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One of the smaller and fascinating tidbits I've found out while reading about Gregorio Luperon is his correspondents with various European figures and his attempts to help out foreign communities abroad.

In 1862 he dispatched letters to Tsar Alexander II in Russia offering settlement to Jewish citizens in the Dominican Republic in response to hearing of pogroms in the empire. The Tsar apparently received the letter and responded, but nothing came of it due to the Dominican Restoration War.

In 1881, Luperon tried again after hearing another round of pogroms prompted him to try again. He reached out to Alexander II, and additionally to Barons Rothschild and Charles Netter of the Alliance Israelite Universale on the question of resettlement of Russian Jews into the country. The latter two responded warmly (and again, apparently Alexander II responded back but I have no idea as to how he felt) and were considering the idea, but upon Alexander's assassination in 1881 and Netter's death in 1882 the AIU stopped responding.

Suppose Netter's death is delayed by a couple of years (he was in his 50s when he died, it should be somewhat plausible I suppose) and correspondence continues enough to entertain the idea. The financial assets are there, and for once the Dominican Republic is stable- undergoing its first sugar boom after independence under the political dictatorship of Ulises Heureaux- and eager for manpower.

How would settlement have gone? And should Alexander II's death have been prevented, would Russia give official sanction to this? If not, and the May Laws of 1882 are still a thing and the AIU, alongside other Zionist organizations, now have another area.

The First Aliyah to my knowledge has barely taken off, and so its not like there's a chain of migration established yet in Palestine. Additionally, given that many in the First Aliyah were political radicals and activists, they'd be right at home among the liberals of Santo Domingo and Santiago, where the Liberal Blue Party was finally ascendent.
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