While Ramón was in France, his father sought to move the family's registration from the "mixed race" to the "white" (Caucasian) classification of families in Cabo Rojo. The process, when successful, entitled the requester to further legal and property rights for him and his family, and was necessary to allow his daughter, Ana María, to marry José Tió, who was a Caucasian. In the case of Betances' father, the process lasted two years, and was formalized in 1840, but not before having to have the family's lineage and religious affiliations exposed to the general public, something that embarrassed them all. Betances was considerably annoyed by the entire ordeal, since he was the first to acknowledge that he and his entire family were not ""blancuzcos"" ("whitish", a legal term) but ""prietuzcos"" ("blackish", as Betances mocked it in his letters) instead. To him the procedure reeked of hypocrisy.