Dr. Ramón Emerterio Betances y Alacán (PR independence advocate/abolitionist) 1827-1898 (8 apr 1827 anni – 16 sett 1898 anni)

Descrizione:

Ramón Emeterio Betances y Alacán [note 1] (April 8, 1827 – September 16, 1898) was a Puerto Rican independence advocate and medical doctor. He was the primary instigator of the Grito de Lares revolution and is considered to be the father of the Puerto Rican independence movement. Since the Grito galvanized a burgeoning nationalist movement among Puerto Ricans, Betances is also considered "El Padre de la Patria" (Father of the [Puerto Rican] Nation). Because of his charitable deeds for people in need, he also became known as "El Padre de los Pobres" ("The Father of the Poor").

Betances was also a medical doctor and surgeon in Puerto Rico, and one of its first social hygienists. He had established a successful surgery and ophthalmology practice. Betances was also an abolitionist, diplomat, public health administrator, poet, and novelist. He served as representative and contact for Cuba and the Dominican Republic in Paris, France.

An adherent of Freemasonry, his political and social activism was deeply influenced by the group's philosophical beliefs.

Betances was born in Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico, in the building that now houses the "Logia Cuna de Betances" ("Betances' Cradle Masonic Lodge"). Betances' parents were Felipe Betanzos Ponce, a merchant born in Hispaniola (in the part that would later become the Dominican Republic; the surname Betanzos transformed into Betances while the family resided there), and María del Carmen Alacán de Montalvo, a native of Cabo Rojo and of French ancestry. They were married in 1812.

Betances claimed in his lifetime that a relative of his, Pedro Betances, had revolted against the Spanish government of Hispaniola in 1808 and was tortured, executed, and his body burned and shown to the populace to dissuade them from further attempts.[1] Meanwhile, Alacán's father, a sailor, led a party of volunteers that tried to apprehend the pirate Roberto Cofresí y Ramírez de Arellano in 1824 and did arrest some of Cofresí's crew, for which he was honored by the Spanish government.[2]

Betances was the fourth of six children; the oldest of which would die shortly after birth; Betances was the only male among the surviving siblings. The family was described as being of mixed race in records of the day. His mother died in 1837, when he was nine years old, and his father remarried in 1839; the five children he had with María del Carmen Torres Pagán included Ramón's half-brother Felipe Adolfo,[3] who was not involved in politics (according to Ramón) but was nevertheless arrested following the Grito de Lares years later.[4]

His father eventually bought the Hacienda Carmen in what would later become the nearby town of Hormigueros, and became a wealthy landowner. He owned 200 acres (0.8 km2) of land, a small sugar mill, and some slaves, who shared their duties with free workers.[5] There is speculation that he later freed his slaves, persuaded by his son Ramón.

Betances believed in the abolition of slavery, inspired not only on written works by Victor Schoelcher, John Brown, Lamartine and Tapia, but also on personal experience, based on what he saw at his father's farm and in daily Puerto Rican life.[17] Based on his beliefs, he founded a civic organization in 1856, one of many others that were later called the Secret Abolitionist Societies by historians. Little is known about them due to their clandestine nature, but Betances and Salvador Brau (a close friend who later became the official Historian of Puerto Rico) describe them in their writings. Some of these societies sought the freedom and free passage of maroons from Puerto Rico to countries where slavery had been abolished already; other societies sought to liberate as many slaves as possible by buying out their freedom.[11]

The objective of the particular society Betances founded was to free children who were slaves, taking advantage of their need to receive the sacrament of Baptism at the town church, Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria, which is now the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Mayagüez. Since buying the freedom of slave children cost 50 pesos if the child had been baptized, and 25 pesos if the child had not, Betances, Basora, Segundo Ruiz Belvis and other members of the society waited next to the baptismal font on Sundays, expecting a master to take a slave family to baptize their child. Before the child was baptized, Betances or his partners gave money to the parents, which they in turn used to buy the child's freedom from his master. The child, once freed, was baptized minutes after. This action was later described as having the child receive the "aguas de libertad" (waters of liberty). Similar events occurred in the city of Ponce.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ram%C3%B3n_Emeterio_Betances

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