The Constitution of 1812 as an American document
The constitution promulgated at Cádiz on 19 March 1812 defined the Spanish nation as all Spaniards of both hemispheres, listed the American and Asian provinces among its territories, made citizens of all descended by both lines from the Spanish dominions of either hemisphere, and ordered schools in every town of the monarchy. It left Spaniards reputed to be of African origin outside citizenship by birth, admitting them only by a grant of the Cortes under five conditions.
Why this wins its question: The Constitution of Cádiz reaches English-language accounts as a milestone in Spanish liberalism, summarised in a sentence about popular sovereignty and a second about how briefly it lasted; the American half of the document — which is most of its territory clause and the whole of its citizenship problem — is usually reported at second hand as "Indians were made citizens but blacks were not". This object quotes the 1812 Imprenta Real sheets article by article: the both-hemispheres definition of the nation in article 1, the province-by-province American and Philippine list of article 10, the exact descent test of article 18 that admitted indigenous Americans without naming them, and the full text of article 22 with all five conditions attached to the carta de ciudadano — including legitimate birth to freeborn parents, which put citizenship out of reach of the descendants of the enslaved by definition rather than by discretion. It sets the cost in the same frame as the achievement because the document does: article 23 closes municipal office to non-citizens in the line after the exclusion, article 25 suspends citizenship for domestic service and writes a literacy test into the constitution for 1830, and article 366 promises the schools that test would have required.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The first article makes the constitution a document about two hemispheres before it is a document about Spain. Título I, capítulo I opens: "ART. 1. La Nacion española es la reunion de todos los españoles de ambos hemisferios", followed by "ART. 2. La Nacion española es libre é independiente, y no es ni puede ser patrimonio de ninguna familia ni persona" and the sovereignty clause of article 3, that sovereignty resides essentially in the Nation and the right to establish its fundamental laws belongs exclusively to it. The overseas provinces are not annexes to the nation in this text; they are constituents of it.
Article 5 defines Spaniards by residence and freedom rather than by descent, and includes the freed. "Son Españoles — Primero: Todos los hombres libres nacidos y avecindados en los dominios de las Españas y los hijos de estos", then naturalised foreigners, then those with ten years' residence, and "Quarto: Los libertos desde que adquieran la libertad en las Españas." The category of español therefore reached enslaved people the moment they were freed on Spanish soil — while saying nothing about those still enslaved, of whom the constitution as promulgated makes no other provision in this chapter.
Article 10 enumerates the territory, and the American list occupies most of it: "En la América septentrional, Nueva España con la Nueva-Galicia y península de Yucatan, Goatemala, provincias internas de Oriente, provincias internas de Occidente, isla de Cuba con las dos Floridas, la parte española de la isla de Santo Domingo, y la isla de Puerto Rico con las demas adyacentes á estas y al continente en uno y otro mar. En la América meridional, la Nueva-Granada, Venezuela, el Perú, Chile, provincias del Rio de la Plata, y todas las islas adyacentes en el mar Pacífico y en el Atlántico. En el Asia, las islas Filipinas, y las que dependen de su gobierno." Article 11 promises a more convenient division of the whole Spanish territory by a constitutional law "luego que las circunstancias políticas de la Nacion lo permitan".
The citizenship article is the one that changed the legal position of indigenous Americans, and it does so without naming them. Capítulo IV, "De los ciudadanos españoles", opens: "ART. 18. Son ciudadanos aquellos españoles que por ámbas líneas traen su origen de los dominios españoles de ámbos hemisferios, y estan avecindados en qualquier pueblo de los mismos dominios." Descent from the dominions of either hemisphere by both lines is the whole test, so people whose ancestry was wholly American qualified on the face of the article — the same criterion that, read in the light of article 22, is what excludes those of African descent.
Article 22 states the exclusion and its price in full: "A los españoles que por qualquiera línea son habidos y reputados por originarios del Africa, les queda abierta la puerta de la virtud y del merecimiento para ser ciudadanos: en su consecuencia las Córtes concederán carta de ciudadano á los que hicieren servicios calificados á la Patria, ó á los que se distingan por su talento, aplicacion y conducta, con la condicion de que sean hijos de legítimo matrimonio de padres ingenuos; de que esten casados con muger ingenua, y avecindados en los dominios de las Españas, y de que exerzan alguna profesion, oficio ó industria útil con un capital propio." Citizenship that others held by birth was for them a discretionary grant hedged with five conditions, one of which — descent from freeborn parents — no descendant of the enslaved could satisfy.
What the exclusion cost in practice is fixed by the next article. "ART. 23. Solo los que sean ciudadanos podrán obtener empleos municipales, y elegir para ellos en los casos señalados por la ley." Municipal office and the municipal vote, the level of government closest to an American town, were closed to the excluded category by the article immediately following the one that excluded it. In a population where people of African descent were a large share of the free inhabitants of Cuba, Venezuela and the Caribbean coasts, the two articles read together are a substantial disfranchisement, and the constitution states both in the same breath.
Citizenship could also be suspended, and the grounds show the social shape of the settlement. Article 25 suspends the exercise of citizen rights for judicial interdiction, bankruptcy or debt to the public treasury, "Tercero: Por el estado de sirviente doméstico", lack of a known employment or way of living, and criminal prosecution; and "Sexto: Desde el año de mil ochocientos treinta deberán saber leer y escribir los que de nuevo entren en el exercicio de los derechos de ciudadano." Domestic service disqualified immediately; a literacy test was written into the constitution with eighteen years' notice. Article 26 adds that citizen rights may be lost or suspended only for the causes named in the two preceding articles "y no por otras".
The literacy clause of 1830 is why título IX matters to the Americas. "ART. 366. En todos los pueblos de la Monarquía se establecerán escuelas de primeras letras, en las que se enseñará á los niños á leer, escribir y contar, y el catecismo de la religion católica, que comprehenderá tambien una breve exposicion de las obligaciones civiles", with article 367 ordering that the competent number of universities and other establishments of instruction be arranged and created. A school in every town of the monarchy is a promise to American pueblos de indios as much as to Castilian villages, and it is the enabling condition for a franchise the same text makes conditional on reading and writing.
The promulgating formula records the peculiar circumstances of the text. It is issued in the name of "DON FERNANDO SEPTIMO, por la gracia de Dios y la Constitucion de la Monarquía española, Rey de las Españas, y en su ausencia y cautividad la Regencia del reyno, nombrada por las Córtes generales y extraordinarias", and the constitution itself opens "En el nombre de Dios todopoderoso, Padre, Hijo, y Espíritu Santo, autor y supremo legislador de la sociedad." A sovereign-nation constitution was promulgated for a king in French captivity by a parliament besieged in Cádiz, and the copy read here is the reimpression made by order in the Imprenta Real of Madrid in the same year, after the French withdrawal.
What this source establishes is the text, not its effect. The constitution was in force in Spanish America only intermittently — Fernando VII abolished it in 1814, it returned in 1820, and by then most of the mainland was at war or independent — and nothing in the printed articles shows how many American towns held constitutional elections, how the ayuntamientos constitucionales worked where they were installed, or how the carta de ciudadano of article 22 was actually granted or refused. Those are questions for viceregal, audiencia and municipal records this corpus has not opened, and no claim here asserts an outcome.