Serie 59: the Aquinos of Castillo

In the Dominican Republic people often name a hometown by its cédula number. "Soy serie 59" means "I am from Castillo". This feature explains where that number comes from, what the records say about the Aquinos of Castillo, and how to tell this branch apart from the country's other Aquino families.

What "Serie 59" means

When the Dominican Republic created the personal identity cédula under Law 247 of 1932, each card, the old librito, carried an individual number and a series tied to the place where it was issued. Women were included from 1940 under Law 390. In 1992 Law 8-92 created the combined cédula de identidad y electoral, and new formats followed in 1998, 2014 and the renewal that began in October 2024.¹

Maps of Dominican municipalities still label each town with "name and series". Castillo is 059. Its neighbors are San Francisco de Macorís 056, Pimentel 057, Villa Riva 058, Arenoso 119 and Las Guáranas 143.² The series lives on in the first three digits of modern cédulas. In a 2017 staff record of the Castillo town hall, 134 of 149 employees held cédulas beginning with 059.³ The local news outlet Serie59.com takes its name from the same code.⁴

Castillo: a short history

Castillo lies in the lower Cibao, about 33 km from San Francisco de Macorís, in the valley of the short Nigua River. The river rises at Loma del Firme in the Cordillera Septentrional and joins the Yuna near Hostos.⁵⁶ The municipal history says the area was first settled around 1718 by contraband traders working the northeast coast.⁷ A local history describes waves of settlers between 1718 and 1730, coming from San Francisco de Macorís, Salcedo, Moca and La Vega, along with some foreigners.⁶

The Aquino founding family

The Castillo town hall's official history names the town's first families and where they came from:

"Las primeras familias que poblaron Castillo eran oriundas de Santiago, Moca, La Vega, Cotuí, Sánchez, Samaná, San Juan de la Maguana, Yamasá y San Cristóbal. Sus apellidos eran: Díaz, Mercedes, García, Aquino, Nolasco, De Jesús, Rojas, Rosa, Gálvez, De la Cruz, Antigua y Germán, entre otros."Ayuntamiento Municipal de Castillo, "Historia"⁷

In English: the first families came from Santiago, Moca, La Vega, Cotuí, Sánchez, Samaná, San Juan de la Maguana, Yamasá and San Cristóbal. The list gives places of origin and surnames separately and does not say which family came from where. So the Aquinos' place of origin before Castillo is an open research question. Three leads are worth following:

• The Macorís lead. Aquinos were already living in the San Francisco de Macorís jurisdiction in 1812, a century before Castillo became a municipality.⁸ A local continuity is the simplest explanation.
• The southern lead. San Cristóbal and Yamasá are on the list of origins. A documented Aquino cluster lived in Sabana Grande de Palenque, San Cristóbal, in the 1880s and 1890s.¹⁰¹¹
• The Cibao lead. Santiago, Moca and La Vega supplied many settlers, and the Aquino name is found across the Cibao.⁶¹²

Juanico Aquino, cacao and coffee

Juanico Aquino is the best-documented early individual of the branch. The municipal history, citing the Castillo historian Juan Alberto Duarte Gómez, says cacao and coffee were introduced around 1884 by Gregorio Rivas, Doroteo Tapia, Domingo Ferrera and Juanico Aquino.⁷ Serie59.com tells a narrower version: coffee came in 1897 through Juanico Aquino and Gregorio Riva, planted on a ranch bordered by the Nigua and Bracito rivers, and later spread to other ranches.⁶

Cacao became the base of Castillo's economy. The municipality now promotes itself as producing some of the best cacao in the world.¹³

Illustration · AI-generated

Aquinos in Castillo today

The surname has stayed in Castillo. Recent public staff records of the Castillo town hall, the 2017 SISMAP file and the 2022 performance evaluation of 207 employees, include people with Aquino as a first or second surname. Their cédulas carry the 059 prefix.³¹⁴ Out of respect for privacy, this site does not reproduce their names or ID numbers. In the wider province, Ramón Esteban Aquino Arias served as mayor of Arenoso.¹⁵ Castillo's current mayor is Faurys Vélez Victorio.¹⁶

Where the records are

How to tell Serie 59 Aquinos from other branches