The Ten Years' War in Cuba had…

The Ten Years' War in Cuba had brought Cuban sugar planters to the Dominican Republic in search of new lands and security from the insurrection that had freed their slaves and destroyed their property.

Most have settled in the southeastern coastal plain, and, with assistance from Luperón’s government, built the nation's first mechanized sugar mills.

They are later joined by Italians, Germans, Puerto Ricans and Americans in forming the nucleus of the Dominican sugar bourgeoisie, marrying into prominent families to solidify their social position.

Disruptions in global production caused by the Ten Years' War, the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War have allowed the Dominican Republic to become a major sugar exporter.

An 1884 slump in prices had led to a wage freeze, and a subsequent labor shortage had been filled by migrant workers from the Leeward Islands—the Virgin Islands, St. Kitts and Nevis, Anguilla, and Antigua (referred to by Dominicans as cocolos).

These English-speaking blacks are often victims of racism, but many have remained in the country, finding work as stevedores and in railroad construction and sugar refineries.