The Dominican Republic receives its first democratically elected president, Juan Bosch, since the end of the dictatorship led by Rafael Trujillo.

The Dominican Republic is an island country on the eastern part of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles of the Caribbean Sea in the North Atlantic Ocean. It shares a maritime border with Puerto Rico to the east and a land border with Haiti to the west, occupying the eastern five-eighths of Hispaniola which, along with Saint Martin, is one of only two islands in the Caribbean shared by two sovereign states. In the Antilles, the country is the second-largest country by area after Cuba at 48,671 square kilometers (18,792 sq mi) and the second most populous country after Haiti with approximately 11.4 million people in 2024, of whom 3.6 million reside in the metropolitan area of Santo Domingo, the capital city.