Pedro Alejandro Pina
Pedro Alejandrino Pina García (Santo Domingo, 20 November 1820 – Las Matas de Farfán, 24 August 1870) was a Dominican politician and military man considered one of the heroes of Dominican independence. He was a co-founder of La Trinitaria and first cousin of the father of Dominican history Jose Gabriel García and the Dominican activist Concepción Bona.
Biography
Pedro Alejandrino Pina was born on November 20, 1820, in Santo Domingo. After graduating in law, he joined Sociedad La Trinitaria, being one of the first members to join it after its foundation in 1838, and who sought the separation of the Dominican Republic from Haití.
During his time at La Trinitaria, Pedro Alejandro Pina used the theater as a medium in which he could expose and influence his ideas to the Dominican people. Thus, the works that he chose to be performed in the theater told stories similar to the situation the country was experiencing at that time and to the objectives of the Trinitarians. Some of these works were "Roma Libre" by Alfieri and "La Viuda de Padilla" written by Francisco Martínez de la Rosa and "One day of the year 1823 in Cádiz" by Eugenio de Ochoa.
The Trinitarians decided to participate in the Prasline revolution, whose objective was to overthrow the Jean Pierre Boyer government on March 24, 1843. Pina and other Trinitarians launched a popular revolt against Boyer's policies in the Plazuela del Carmen, calling for reforms.
However, to prevent the independence revolution of the Trinitarians, the new government of the island, led by Charles Herard, persecuted Pina and forced him to go abroad, together with Juan Pablo Duarte and Juan Isidro Pérez. Pina settled in Curaçao, but his stay on the island lasted less than a year, because on February 27, 1844, the news of the proclamation of independence that had been carried out in the Dominican Republic reached him, which pushed him to return there, along with his companions Duarte and Pérez. After returning to the Dominican Republic, he joined the Central Government Board. He fought alongside Duarte and other Trinitarians against the delivery of Samaná Province from France and collaborated in the military mutiny of June 9, a military mutiny that failed and whose objective was to expel from the government those members who rejected Dominican independence and wanted to turn the Dominican Republic into a French colony, based on the Levasseur plan. In addition, Pina and the Trinitarians wanted to make Duarte the president of the country.
All this caused Pedro Santana to dissolve the Central Government Board, with military aid, and to appoint himself as supreme head of the Dominican Republic. Considered one of the traitors to the homeland by Santana, Pina was forced to emigrate abroad again, along with Duarte and other colleagues. The amnesty decreed by the new president Manuel Jimenes allowed him to return in 1848. He returned to the Dominican government and, with the acquired title of army colonel, was incorporated into the Secretariat of the Ministry of War and Navy.
When the supporters of the Spanish Crown returned to the Dominican government, Pina returned to Venezuela, where many Dominican exiles already lived, but the reincorporation of his country to Spain in 1861 made him return to the Dominican Republic, although through the Dominican-Haitian border, along with the also hero of Dominican independence Francisco del Rosario Sánchez. After arriving in El Cercado with Sánchez, he was on the verge of being a victim of anti-national interests when the Dominican military – also a hero of independence – Timoteo Ogando rescued him by taking him to Haiti, to return again to Venezuela. In 1865, when the Dominican Republic regained independence from Spain, he returned to the country, joining the government of José María Cabral. During his stay in the Cabral government he held various positions in the administration. He was a deputy of the National Constituent Assembly, governor of the province of Santo Domingo, minister of the Ministry of the Interior and Police and, after dissolving the Constituent Board, exercised the direction of the Supreme Court of Justice, being politically inactive. In 1866 he participated in the revolutionary movement of Santiago de los Caballeros. In 1869, Pina and Cabral began to fight in the south against the incorporation of the country into the United States, as Buenaventura Báez wanted. This fight on the part of Pina would not end until 1870 when, on August 24 of that year, he died in Las Matas de Farfán.
Personal life
Pedro Alejandro Pina had at least eight children, including Juan Pablo Pina Rozón (1842-1912) who was a general during the Wars of Dominican Restoration and Mercedes Pina Echevarría, who married the also hero of Dominican independence in the War of Restoration, Braulio Álvarez Castillo.
References
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