Cocolo

[1] It is mainly used to refer to the migrants in San Pedro de Macorís, Puerto Plata, the Samaná Peninsula, and other Afro-descendants who arrived in the Atlantic coastal areas of the country in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

At the time these migrants were culturally distinct from the lighter Dominicans who primarily lived in the northern interior of the country and had a higher degree of colonial European ancestry.

[2][3] The usage, outside the specific ethnicity of the Cocolos of San Pedro de Macorís, is vague, and at times the word can mean all black or all poorer people of any race living in less developed coastal areas.

The first Turks and Caicos Islander immigrants began arriving in Puerto Plata after the Dominican War of Restoration, long before the modern sugar industry was established.

[4] Since the Dominican Republic was a predominantly Hispanic Roman Catholic nation, the Cocolos thus needed to establish their own religious, social, and community centers.