Bayaguana is a municipality

Municipalities of the Dominican Republic

The provinces of the Dominican Republic are divided into two or more municipalities with the exception of the Distrito Nacional which consist of only one municipality Santo Domingo...

 (municipio

Municipio

Municipio and Município are terms used for country subdivisions. They are often translated as municipality.-Overview:...

) of the Monte Plata

Monte Plata Province

Monte Plata is a province of the Dominican Republic, and also the name of its capital city. It was split from San Cristóbal in 1992.-Municipalities and municipal districts:...

 province

Provinces of the Dominican Republic

The Dominican Republic is divided into thirty–one provincias , while the national capital, Santo Domingo, is contained within its own Distrito Nacional ....

 in the Dominican Republic

Dominican Republic

The Dominican Republic is a nation on the island of La Hispaniola, part of the Greater Antilles archipelago in the Caribbean region. The western third of the island is occupied by the nation of Haiti, making Hispaniola one of two Caribbean islands that are shared by two countries...

.

As of the Dominican Republic's 2002 census

Census

A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring and recording information about the members of a given population. It is a regularly occurring and official count of a particular population. The term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common...

, the municipality had a total population of 33,122 inhabitants, of which 19,351 resided in urban areas and 13,771 in rural areas.

Bayaguana was founded in 1606, when Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

 resettled colonists from the northern and western part of Hispaniola

Hispaniola

Hispaniola is a major island in the Caribbean, containing the two sovereign states of the Dominican Republic and Haiti. The island is located between the islands of Cuba to the west and Puerto Rico to the east, within the hurricane belt...

 closer to Santo Domingo

Santo Domingo

Santo Domingo, known officially as Santo Domingo de Guzmán, is the capital and largest city in the Dominican Republic. Its metropolitan population was 2,084,852 in 2003, and estimated at 3,294,385 in 2010. The city is located on the Caribbean Sea, at the mouth of the Ozama River...

. Spanish colonists from La Yaguana and Bayajá (present-day Port-au-Prince

Port-au-Prince

Port-au-Prince is the capital and largest city of the Caribbean nation of Haiti. The city's population was 704,776 as of the 2003 census, and was officially estimated to have reached 897,859 in 2009....

 and Fort-Liberté

Fort-Liberté

Fort-Liberté is the administrative capital of the Nord-Est Department, Haiti. It is close to the border of the Dominican Republic and is one of the oldest cities in the country. Haiti's independence was proclaimed here on November 29, 1803. The area around Fort-Liberté was originally inhabited by...

, Haiti

Haiti

Haiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...

) were resettled in the town. The economy is centered around cattle-ranching and pineapple and rice farming.