Julio Vizcarrondo y Coronado was a Puerto Rican politician who was a member of the Spanish Parliament between 1886 and 1889 representing the district of Ponce. 
He was born in 1829 to a family of wealthy landowners who owned slaves. However, he dedicated his life to the cause of freedom. After getting an education in Madrid and Paris he returned to his homeland where he begun to campaign against slavery.
In the ultraconservative period that Spain was going through at the time that led him to exile in the USA in 1850. He later freed all his slaves and moved to Madrid.
There he was one of the founders of the Spanish Abolitionist Society and he also founded a newspaper, El Abolicionista. It was shut down by the conservative Narváez government.
In 1868 Vizcarrondo was amongst those who led the Democratic revolution called La Gloriosa in Spain.
His campaign for liberty was instrumental in getting the Moret Act or Freedom of wombs Act passed in 1870, the first law that begun the process of ending slavery in Puerto Rico and Cuba. It only freed those children of slaves born after 1868.
The democratic revolution failed and the Bourbon monarchy was restored in 1874 in a military coup. Once political activism was permitted again, the Abolitonist Society reignited the campaing to abolish slavery once and for all.
In 1880 the remaining slaves were put under a regime of "Patronato", the patronage of the former slave owners, and, in 1886, slavery was finally and definitely abolished in Puerto Rico and Cuba. 29,000 Puerto Rican slaves were freed.
The criminal institution of slavery was abolished embarassingly late.
Spain has the dishonour of being one of the last countries to abolish slavery in its colonies (although it had been abolished in 1837 in the metropolis). Spain was afraid of alienating the slave-owning elites of Cuba and Puerto Rico.
However, some of the most important and lucid Spanish abolitionists were Cuban or Puerto Rican born. Many of them became members of the Spanish Parliament. Because they could participate in the Spanish political process they finally succeeded in their goal.
They say that Puerto Rico is the oldest colony. In the late 19th Century Puerto Ricans, when they were a colony of Spain, could elect deputies to the Spanish Parliament.
In 1898 Puerto Rico was "freed" from Spanish colonial oppression by the USA and put under military rule and then colonial rule from Washington. Puerto Ricans were not allowed to elect their governor until 1948.
Ironically Puerto Ricans have fewer political rights today than when they were under the Spanish colonial oppression that was used as an argument to justify military intervention and occupation of Cuba and Puerto Rico.
It was an embarassment for Spain to take so long to end slavery in Puerto Rico. Today, it is an embarassment for the USA, which purports to defend democracy around the World, to run a de facto colony under the fancy name of Commonwealth.
Puerto Ricans cannot vote for the President or elect members of Congress. They have been given a citizenship which gives them the right to emigrate from their country and move into they US or serve and get killed in the US Armed Forces.
It's high time for the USA to decide if it wants to admit Puerto Rico as a state or give the country independence. The current regime is unacceptable. Sort it out.
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