A friend of mine threw a party for some girl's 15th birthday, I forgot what this event is called but it's big in Latin American cultures.
Sitting at a table was a Dominican man clearly in his mid-late 40's with an underaged girl. He flew from the states to be with her at this event. I would say she was 16 years old tops. They were sitting at a table with her whole family, and these weren't chopos, either. None were invited to this party. The family seemed not to be bothered at all, and if they did not condone the relationship he wouldn't have been sitting next to her with his arm wrapped around her for most of the evening.
The reason why I'm getting sick and tired of my local gym, convenient as it is, is I have to be subjected to these types of conversations-aging Dominican taxi drivers, bogeda clerks, and factory workers talking about going home and having their pick of underage girls. They talk about it blatantly and openly, and don't care if anyone overhears them.
They make no bones about it and stress the underage part like it's something to be proud of. It will continue unless the laws in the DR are enforced, which is why so many Dominican men living abroad love their country, because the laws there are a joke. I don't even know if such dalliances are specifically against Dominican law.
As far as this being a cultural phenomenon, it's only like that for the men. If it were so culturally ingrained, they'd be doing the same thing here with young Dominican girls, but they can't. Even the most humble Section 8 dwelling loser chica has more options than a greasy old pervert who stacks shelves in a grocery store, and I don't know of one Dominican family that would condone such behavior unless the guy was loaded. Even then it's not something you see very often.
But these guys get away with what they do because they (for the most part) live in remote campos, where anything goes, more so than in the big cities, if you can believe that.
There's no reason why a man in his 40's should have an underage novia. None. But that's not how it is in the land of "Anything Goes".