Latin American citizenship was achievable through acquiring cultural properties coded as white.

Evidence

Those not ethnoracially European, phenotypically or culturally not white (notably those of African or Indian descent), somewhat ambiguously could become white, could be citizens, by taking on the properties of education, social elevation, looking after their economic and physical wellbeing, investment in successful business ventures but also in the moral virtues, religious values, personal health, and nutrition. Those not white could elevate themselves through social-sexual relations with those who were, producing offspring visibly whiter, thus rendering whiter not just the offspring but the parents producing them also. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1127

Categorization

• XREF: Whiteness as acquirable property echoes the economic/racial analysis in Goldberg’s broader racial-neoliberalism project and connects to the ‘propertied’ framing of slavery-era whiteness.
• QUESTION: How does the claim that begetting whiter offspring ‘whitens’ the parents as well square with inheritance-based rather than achievement-based models of racial status?