EUTopia CoLeCo Legal History: Collective and Individual Rights in Legal History

  Members of the constitutional convention meet to vote on the latest provisions of the draft constitution in Santiago on Saturday 14 May.  The Guardian, 16 May 2022, Photograph: Esteban Félix/AP   My project has investigated how textuality has been crucial in Chile’s development as a nation. Specifically, I have considered the art of poetry as a cross-cultural tool that enabled one of Chile’s Indigenous groups, known as the Mapuche, to assert their autonomy and cultural excellence. My study of three exceptional poets - Juan Paulo Huirimilla Oyarzo, Bernardo Colipán Filgueira and Maribel Mora Curriao – concluded that this genre of literature enables the crucial preservation of Indigenous nations, as well as a re-writing of canonical, whitewashed history. From this arose an exploration of the conflict over Indigenous incorporation into Chilean politics. This has been very limited, until now. A new Chilean constitution has been in the making since the plebiscite o...

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  [ Gallica BnF Digital Library ]  Analysis by Aron Pandian, Warwick. This document, written in 1805, is the constitution written and enacted by the regime of Jean-Jacques Dessalines in the aftermath of the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804). The Haitian revolution was an inherently unique rebellion. It marked the only time a slave colony was successfully overthrown by its enslaved captives and Haiti became the first Black republic in the world. Article 14 of the 1805 Constitution, detailing that all citizens be defined as Black, can be observed as a new, radical racialisation of Haitian identity, avoided by even Toussaint Louverture. It was fundamental to the processes of citizenship and state formation in Haiti. This source allows insight into French imperial fears of Haitian blackness, as the previous hegemony of whiteness was deconstructed by the new state. The constitution also suggests how Dessalines sought to consolidate the complex frameworks of creole, free Black ...