Jánico

Jánico is a town and municipality (municipio) of the Santiago province in the Dominican Republic. Within the municipality there are two municipal districts (distritos municipal): El Caimito and Juncalito.

Jánico acquired the status of municipality of the province of Santiago in 1881.

History
Christopher Columbus established a stockade here in March 1494, to protect his gold mining ambitions. The prospectivity of gold was established earlier in the year by Alonso de Ojeda's expedition.

The first in the province of Santiago dates back to the 15th century, at the time of discovery, when the Spanish built the ephemeral Santo Tomás de Jánico Fortress, the first built inland on the island, and the second in all of America after Christmas. The remains of this fort are not found in Janicus, which takes its name from the Janicus River. Jánico is part of a region known as the Sierra (La Sierra; ). This region was peopled in the 18th century mostly by ethnic Canarians and French who established a markedly endogamous society in order to preserve their whiteness; only a very few were slaveholders. The Sierra received a sizeable amount of white and mulatto refugees from both Saint-Domingue and the Cibao Valley, the former during the Haitian slave revolts in 1805.

Demographics
In the 1950 census it was the town with the second highest percentage of white people in the country, with 81.1 percent.

According to a 2016 genealogical DNA testing by the Genographic Project, the town has among the highest percentages of both European and pre-Columbian heritages in the island, at 61.5% and 7.8%, respectively, while the African input (including non-black North Africans) was numbered at 29.6%, the second lowest.

Economy
The main source of the municipality's economy is agriculture, with coffee cultivation as a reference, which makes it one of the most important coffee-growing areas in the country. Remittances also constitute an important element in the economy of this municipality.

Its location in the Central Mountain Range gives it landscape attributes with great potential for mountain tourism. Among its attractions are the Bao reservoir and a botanical garden with an area of 700 hectares of land. On its border with the municipality of Sabana Iglesia is the Taveras hydroelectric complex, located on the Yaque del Norte and Bao rivers. It is formed by the Taveras, Bao dams and the López Angostura reservoir. This endowment contributes 185 GWH to the national electrical system and is used to irrigate approximately 9,100 hectares of land.

For comparison with other municipalities and municipal districts see the list of municipalities and municipal districts of the Dominican Republic.