Ramón Emeterio Betances

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Ramón Emeterio Betances : biography

April 8, 1827 – September 16, 1898

Gregorio Luperón met Betances in Saint Thomas, and offered to assist the Puerto Rican revolution, in exchange for help to overthrow Báez once the right circumstances were met. As a consequence, Betances organized revolutionary cells in Puerto Rico from exile, which would be led by leaders such as Manuel Rojas and Mathias Brugman. Betances instructed Mariana Bracetti to knit a flag for the revolution using the colors and basic design similar to that of the Dominican Republic (which in turn was almost identical to a French military standard). Betances was also supposed to send reinforcements to the Puerto Rican rebels through the use of a ship purchased by Puerto Rican and Dominican revolutionaries, "El Telégrafo" (which was to be shared by both), but the ship was confiscated soon after arrival by the government of the then Danish (later United States) Virgin Islands.Ojeda Reyes, El Desterrado de París, pp. 145, 149. El Telégrafo would later be used by Luperón in a failed invasion of the Dominican Republic, and later sold in 1869.

Eventually all these factors led the way to the abortive insurrection known as the "Grito de Lares", whose date had to be brought forward to September 23, 1868. The Grito found Betances between Curaçao and Saint Thomas, struggling to send reinforcements in time for the revolt.Ojeda Reyes, El Desterrado de París, p. 128. See note at end of next paragraph.

After the failed insurrection, Betances did not return to Puerto Rico, except for "secret" visits, according to the obituary written about him by the New York Herald after his death. There is no evidence of these, although Betances suggests a visit did occur at some time between 1867 and 1869, and perhaps again in the 1880s.Ojeda Reyes, El Desterrado de París, p. 128. Betances claimed in a letter to Julio J. Henna that once he had news of the Grito, he "went as quickly as possible where duty was calling", but that, "as soon as I arrived, everything had finished". It is unclear whether Betances had returned to Puerto Rico clandestinely or to some other Caribbean location.

In New York

Betances fled to New York City in April 1869, where he again joined Basora in his efforts to organize Puerto Rican revolutionaries into additional activities leading to independence.Ojeda Reyes, El Desterrado de París, pp. 140, 148. Betances had been arrested in Saint Thomas, but used his diplomatic credentials so as to be allowed to move on to New York. He joined the Cuban Revolutionary Junta, whose members were more successful at their drive for armed revolution for Cuba, which had started with the "Grito de Yara", just two weeks after the Grito de Lares.Ojeda Reyes, El Desterrado de París, p. 134 He also lobbied the United States Congress successfully against an annexation of the Dominican Republic by the United States, requested in a vote by a majority of voters in a referendum in 1869.Ojeda Reyes, El Desterrado de París, p. 150. Frederick Douglass was an observer of the election; Charles Sumner sided with Betances and the Dominican liberals, and was instrumental in having an annexation plan voted down by the United States Senate. He also befriended Venezuelan military leader and former president José Antonio Páez in his final days.Ojeda Reyes, El Desterrado de París, p. 162 Betances stayed in New York from April 1869 through February 1870.

The Antilles now face a moment that they had never faced in history; they now have to decide whether ‘to be, or not to be’. (…) Let us unite. Let us build a people, a people of true Freemasons, and we then shall raise a temple over foundations so solid that the forces of the Saxon and Spanish races will not shake it, a temple that we will consecrate to Independence, and in whose frontispiece we will engrave this inscription, as imperishable as the Motherland itself: "The Antilles for the Antilleans"

Speech to the Masonic Lodge of Port-au-Prince,1872Ojeda Reyes, El Desterrado de París, pp. 192–193