Following the 1930 hurricane, the regime banned wood and zinc as building materials, an ideological decision presented as a technical measure
SANTO DOMINGO. – Before Hurricane San Zenón, Santo Domingo had already been facing a long-standing housing problem.
Researcher Marcos Prados Martín, in «From bohíos to social housing» (Culture & History Digital Journal, 2025), documents that since the end of the 19th century there were attempts to restrict the construction of bohíos in the capital, without success.
The San Carlos neighborhood, for example, annexed to the capital in 1910, was a collection of huts, built with wood that came from rural areas and via the Ozama River.
The bohío, as described by Prados Martín, was a structure built with techniques inherited from the Taíno, adapted with Spanish and African elements: palm boards, a roof of palm fronds, a square or rectangular floor plan, a single room that served as housing for an extended family or several families.
The kitchen and everyday workspaces were located outside. Until the mid-20th century, this was the most common type of housing in the country, and the 1930 cyclone provided the regime with the justification it needed.
Prados Martín points out that the main cause of the collapse of popular housing was its structural fragility, but that the government responded by prohibiting wood as a building material, leaving concrete as the only option.
The measure was so radical that it included a temporary ban on zinc roofs, but it had to be quickly abandoned as impractical.
Law 142 of June 1, 1931, cited by the same author, explicitly prohibited the construction of "huts made of palm planks, merchandise crates and peanut tiles" and mandated the demolition of existing ones within six months, and the decision was not exclusively technical.
Prados Martín documents that the regime's nationalist discourse associated the bohío (a traditional Dominican dwelling) with African and Haitian influence on the Dominican peasant population. Joaquín Balaguer, the regime's ideologue, linked vernacular architecture to racial backwardness in his writings, as cited by the same author.
The town of Jimaní, in the province of Barouco, was demolished because it was made up of houses that, according to an official document cited by Prados Martín, were not "in accordance with the level of culture and civilization that, as a patriotic imperative, the Government has imposed upon itself to bring to the entire border region.".
The consequences for the inhabitants were documented in the General Archive of the Nation.
Prados Martín also cites Blasina Ramírez's letter, dated September 9, 1933, addressed to the authorities: "I live in Puerto de la Caridad, in a small house that I built after Hurricane San Zenón left me in the most complete and devastating poverty. I live there with my five daughters, of whom I am the sole provider. The Department of Health has ordered the destruction of these houses, declaring them a public nuisance.".
Three years after the hurricane, a mother of five daughters who had built her own temporary home faced a second demolition by order of the State.
According to Prados Martín, the prohibition of the bohío (traditional thatched hut) must be understood within the framework of what the author describes as a "negative" policy: one oriented more toward prohibition than creation. During the 1930s, the regime prioritized the symbolic consolidation of political power in the capital, not solving the housing problem for the population displaced by the hurricane.
Series: History of social housing in the Dominican Republic. Chapter II.
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