Betances believed in the abolition of slavery, inspired not only on written works by Victor Schœlcher, 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.

[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.

Once he returned to Puerto Rico from his medical studies he requested the necessary ecclesiastical permissions to marry her (due to the degree of consanguinity between them), which were granted in Rome (then part of the Papal States) after an extended delay.

Their marriage was supposed to occur on May 5, 1859, in Paris, but Lita fell sick with typhus and died at the Mennecy house of Dr. Pierre Lamire, a friend from Betances' medical school days, on April 22, 1859 (the Good Friday of that year).

Betances was also a collaborator of Dominican priest (and later Archbishop of Santo Domingo and one-time president of the country), Fernando Arturo de Meriño, who was the revolt's ideological leader (as well as its delegate in Puerto Rico when he was himself exiled by the restored republican government).

The Spanish government was involved in several conflicts across Latin America: war with the Dominican Republic, Peru and Chile (see below), slave revolts in Cuba, a bad economic situation in its colonies, among others.

The Puerto Rican delegation was freely elected by those eligible to vote (male Caucasian property owners[citation needed]), in a rare exercise of political openness in the colony.

However, Acosta could convince the Junta that abolition could be achieved in Puerto Rico without disrupting the local economy (including its Cuban members, who frowned upon implementing it in Cuba because of its much higher numbers of slave labor).

After listening to the Junta members' list of voted-down measures, Betances stood up and retorted: "Nadie puede dar lo que no tiene" (No one can give others what they don't have for themselves), a phrase that he would constantly use through the rest of his life when referring to Spain's unwillingness to grant Puerto Rico or Cuba any reforms.

In late June 1867 Betances and at least 12 more potential "revolutionaries" were exiled from Puerto Rico by then governor Gen. José María Marchessi y Oleaga as a preventive measure, including Goyco and Ruiz.

Marchesi feared that the United States, which had made an offer to purchase what were then the Danish Virgin Islands, would rather instigate a revolt in Puerto Rico so as to later annex the island—which would make a better military base in the Caribbean—at a lesser economic cost.

After signing a letter that could serve as proof of his intentions of becoming a United States citizen (mainly to prevent his arrest elsewhere) Betances then returned to the Dominican Republic in September 1867, where he attempted to organize an armed expedition that was to invade Puerto Rico.

If Spain feels capable of granting us, and gives us, those rights and liberties, they may then send us a General Captain, a governor... made of straw, that we will burn in effigy come Carnival time, as to remember all the Judases that they have sold us until now.

He had received an invitation from Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna, a Chilean diplomat, to coordinate a common front against Spanish interests in all of Latin America (Spain was still threatening Chile after the Chincha Islands War, and any revolution in the Caribbean would have been a welcome distraction).

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).

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" Somewhat disillusioned by his experience in New York City (he had philosophical differences with some leaders of the Antillean liberation movements, particularly with Eugenio María de Hostos), Betances spent a short interlude in Jacmel, Haiti in 1870 at the request of its then-president, Jean Nissage-Saget, who supported Betances' efforts to have a liberal government for the Dominican Republic take power.

He was vehement about the need for natives of the Greater Antilles to unite into an Antillean Confederation, a regional entity that would seek to preserve the sovereignty and well-being of Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.

Therefore, Betances and the Puerto Rican revolutionaries ceded their caches of firearms hidden in Saint Thomas, Curaçao and Haiti to the Cuban rebels in October 1871, since their struggle was deemed as a priority.

[54] Betances admired the United States of America for its ideals of freedom and democracy, but despised Manifest Destiny and the Monroe Doctrine, and sensed that both philosophies were being used as excuses for American interventions on the continent.

[56] Expecting to bring some stability to his personal life, Betances had Simplicia Jiménez meet him again in Haiti (she had been living in St. Croix since he was evicted from Saint Thomas, to ensure her safety), and returned with her to Paris where he continued to fight for Puerto Rico's independence for close to 26 years.

He reminded people that abolition would not have happened without the direct intervention of Puerto Ricans in the Spanish political process, and was thus hopeful that the islanders would assume a more proactive role in seeking their freedom from Spain.

They would assume this role until political turmoil in the Dominican Republic forced Luperón to return and lead yet another revolt, which had another Puerto Plata native, Ulises Heureaux, installed as president.

The Maceo brothers both escaped imprisonment, were recaptured in Gibraltar and turned over to the Spanish authorities, but José remained in jail long after Antonio regained his liberty and fled to New York City.

[44] Betances, who had collected more money in France for the Party than the plan's potential cost, grew weary of the Cuban revolutionary movement's diminishing support of the Puerto Rico independence cause.

However, his failing health (he had uremia, and since his lungs could not exchange oxygen properly this put extra burden to his heart and kidneys) prevented Betances from performing further diplomatic work from France on behalf of Puerto Rico or Cuba.

When reminded by de Hostos through a letter of what was happening in the island, he responded, highly frustrated, with a phrase that has become famous since: "¿Y qué les pasa a los puertorriqueños que no se rebelan?"

According to Puerto Ricans and French historians in three different fields (medicine, literature and politics), Betances left a legacy that has been considerably understated,[11] and is only being assessed properly in recent times.

But the world is full of ingratitudes, and the disdainful tend to forget that this revolutionary act is precisely the highest struggle of dignity that has been done in Puerto Rico in four centuries of the most opprobrious servitude, engraving in its flag the abolition of slavery and the independence of the island.

A Dominican historian and political leader, Manuel Rodríguez Objío, likened Betances' revolutionary work to that performed by Tadeusz Kościuszko for Poland, Lithuania and the United States of America.

[76] José Martí considered Betances one of his "teachers", or sources of political inspiration, and his diplomatic and intelligence work in France on behalf of the Cuban revolutionary junta greatly aided the cause, before it was directly influenced by the intervention of Gen. Valeriano Weyler as governor and commander of the Spanish forces in Cuba, and by the Maine incident later on.