Dominican Family Background

After many long talks with my grandmother's from my maternal and paternal side, they have provided me with a lot of insight to our family history and how we have ended in the United States. On my Dominican side we have not had many family members migrate to the United States until my mother and aunts decided to do so in in the 1970s. Santo Domingo, where my mother is originally from is the capital and the largest city in the Dominican Republic (DR). For a while the DR was not heavily populated until the metropolitan area was expanded, which increased the population to over 2 million. My native ancestors were the Taíno people who populated the island prior to Christopher Columbus's arrival in 1492. My ancestors referred to the island as Quisqueya