Franklin,
No, I wasn't on Margarita to work. My home was a cruising sailboat (which was how I got to the other islands).
My comparison of Margarita to the US was based largely on Porlamar. There is nothing that compares with this in the DR; you'd have to go to the US to find anything similar.
One important point is that in the DR you never feel as though you are on an island, unlike Margarita and the other Caribbean islands. It is so much larger. Maybe if we had a car I would feel differently, but as it is, we forget we are on an island. From Sosua to Santo Domingo, for example, takes about 4.5 hours (including enroute stops). Travel the same distance on the other islands and you've made at least a couple circumnavigations.
I never got to Caracas, so can't compare it to SD. But SD is much, much larger than Puerto La Cruz. Santiago is also larger. My comments about similarity had more to do with the types of local businesses, nature of the people, etc.
When we were in Venezuela, we had the feeling that the average person might be a little more sophisticated than his counterpart in the DR. Venezuela is going through a very difficult period, but they have had some golden periods as well. It is possible that they have come out of those periods with a little more sophistication than you'll find among the "common men" in the DR. (I'm not talking about the campesinos, the country people. I've had no experience with them in Venezuela so can't make a comparison.)
In the American Virgin Islands (much more so than the BVIs) and many of the other islands, we felt that the "common men" were more defensive than in the DR, more likely to have a chip on their shoulders. Perhaps you had a different impression, although, at least in the American Virgins I think youl'll know what I am talking about.
The Spanish influence is, as is to be expected, very much in evidence in the DR. For this reason it is almost impossible to make a good comparison with the French and British islands. Very different cultural heritages.
I'll be very interested in hearing from you after you have been here for a little way. I'd be interested to knowing what conclusions you come to, and how you compare what you find here with what you experienced in the other islands.
Ken