Santiago de los Caballeros, or Santiago for short, is a Dominican city and the head municipality of the Santiago, in the north central region of the country. By its population and economic activity, it is the second-most important city in the country, after Santo Domingo.
Christopher Columbus built a small fort in the summer of 1495, on the northern side of the Yaque del Norte river in a place named "La Emboscada". This is several kilometres to the west of the present city. Columbus named the fort after "Santiago Apóstol", in English "Saint James"
In 1504, Nicolás de Ovando, governor of the Hispaniola, moved the town to Jacagua which is now the municipal district of San Francisco de Jacagua. This place was near the mountains and away from the river Yaque del Norte.
An earthquake destroyed the city of Santiago on 2 December 1562. The next year, 1563, the city was rebuilt again on the north side of the river Yaque del Norte but this time more to the east, where it is now. This new town was called "Santiago de los Caballeros", in English, "Saint James of the Knights" or, better, "Knights of Saint James".
The city had, in , a total population of 591,985: 288,746 men and 303,239 women. The urban population was of the total population.
The people from this city are called (demonym) in different ways; "santiaguero" for males and "santiaguera" for females. Sometimes "santiagués" is used for both sexes. "Santiaguense" (for both sexes) is used to differentiate them from people of other cities with the same name in Spain, Cuba, Chile, and Argentina).
The municipality of Santiago de los Caballeros has a total area of . It has five municipal districts (a municipal district is a subdivision of a municipality). These are Pedro García, Baitoa, La Canela, San Francisco de Jacagua and Hato del Valle.
Santiago de los Caballeros is at to the northwest of Santo Domingo and at an altitude of above sea level.
The municipality has the municipalities of Tamboril and Licey al Medio to the east, the La Vega province to the southeast, the municipality of Jánico to the south, the municipality of San José de las Matas to the southwest, the Valverde province to the west, the municipalities of Bisonó and Villa González to the northwest and the province of Puerto Plata to the north.
The "Cordillera Septentrional" ("Northern mountain range") runs along the northern half of the municipality. The city of Santiago de los Caballeros is on the southern side of those mountains, and even some parts of the city are on the mountains.
There are several small hills in the city; the highest is the "Cerro del Castillo" ("Castle Hill") in the eastern part of the city; on this hill there is a monument: the "Monumento a los Héroes de la Restauración" ( "Monument to the Restoration War Heroes"), commonly named only as the "Monumento".
The river "Yaque del Norte", the longest of the Dominican Republic, flows along the old southern side of the city. Now, the city is on both sides of the river but most people still lives on the northern (right) side of it. Other rivers are Nibaje and Gurabito but they are very small and tributaries of the Yaque del Norte.
The city of Santiago de los Caballeros is located in the northeastern part of the "Yaque del Norte Valley", a very dry and hot region. And so, the climate of the city is a dry tropical climate, hot most of the year (Köppen-Geiger classification: Aw). The northern part of the municipality, and part of the city, is on the Cordillera Central mountain range and the climate is cooler and it rains more than in the city itself.
The average amount of rainfall for the year in the city is . The month with the most precipitation on average is May with of rainfall, followed by November with .
The driest season is winter. The month with the least rainfall on average is February with an average of and the second is January with .
Santiago de los Caballeros is in a hot region; the average temperature for the year is . The warmest month, on average, is August with an average temperature of . The coolest month on average is January, with an average temperature of .
The municipality of Santiago de los Caballeros has five municipal districts:
Even if farming is still a very important economic activity around the city, Santiago is now a modern city with many industries and companies of different kinds.
Santiago is home of two universities: "Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra" (PUCMM) and "Universidad Tecnológica de Santiago" (UTESA). Other universities present in Santiago are: "Universidad Organización & Método" (O&M), "Universidad Abierta para Adultos" (UAPA), "Universidad Nacional Evangélica" and one regional campus of the state university "Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo" (UASD).
The twin cities of Santiago are:
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath (October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was an American writer. She was most well known for her poetry, but she also wrote novels, children's books, short stories, book reviews, and newspaper articles. Her most well-known novel is "The Bell Jar", which was partly based on her life. She married another famous poet, Ted Hughes. She died by suicide in 1963.
Plath was born in 1932 in Boston, Massachusetts. Her parents were Otto Emil Plath and Aurelia Schober Plath. Her father was from Germany; her mother was Austrian-American. He was a college professor and wrote a book about bumblebees. Aurelia Plath was twenty-two years younger than her husband. In April 1935, Plath's younger brother Warren was born. The family moved from Jamaica Plain to Winthrop, Massachusetts in 1936. This was where Aurelia had grown up. Plath published her first poem here, when she was eight. It was in the children's section of a newspaper called the "Boston Herald".
In 1940, Otto Plath died. He was buried in Winthrop cemetery. In 1942, Aurelia and the children moved to Wellesley, Massachusetts.
Plath went to Smith College. After her third year, she became a guest editor for a magazine called "Mademoiselle", and spent a month in New York City. At this time, she became depressed. She tried to kill herself by taking too many sleeping pills. After she took the pills, she crawled underneath her house, but she was found and taken to hospital. She went to a mental hospital called McLean Hospital and was treated for her depression. She was given both insulin shock treatment and electric shock therapy. She began to improve and returned to Smith College for the second semester in January 1954. She graduated from Smith College in 1955.
Plath then went to the University of Cambridge in England, on a Fulbright scholarship. She attended Newnham College, Cambridge and carried on writing poetry and prose. She also wrote for the student newspaper, "Varsity", at Cambridge. At a party she met an English poet called Ted Hughes. She married him on June 16, 1956.
After they were married, Plath and Hughes went to live in the United States. Plath taught at her old college, Smith College. They met and became friends with a poet named W. S. Merwin. In mid-1959, Plath became pregnant and after a cross-country trip of the United States and several months at the artists colony Yaddo, in Saratoga Springs, New York and they moved back to England. They lived in London initially, and then in a small town in Devon called North Tawton. Plath published her first collection of poems, "The Colossus". In February 1961 she had a miscarriage, which she wrote about in some of her poems.
In the early summer of 1962, Hughes began an affair with a woman called Assia Wevill. Plath and Hughes separated (lived apart) in 1962. Plath moved to London with their children, Frieda and Nicholas.