Juan Pablo Duarte (January 26, 1813 – July 15, 1876) is one of the founding fathers of the Dominican Republic. He was a visionary and liberal thinker, who along with Francisco del Rosario Sánchez and Matías Ramón Mella, is widely considered to be the architect of the Dominican Republic and its independence from Haitian rule in 1844. He would help create the political organization La Trinitaria to fight against the Haitian occupation, achieve independence, and create a self-sufficient nation.Duarte helped inspire and finance the Dominican War of Independence, paying a heavy toll which would eventually ruin him financially. His liberal views made him a controversial figure among conservative and powerful Dominicans of the time, and he was exiled at numerous occasions after the founding of the new nation. His liberal views went against the conservative elites who sought for heavy-handed control of the nation, and wanted to maintain the traditional regionalisms of the past. Duarte had strong disagreements with the republic's first president, Pedro Santana, as Santana was a tyrannical figure. Ultimately, Duarte would spend many years away from the nation he helped shape and would die in exile, this made him a political martyr in the eyes of subsequent generations. Wikipedia
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