The Foundation of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de los Morenos de Amapa

Abstract

The relatively small degree of racial discrimination against the Negro in Latin America generally has been traced by North American historians to Spanish acceptance of the African Negro as a human being, not perpetually destined for slavery nor inferior to other races. In contrast to the status of the Negro slave in colonial North America, Spanish laws and attitudes are thought to have provided in colonial Spanish America a climate of opinion which promoted miscegenation and afforded the slave a variety of legal avenues to freedom. In support of this explanation of reduced racial discimination, notarial records of manumission from the colonial period and the thirteenth-century legal code, Las siete partidas , are prominently displayed as evidence of the Spaniards' belief in “equality among men” and the transformation of the principle of equality into practice.