San José de Ocoa Province

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**San José de Ocoa Province**
Location
San José de Ocoa in the Dominican Republic
Information
Country	Dominican Republic
Capital city	San José de Ocoa
Establishment date	2000
Area - Total - % of country - Ranked	855.40 km² 1.8% 25
Population - Total (2002) - Density	62,368 (28) 72.9 inhab/km² (20)
Time zone	UTC-4
ISO 3166-2:	DO-31
Politics and administration
Members in Congress	1 Senator 2 Deputies
Municipalities Municipal Districts	3 4
Provinces of the Dominican Republic

San José de Ocoa is a Dominican province; it is located on the southern side of the Cordillera Central. Its capital city has the same name, San José de Ocoa.

It was created on 6 September 2000 but to start on 1 January 2001. It was a municipality of the Peravia province before being elevated to the category of province.

1 Location
2 Origin of name
3 History
4 Municipalities
5 Population
6 Geography
7 Economy
8 References

[change] Location

San José de Ocoa is bordered to the north by the Monseñor Nouel and La Vega provinces, to the east by San Cristóbal, to the south by the Peravia, and to the west by Azua.

[change] Origin of name

The province is named after its capital city, San José de Ocoa. Ocoa is the name of the river that crosses the province; it is a Taíno word that means "a place with many mountains".

[change] History

Bartolomé de Las Casas was the first person that wrote about the region when he said that Maniey (now, Maniel) was a Taíno province.^[1] Maniey or Maniel meant "a place where there are peanuts";^[2] mani (Spanish, "maní") is the Taíno word for peanut. Peter Martyr d'Anghiera did not write about the Maniey but he wrote about a lake in the region of Rancho Arriba;^[3] there is not lake (or lakes) there anymore, only a swamp.

For a long time, the region was visited only by monteros (men that hunted wild cows and pigs. Then some maroons (runaway slaves) came to live here, in the high mountains of the region. One settlement was called Maniel; since then, Maniel meant in Hispaniola a place where maroons live and not only the name of the region.

The first settlement by maroons in the region is from beginnings of the 16th century and was called Maniel Viejo de Ocoa.^[4] This settlement lasted until 1666 or 1667 because many people died from smallpox and measles that affected the island in those years. There was also a military action in the region to capture maroons.

The second settlement was during the first years of the 19th century (around 1802), and it is known as Maniel de los Lorenzos ("Lorenzos' Maniel") because the last name ("Lorenzo") of its founders. It was founded at El Canal, north of the city of San José de Ocoa.^[4]

Very soon some families from Baní, on the south, began to move to the region and made their houses in the place where is the city of San José de Ocoa.^[4]

On December 1858, San José de Ocoa was made a municipality of the old province of Santo Domingo; in 1895, it was changed to a municipality of the Azua province. With the creation of the Peravia, San José de Ocoa was a municipality of that new province. Then, on 6 September 2000, San José de Ocoa was made a new province.

During the Independence War (1844), there was two important battles in the region: the battles of El Memiso and El Pinar, where the Dominican soldiers won those two fights and the Haitians soldier could not go to Santo Domingo and had to go back to Haiti.

[change] Municipalities

San José de Ocoa has a total area of 855.40 km².^[5] It has 1.8% of the area of the Dominican Republic and it is ranked as the 25th (out of 31 plus the National District) largest province.

There are three municipalities and four municipal districts in the province.

The municipalities are:

San José de Ocoa, head municipality of the province
Rancho Arriba
Sabana Larga

The municipal districts are:

[change] Population

In 2002 (last national census), there were 62,368 people living in the San José de Ocoa province, and 32,920 (52.78%) living in towns and cities. The population density was 72.9 persons/km².^[6]

[change] Geography

[change] Economy

The main economic activity of the province is agriculture; the main products are coffee, beans and potato. Other vegetables, as cabbage and carrot are also grown as well as some tropical fruits (avocado and mango.

[change] References

↑ Las Casas, Fray Bartolomé de (1966). Apologética Histórica Sumaria. Tomo I, Capítulo VII (in Spanish). México: UNAM.
↑ Vega, Bernardo (1989). Los Cacicazgos de la Hispaniola (in Spanish). Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic: Museo del Hombre Dominicano.
↑ Anglería, Pedro Mártir de (1949). Décadas del Nuevo Mundo, Tercera Década, Libro VII (in Spanish). Buenos Aires: Editorial Bajel.
↑ ^4.0 ^4.1 ^4.2 Read, Alexis (1993). Apuntes para una Historia de los orígenes de San José de Ocoa (in Spanish). San José de Ocoa: ADESJO, Ediciones Convite.
↑ Listado de Códigos de Provincias, Municipio y Distritos Municipales, Oficina Nacional de Estadistica
↑ Censo 2002 de Población y Vivienda, Oficina Nacional de Estadistica