Ramón Emeterio Betances y Alacán (April 8, 1827 – September 16, 1898) was a Puerto Rican independence leader, abolitionist and medical doctor. He led the nation's independence movement and was the primary instigator of the Grito de Lares revolt and designer of the Lares flag. Betances is considered to be the father of the Puerto Rican revolutionary movement and El Padre de la Patria (The Father of the Homeland). His charitable deeds for people in need, earned him the moniker of El Médico de los Pobres (The Doctor 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.
An adherent of Freemasonry, his political and social activism was deeply influenced by the group's philosophical beliefs.
Early years
Ancestry 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 later.
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.Dávila del Valle. Oscar G., Presencia del ideario masónico en el proyecto revolucionario antillano de Ramón Emeterio Betances 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.Ojeda Reyes, Félix, El Desterrado de París: Biografía del Dr. Ramón Emeterio Betances (1827–1898), Ediciones Puerto, San Juan, Puerto Rico, 2001, pp. 2–7
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,Ojeda Reyes, Félix, El Desterrado de París, pp. 6, 14 who was not involved in politics (according to Ramón) but was nevertheless arrested following the Grito de Lares years later.Ojeda Reyes, Félix, El Desterrado de París, pp. 131–132
His father eventually bought the Hacienda Carmen in what would later become the nearby town of Hormigueros, and became a wealthy landowner. He owned of land, a small sugar mill, and some slaves, who shared their duties with free workers.Ojeda Reyes, Félix, El Desterrado de París, pp. 8, 12 There is speculation that he later freed his slaves, persuaded by his son Ramón.Felix Ojeda Reyes speculates this in his book, El Desterrado de París, p. 42: "A search of slave registries in Cabo Rojo for the decades of 1840s and 1850s has given us no results. We can assure, however, that by 1869 and following years Dr. Betances is not listed as owning any Negro slaves within the jurisdiction. (...) The only Betances listed as owning a Negro slave in Cabo Rojo, in both the 1869 and 1872 censuses, is Ana Betances Torres (Ramón's half-sister)."
First years in France
Primary education The young Betances received his primary education from private tutors contracted by his father, a Freemason who owned the largest private library in town. His parents' attitude towards religion and civil authority shaped his personal beliefs in both subjects.Ojeda Reyes, Félix, El Desterrado de París, p. 8. Betances is quoted as saying once that he never saw his mother go to any religious service, and that when his father took him to church, he would stand in the back, close to the door, and not pay much attention to Mass. His father would eventually send him to France, to study at the then-named "Collège Royal" (later named the Lycée Pierre-de-Fermat) in Toulouse when he was ten years old. A Franco-Puerto Rican family, Jacques Maurice Prévost and María Cavalliery Bey (who also was a native of Cabo Rojo) were appointed as his tutors. Prévost opened a drug store in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, but was forced to return to France (particularly to his native town, Grisolles) for not having finished his pharmacy studies. There is also speculation that Prévost was a Freemason, as was Betances' father.
Betances accompanied the couple in Prévost's return to his country, and would be under their indirect tutelage while boarding at the school. He showed interest in natural and exact sciences early on, and also became a good fencer.Ojeda Reyes, Félix, El Desterrado de París, pp. 8, 17–19
Legal "whitening" of family While Ramón was in France, his father sought to move the family's registration from the "mixed race" to the "white" (Caucasian) classification of families in Cabo Rojo. The process, when successful, entitled the requester to further legal and property rights for him and his family, and was necessary to allow his daughter, Ana María, to marry José Tió, who was a Caucasian. In the case of Betances' father, the process lasted two years, and was formalized in 1840, but not before having to have the family's lineage and religious affiliations exposed to the general public, something that embarrassed them all. Betances was considerably annoyed by the entire ordeal, since he was the first to acknowledge that he and his entire family were not "blancuzcos" ("whitish", a legal term) but "prietuzcos" ("blackish", as Betances mocked it in his letters) instead. To him the procedure reeked of hypocrisy.Ojeda Reyes, Félix, El Desterrado de París, pp. 14–17, 20
Medicine studies
In 1846, Betances obtained his baccalauréat (high school diploma). After an extended vacation in Puerto Rico, he went on to study medicine at the Faculty of Medicine of Paris from 1848 until 1855, with a short interlude at the Faculty of Medicine of Montpellier for specific courses in the summer of 1852.Ojeda Reyes, Félix, El Desterrado de París, pp. 20, 29–30
At the time of his arrival in Paris, Betances witnessed the aftermath of the 1848 Revolution and its backlash, the June Days Uprising, earlier that year. His future political views were directly shaped by what he saw and experienced at the time. He himself "an old soldier of the French Republic". Inspired by the proclamation of the 2 République, he rejected Puerto Rican aspirations for autonomy (sought from Spain by Puerto Rican politicians since 1810) in favor of Puerto Rican independence.Ojeda Reyes, Félix (as told to Collado Schwarz, Ángel), Ramón Emeterio Betances: Padre de la Patria, Médico de los Pobres, Poeta, Diplomático de Puerto Rico y Cuba en Francia.
In 1856, he graduated with the titles of Doctor in Medicine and Surgeon. He was the second Puerto Rican to graduate from the University (after Pedro Gerónimo Goyco, a later political leader native of Mayagüez who would eventually interact with Betances when both returned to Puerto Rico).A nephew (Luis) and a second cousin (José) later graduated from the University of Paris' medical school; the former in the late 1880s, and the latter in the 1920s. Among Betances' teachers were: Charles-Adolphe Wurtz, Jean Cruveilhier, Jean-Baptiste Bouillaud, Armand Trousseau, Alfred-Armand-Louis-Marie Velpeau and Auguste Nélaton.El doctor Ramón Emeterio Betances, higienista social , submitted to the Third Betances-Martí Scientific International Conference, Centro de Estudios Martianos, Havana, Cuba, September 2002.
Father's death and family's economic problems While Betances was studying medicine in France, his father died (in August 1854) and his sister Ana María would be forced to take over the Hacienda Carmen's management. By 1857 the heirs were forced to give the operation's output to a holding company headed by Guillermo Schröeder.Ojeda Reyes, Félix, El Desterrado de París, p. 40. Ojeda Reyes implies that the plantation was later sold, but does not elaborate on the transaction's details.
First return to Puerto Rico
Cholera epidemic of 1856 Betances returned to Puerto Rico in April 1856. At the time, a cholera epidemic was spreading across the island. The epidemic made its way to Puerto Rico's western coast in July 1856, and hit the city of Mayagüez particularly hard. At the time, Betances was one of five doctors that would have to take care of 24,000 residents. Both he and Dr. José Francisco Basora (who became lifelong friends and colleagues from that point on) would alert the city government and press the city managers into taking preventive action.
An emergency subscription fund was established by some of the city's wealthiest citizens. Betances and Basora had the city's unsanitary slave barracks torched and a temporary camp set up for its dwellers. A large field at a corner of the city was set aside for a supplementary cemetery, and Betances set and managed a temporary hospital next to it (which was later housed in a permanent structure and became the Hospital San Antonio, the Mayagüez municipal hospital, which still serves the city). However, the epidemic struck the city soon after; Betances' stepmother and one of his brothers-in-law would die from it. By October 1856 Betances would have to take care of the entire operation on his own temporarily.Ojeda Reyes, Félix, El Desterrado de París, pp. 33–35
At the time, he had his first confrontation with Spanish authorities, since Betances gave last priority of medical treatment to those Spanish-born military rank and officers who were affected by the disease (they demanded preferential and immediate treatment, and he openly despised them for it). For his hard work to save many Puerto Ricans from the ravages of the cholera epidemic of 1856, Betances was commended by the city's government. However, when the central government established a Chief Surgeon post for the city, Betances (who was the acting chief surgeon) was passed over, in favor of a Spanish newcomer.Ojeda Reyes, Félix, El Desterrado de París, pp. 35–36
Basora and Betances were eventually honored with streets named after each in the city of Mayagüez. The main thoroughfare that crosses the city from north to south is named after Betances; a street that links the center of the city with the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez is named after Dr. Basora.
Exile from and return to Puerto Rico
Abolitionist