Who is josé celso barbosa

When he returned to Puerto Rico to practice medicine, he had to struggle to have his degree recognized. Spain accepted only European degrees. The American consul assisted Barbosa in his negotiations, and he was allowed to practice. Barbosa provided medical care in Bayamon and beyond. Barbosa was a prominent medical doctor, and he was also a visionary. He had the idea that employers should pay a fee to ensure medical care for their workers, much like modern health insurance.

This party favored statehood for Puerto Rico. It was not the first political party in which Barbosa was involved, but it addressed the frustration he felt at seeing Puerto Rico continue in the same colonial patterns he had known before.

He wanted Puerto Rico to have the same rights and responsibilities he had seen in the United States. He owned this highly successful newspaper even as he became more involved with his political career. After graduating from the seminary, Barbosa tutored private students to save money to attend college. In , he moved to New York City to attend prep school, where he learned English in a year. Originally Barbosa wished to become a lawyer, but after he suffered a bout of pneumonia in New York City, his doctor recommended that he study medicine.

In , he was admitted to the medical school of the University of Michigan, where he graduated as valedictorian of the class of Barbosa was the first person from Puerto Rico to earn a medical degree in the United States. The Spanish colonial government initially did not recognize Barbosa's medical degree, as it was not from a known European university. The American consul to the island intervened on behalf of Barbosa to have his United States degree recognized, so that he could practice.

Barbosa provided medical care all over the island. He introduced the novel idea of employers paying a fee for the future healthcare needs of their employees a very early health insurance system.

Barbosa, as a member of the Red Cross, went to the aid of the wounded Puerto Rican and Spanish soldiers. He and his party on the ferry had to travel across San Juan Bay at risk, as they were under cannon fire. For over thirty-years, Barbosa penned articles in various periodicals promoting political and social reform, labor and civil rights, universal suffrage, and republicanism. He read the works and admired the activism of Frederick Douglass, W.

DuBois, Booker T. Washington, and A. Philip Randolph. A proponent of racial democracy, Barbosa encouraged inclusion into an openly racist nation and incorrectly believed that Puerto Rican institutional discrimination did not exist.