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Dominican Republic Middle Class
By the 1980s, Dominican society no longer consisted of
a
small landed elite at the top and a huge mass of peasants
at the
bottom, with almost no one in between. In large part, as a
result
of the economic development and modernization that had
occurred
since the end of the Great Depression, a sizable middle
class,
constituting 30 to 35 percent of the population, had
emerged
(see Dominican Republic - Urban Society
, ch. 2).
The middle class consisted of shopkeepers, government
officials, clerks, military personnel, white-collar
workers of
all kinds, teachers, professionals, and the better paid
members
of the working class. Most of the middle class resided in
Santo
Domingo, but secondary cities like Santiago, Barahona,
Monte
Cristi, La Romana, San Francisco de Macorís, and San Pedro
de
Macorís had also developed sizable middle-class
populations.
The middle class, not the oligarchy, had come to
predominate
within the country's major political institutions: the
Roman
Catholic Church, the military officer corps, the
government
service, the political parties, interest groups, and even
the
trade union leadership. However, the middle class was
often
divided on social and political issues. Generally, its
members
advocated peace, order, stability, and economic progress.
It
backed Balaguer in the late 1960s and the early 1970s
because he
was thought to stand for those things that the middle
class
wanted; later it supported the PRD governments of Guzmán
and
Jorge for the same reason.
The middle class used to support authoritarian governments
because it thought they would best protect its interests;
in the
1980s, however, the middle-class consensus generally
supported
democracy as the best way to preserve stability and to
sustain
development.
Data as of December 1989
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