Carnaval de Samana

Carnaval de Samana is the carnival celebration of the Samana Peninsula, a region with a distinctive cultural history shaped by freed African-American settlers who arrived in 1824, establishing English-speaking, Protestant communities whose descendants remain culturally identifiable today. The carnival's general February-to-March timing overlaps with Samana Bay's annual humpback whale migration season.

Carnaval de Samana is the carnival celebration of the Samana Peninsula, a region of the Dominican Republic with a distinctive cultural history shaped by the arrival of freed African-American settlers in 1824, who came at the invitation of Haitian president Jean-Pierre Boyer during the period when Haiti controlled the entire island, establishing English-speaking, Protestant communities whose descendants remain culturally identifiable within Samana today, giving the peninsula a cultural profile within the Dominican Republic distinct from the predominantly Hispanic Catholic heritage found in most of the rest of the country.