Juan Pablo Duarte

Juan Pablo Duarte y Díez was a Dominican military leader, writer, activist, and nationalist politician who was the foremost of the founding fathers of the Dominican Republic and bears the title of Father of the Nation. As one of the most celebrated figures in Dominican history, Duarte is considered a national hero and revolutionary visionary in the modern Dominican Republic, who along with military general Ramón Matías Mella and Francisco del Rosario Sánchez, organized and promoted La Trinitaria, a secret society that eventually led to the Dominican revolt and independence from Haitian rule in 1844 and the start of the Dominican War of Independence.

Duarte became an officer in the National Guard and a year later in 1843 he participated in the "Reformist Revolution" against the dictatorship of Jean-Pierre Boyer, who threatened to invade the western part of the island with the intention of unifying it.