Empowering Global Citizens

The resistance of various religious leaders to the Violent colonization of
Latin America by the Spanish conquistadores further developed this interest
in cosmopolitanism. For instance, Dominican friars Anton de Montesinos
and Bartolome de las Casas challenged the violence against the indigenous
populations on the grounds that indigenous people had the same rights and
dignity as the conquistadores. Montesinos’s sermon, “I Am a Voice Crying
in the Wilderness,” given in the Dominican Republic in 1511, nineteen
years after Columbus had landed on the island, influenced changes in the
New Laws of the Indies so much that the crown censored and punished the
abuse, enslavement, and murder of indigenous people (Fajardo, 2014; Jay,
2002). De las Casas, who witnessed Montesinos’s sermon and was influ—
enced by him, challenged the institution of slavery and the violence against
indigenous people and argued that all mankind was one (Hanke, 1994;
Huerga, 1998). The notion of “natural rights” of different people and the
idea that all humanity is one, which was advanced in the early sixteenth

century, are cornerstones of the idea of human rights.

Both the cosmopolitan aspiration to construct humanity as one and the entire
idea of human rights benefitted from a new impetus during the Enlightenment,
the philosophical movement that advanced the notion that individuals could
improve their circumstances individually and collectively as a result of the cul—
tivation of human reason and the development of science (Reimers, 2013a).
These ideas were foundational to the creation of democratic societies, which
recognize the rights and responsibilities of individuals, and were central to the
creation of public education. During this era, Hobbes argued that the state
had to justify the exercise of power to each member of the polity, and Locke
saw human rights as protections that individuals needed against abuses by
the state (Reynolds 8c Saxonhouse, 1995; Goldie, 1997). Rousseau, the first
Enlightenment philosopher to write explicitly about human rights, argued that
since humans are naturally free and equal, the social contract should preserve
that equality among all people (Rousseau, 1974). Kant proposed the need for
cosmopolitan law to prevent war, an idea that is ethically based on the shared
right of humans from different jurisdictions to natural resources (Kant, 1795).

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