page_title: Ramón Emeterio Betances
section_title: Simplicia Jiménez
hierarchical_section_title: Ramón Emeterio Betances / Exile from and return to Puerto Rico / Return to Mayagüez and second exile / Simplicia Jiménez
caption_attribution_description: The Casa de los Cinco Arcos, the house that Ramón Emeterio Betances built in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico in 1865. Betances lived it for close to a year and a half, before he was exiled to Paris. Credits The author took this picture on April 5, 2007.
context_page_description: Ramón Emeterio Betances y Alacán 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". Because of his charitable deeds for people in need, he also became known as "El Padre de los Pobres".
  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.
context_section_description: Betances met his lifelong companion, Simplicia Isolina Jiménez Carlo, in 1864. Jiménez apparently was born in what would later become the Dominican Republic, on July 28, 1842. Her mother's last name, Carlo, rather common in Cabo Rojo, implies that her family had ties to the town. She worked for one of Betances' sisters between 1863 and 1864, and he met her once at his sister's house. Apparently she was infatuated with him strongly enough to appear at his door with a pair of suitcases, asking him to give her shelter, since "no gentleman would leave a woman alone on the street at night." Jiménez then became Betances' common-law wife for thirty-five years, and survived his death in 1898. They would not have any children. Their godchild, Magdalena Caraguel, was eventually adopted by the couple as their daughter. Little else is documented about Jiménez in history books, and Betances rarely mentions her in his works and correspondence.
  While still living in Mayagüez, Betances built a house for himself and his wife, which they only lived in for less than two years; the house, named the Casa de los Cinco Arcos (House of the Five Arches), still stands on the street that bears his name near the corner with Luis Muñoz Rivera street, south of the city's center.
caption: Casa de los Cinco Arcos (Betances' House) in Mayagüez, 2007
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