Against White Supremacy: Blacks and People of Color in the Making of a New Citizenry

The tumultuous years of 1800 to 1822 on Haytí and Santo Domingo marked a special, yet seldom studied period of the formation of race and nation as paralleling modern concepts. Notably among the formative indicators of this period is the story a racialized people’s success in achieving political enfranchisement, even prior to the union with Hayti in 1822. Between the defeat of the French in 1809 and the time of the Haitian occupation the Cadiz Constitution of 1812 recognized the free Blacks and mulattoes’ civil rights while still denying them automatic citizenship. The majority of the population moved from non-persons to people with rights who could still gain citizenship through naturalization. The increasing economic and social power of people of color at this time is evident in the general population. The clearest example, however, is the fact that the Cadiz Constitution found its most liberal application in Santo Domingo by allowing for a growing number of Black naturalizations. So, when José Núñez de Cáceres declared independence from Spain in 1821, conscious of the increasing power of the Haitian Party in Santo Domingo, he imprinted the rights of citizens of people of color in the newly and hastily written constitution of the Haytí Español, even when it did not abolish slavery. ! While Cáceres, like with most Spanish and criollo leaders at the time, sought to elevate White political status over that of Blacks and people of color, in just over a decade after the expulsion of the French rule from Santo Domingo, the criollo class was forced to concede political equality to the same people they sought to disenfranchised. Their defeat marks a special moment in the history of nascent nationalism when racialized communities subtly, yet powerful reshaped the nation to have themselves included as participants of the nation’s citizenship.