Julio Vizcarrondo

Julio Vizcarrondo Coronado
Julio Vizcarrondo Coronado
Born	(1829-12-09)December 9, 1829 San Juan, Puerto Rico
Died	1889 Madrid, Spain
Nationality	Puerto Rican
Occupation	Journalist, Political activist
Notes
Vizcarrondo Coronado was founder of the Protestant movement in the Iberian Peninsula in the 19th century

Julio Vizcarrondo Coronado (December 9, 1829 – 1889) was a Puerto Rican abolitionist, journalist, politician and religious leader. He played an instrumental role in the development and passage of the Moret Law which in 1873 abolished slavery in Puerto Rico. Vizcarrondo was also the founder of the Protestant movement in the Iberian Peninsula in the 19th century.

Vizcarrondo was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico to Dr. Jose Bonifacio Vizcarrondo y Ortiz de Zarate and María Josefa Coronado y Martínez. His family were the owners of slaves who worked their Hacienda. Vizcarrondo received his primary education in the capital city of Puerto Rico and his secondary education in Madrid, Spain and Paris, France.

Upon his return to Puerto Rico, Vizcarrondo began to write for a local newspaper, where he expressed his liberal ideas and his position against slavery. The Spanish government considered his remarks as treacherous, and the appointed governor of the island, Lieutenant General Juan de la Pezuela y Cevallos (1848–1851), ordered his exile to the United States.

In 1850, Vizcarrondo arrived in New York City and joined the "International Conference of Paris against Slavery" as Secretary of the Permanent Committee of said organization. In New York he met and married Henriette Brewster y Cornell and converted to Protestantism, the faith of his wife. In 1854, Vizcarrondo returned to Puerto Rico and continued writing articles and expressing his ideas. He granted his slaves their freedom and became a defender of the rights of the Puerto Rican slaves. He often denounced, in the island's courts, the slave owners who mistreated their slaves, thereby making many enemies. Vizcarrondo also denounced what he felt was the mistreatment of the Puerto Ricans and Puerto Rico in general by the colonial Spanish government.