Boca Chica

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Boca Chica is a municipality (municipio) of the Santo Domingo province in the Dominican Republic.Within the municipality there is one municipal district (distritos municipal): La Caleta.^[1]

As of the 2002 census the municipality had 99,508 inhabitants, 46,385 living in the city itself and 53,123 in its rural districts (Secciones). ^[2] For comparison with other municipalities and municipal districts see the list of municipalities and municipal districts of the Dominican Republic.

It has a popular beach with the same name, located about 30 kilometers east of Santo Domingo de Guzmán in the south shore of the island of Hispaniola.

[edit] History

Boca Chica was originally developed by Juan Vicini in the early twentieth century. Vicini was very fond of the place, but the golden era of Boca Chica was in the 1950s, when dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo ordered the construction of a modern hotel named "Hotel Hamaca," which subsequently became something of an icon. The hotel got all the more famous because it was there that Trujillo granted asylum to Fulgencio Batista after the Cuban Revolution.

The Hamaca was closed almost immediately after Trujillo was killed in May 1961, and it remained closed and abandoned for more than twenty years. It was reopened in the early 1990s.

During the 1950s and the 1960s, prominent families of the Dominican Republic built several summer properties along the beach only accessible by private transportation.

After the 1970s, the beach became more and more popular and public transportation helped to make Boca Chica a very populated beach; it was no longer secluded and quiet, as it had been during the '50s and '60s.

[edit] Economy

The short distance from the capital city of the Dominican Republic, the crystalline waters and the white sands, turned Boca Chica in the most crowded beach of the Dominican Republic. Boca Chica has two small islands, Los Pinos and La Matica, and two marinas.

[edit] References