as the Sierra ( Spanish: La Sierra; pronounced [la ˈsjera]). This region was peopled in the 18th century mostly by ethnic Canarians and French who established a markedly endogamous society in which cousin marriages were fairly common, in order to preserve their whiteness; only a very few were slaveholders. The Sierra received a sizeable amount of white and mulatto refugees from both Saint-Domingue and the Cibao Valley, the former during the Haitian Revolution and the latter amid the Dominican genocide by the Haitian army in 1805. [7] [8]
According to a 2016 genealogical DNA testing by the Genographic Project, the town has the highest percentage of both European and pre-Columbian heritages in the island, at 61.5% and 7.8%, respectively, while the African input (including non-black North Africans) was numbered at 29.6%, the second lowest. [9]
For comparison with other municipalities and municipal districts see the list of municipalities and municipal districts of the Dominican Republic.
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