I appreciate that Dawson doesn't expend any intellectual energy pretending that principles enshrined in the first drafts of the Atlantic colonial nations' various bills of rights bore any resemblance to modern multicultural humanism. Rights were ascribed to a select portion of males belonging to the dominant Spanish culture group and those rights included dominion over those people within society whose utter subjugation was deemed necessary for the prosperity of the nation as a whole. The concept of citizenship in the early 19th century and prior doesn't have the universal aspect we think of today. Being born within the political boundaries of these nations did not entitle you to the privileges and freedoms of citizenship enumerated in these charters automatically, but was seen by the authors as a responsibility of the "civilized" castes and a reward bestowed upon members of the underclass for loyalty and cultural conversion. These initial declarations of rights and freedoms are not the proud moments for human advancement that they pretend to be, but they represent a symbolically important initial step along the long road to embracing egalitarian social values on paper, reducing the coercive measures to control Latin America's native cultures and abolishing the institution of chattel slavery by the end of the 19th century. However, even when the foundational documents and legal codes were slowly altered to include the lower castes, these statements of principle were utterly incapable of curtailing the informal social institutions of hierarchy and the advent of scientific racism to casually justify such practices that persisted through the 20th century.
Many of the racial biases held by the European descendants towards African slaves were blind prejudices based on self-serving metrics of "civilization" and propriety. The paternalistic attitude towards Africans led to many hateful biases, such as the assertion by Raymundo Rodrigues that they are physiologically incapable of understanding monotheism. Views such as Rodrigues' would lead to the logical mentality among Africans that "if I culturally convert to more European values and beliefs I may be made a full citizen", but as illustrated by the horrific proxy hate crime of South America's various "desert conquests" even when those forces within the government seemed to be offering a route for marginalized groups (African slaves, specifically) to gain access to the benefits of citizenship through military service, it turned out to be a twisted scheme to eliminate two groups deemed enemies of the prevailing criollo order at once. Racial identities are always meant to be external labels that, in Latin American and most other contexts, serve as comparative assessments of white supremacy to other groups. If race is engaged on its own terms, even if it is a well-intentioned appeal to the humanity of a certain group, is still participating in a pseudo-scientific value system that places monotheism, industry and murderous cunning as ideals that truly modern humans must embody.
The fact that these "revolutionary" bill of rights were not universal is a very appropriate one to make. For if they had been we would not be reading these diverse and varied primary documents from this week. These documents exist because the people writing them for the most part had remained unchanged in their situations. While the nations of Latin America had acquired independence, many of their varied residents had simply exchanged one master for another. These documents tell of a fight for autonomy and emancipation that would take many decades to come to fruition.
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