Higüey

At the time of the conquest the east of Hispaniola was the Taíno chiefdom of Higüey, whose leaders included the caciques Cotubanamá and Cayacoa and the female cacique Higuanamá. It was the last part of the island to be conquered. Higuanamá encouraged a first war of resistance in 1502 and Cotubanamá a second in 1504, and Juan de Esquivel led the Spanish campaign. Bartolomé de las Casas took part in, and later described, the massacre of Taíno who had surrendered. By 1519 the surviving Taíno of the region were largely enslaved and numbered only 1,189, and enslaved Africans were brought in to replace them.

Esquivel founded the village of Salvaleón de Higüey in 1505, and in 1508 the Crown granted it a coat of arms. The town's first site may have been near Ponce de León's house at Yuma before it moved to where it stands now. Through the colonial centuries it was a parish of El Seibo, living from sugar cane, ginger, cacao and open-range cattle, and devotion to the Virgin of Altagracia, attested by 1650, made it a place of pilgrimage. Haitian forces under Jean-Pierre Boyer took the town in 1822, and after independence in 1844 it came under El Seibo province, a stronghold of Pedro Santana.

In the 20th century a modern basilica was built to honour the painting, declared a minor basilica in 1970 and completed in 1971; Pope John Paul II visited it in 1992. The rise of Punta Cana, which lies within the municipality, has turned Higüey into one of the fastest-growing cities in the country.

Higüey's identity is bound up with the Virgin of Altagracia, honoured as the spiritual mother of the Dominican people. Her painting shows Mary with the infant Jesus in a manger, her mantle dotted with stars. A legend tells of a girl whose portrait of the Virgin kept appearing at dawn under a tree outside her house, and the sanctuary is said to stand on that spot. Her feast, set by a bishop in 1692, was moved from 15 August to 21 January to mark a victory over the French in 1690, and it is now a national holiday that brings tens of thousands of pilgrims to the city.

Older forms of popular devotion survive too. Beside roads around Higüey stand calvaries of three wooden crosses, each surrounded by a mound of stones left over generations by passers-by, and candles are lit at them during some religious festivals.

The city is enthusiastic about sport but short of facilities. Basketball and volleyball are played on open-air courts, the provincial basketball tournament is held most years, and boxing has brought the province more medals than any other sport, while baseball, the national passion, has little infrastructure here. Two universities, a public campus of the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo and the diocese's Universidad Católica del Este, are based in the city.

About 415,000 people lived in the municipality of Higüey at the 2022 census, which includes the Punta Cana resort district, and it is one of the fastest-growing places in the country. Many of its people work in the hotel complexes of Punta Cana or sell tourist products.

Tourism dominates, and Higüey is sometimes called the capital of Dominican tourism, but it is also known as a capital of stockbreeding. Cattle are raised for milk and meat across the coastal plain, and the farms grow cane, coffee, tobacco, cacao, rice and maize, with pigs and fish farming as well. The city is the commercial centre of the province, with its markets, banks and government offices.

Daily life swings between the resorts and the town. Many people commute to shifts on the coast by guagua and motoconcho, while the centre is busy with shoppers, students and pilgrims. Crowds, traffic and the pace of construction are constant issues, and the city swells for the January feast.

Higüey eats the food of the Dominican countryside. Lunch in the comedores is la bandera — white rice, red beans and stewed meat, with salad and often tostones, twice-fried green plantain — and sancocho, a thick stew of several meats and root vegetables, is the dish for gatherings and Sundays. Mangú, mashed green plantain, is the classic breakfast, with fried cheese, salami and eggs.

The surrounding cattle country shapes the table. Beef and fresh milk are local products of the coastal plain, where pigs are raised too. Cacao, rice and maize are grown in the province, and coffee is drunk strong and sweet throughout the day.

Coconut and dulce de leche sweets are common. Fish and seafood come up from the coast, and fishing is part of the local economy. Presidente beer and rum are the usual drinks, and mamajuana, rum, red wine and honey steeped with bark and herbs, is a Dominican speciality.