Pedro Santana (29 June 1801-14 June 1864) was President of the Dominican Republic from 14 November 1844 to 4 August 1848 (succeeding Francisco del Rosario Sanchez and preceding Manuel Jimenes), from 30 May to 23 September 1849 (succeeding Jimenes and preceding Buenaventura Baez), from 15 February 1853 to 26 May 1856 (succeeding Baez and preceding Jose Antonio Salcedo), and from 13 June 1858 to 20 July 1862 (succeeding Jose Desiderio Valverde and preceding Felipe Ribero y Lemoyne). He also served as Governor-General of Santo Domingo from 18 March 1861 to 20 July 1862, preceding Felipe Ribero y Lemoyne.
Biography[]
Pedro Santana was born in Hincha, Captaincy General of Santo Domingo in 1801, the son of an indigenous Mexican father and a Canarian mother; he was a mestizo. He worked as a cattle rancher before becoming a Dominican general during the Dominican War of Independence, distinguishing himself in the fight against the Haitian occupiers. In 1844, he seized power from the liberal president Francisco del Rosario Sanchez in a military coup after Rosario Sanchez ousted the conservative Tomas Bobadilla from power. Santana inaugurated a military dictatorship with Bobadilla as a member of his junta, and he immediately moved to eliminate the very independentists that fought alongside him; he believed that the nation could not survive without being annexed to Spain. The first person who he forced out of the country was the country's first independence hero, Juan Pablo Duarte, and he also made the first martyr of the republic when he had Maria Trinidad Sanchez executed for refusing to name "conspirators" against him. He served as Spain's Captain General from 1861 to 1862 after Spain reconquered the Dominican Republic, and he died in Santo Domingo in 1864.