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Boca Chica is a municipality of the Dominican Republic, pertaining to the pronvince
of Santo Domingo.
It's main economical activity is tourism. It has a popular beach with the same name,
located about 30 kilometers east of Santo Domingo de Guzmán in the south shore of
the island of Hispaniola.
Boca Chica was originally developed by Juan Vicini in the early twentieth century.
Vicini was very fond of the place, but the golden era of Boca Chica was in the 1950s,
when dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo ordered the construction of a modern hotel
named "Hotel Hamaca," which subsequently became something of an icon. The hotel
got all the more famous because it was there that Trujillo granted asylum to Fulgencio
Batista after the Cuban Revolution.
The Hamaca was closed almost immediately after Trujillo was killed in May 1961,
and it remained closed and abandoned for more than twenty years. It was reopened
in the early 1990s.
During the 1950s and the 1960s, prominent families of the Dominican Republic built
several summer properties along the beach only accessible by private transportation.
After the 1970s the beach became more and more popular and public transportation
helped to make Boca Chica a very populated beach; it was no longer secluded and
quiet, as it had been during the '50s and '60s.
The short distance from the capital city of the Dominican Republic, the crystalline
waters and the white sands, turned Boca Chica in the most crowded beach of the Dominican
Republic. Boca Chica has two small islands, Los Pinos and La Matica, and two marinas.
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