La Raza

Jose Vasconcelos

In 1925 (during the "Age of Eugenics"), Jose Vasconcelos published a short essay entitled "La Raza Cosmica"...The Cosmic Race.  He was one of the most influential Mexican- "American" educators/ revolutionaries of the twentieth century. Vasconcelos felt that European-American eugenics-based "racial superiority/ categories" were arrogant, materialistic, repressive, lacking in scientific truth or religious spirituality, etc. and must be refuted. 

He warned that American "culture" must not be imitated, idealized, or celebrated.

His 1925 theory (also deeply racist and stereotyped) catalogs each race/ racial category and their positive traits. He suggested that the "New Master Race" would rise out of Spain/ Portugal and the Latin American mestizo because they possessed the virtuous attributes necessary to usher in a "universal era of humanity".

Although very racist in tone, I love his "final solution"...an optimistic future that combines all the "races" of the world without regard to skin color, ethnicity, nationality, etc.

Best summarized in the final paragraph of his essay:

"So many races that have come and others that will come...In this manner, a sensitive and ample heart will be taking shape within us; a heart that embraces and contains everything and is moved with sympathy, but, full of vigor, imposes new laws upon the world...we shall arrive at the creation of a new race fashioned out of the treasures of all the previous ones: The final race, the Cosmic Race."

Viva La Raza...Viva The Human Race...

Soon or another 100 years?