''La raza cósmica'' (''The Cosmic Race'') is a Spanish-language book written and published in 1925 by Mexican philosopher, secretary of education, and 1929 presidential candidate
José Vasconcelos
José Vasconcelos Calderón (28 February 1882 – 30 June 1959), called the "cultural " of the Mexican Revolution, was an important Mexicans, Mexican writer, philosopher, and politician. He is one of the most influential and controversial pers ...
to express the ideology of a future "fifth race" in the Americas; an
agglomeration of all the races in the world with no respect to color or number to erect a new civilization: Universópolis.
Claiming that
social Darwinist and
racialist ideologies are only created to validate, explain, and justify ethnic superiority and to repress others, Vasconcelos attempts to refute these theories and goes on to recognize his words as being an ideological effort to improve the cultural morale of a "depressed race" by offering his optimistic theory of the future development of a cosmic race.
As he explains in his literary work, armies of people would then go forth around the world professing their knowledge. Vasconcelos continues to say that the people of the Iberian regions of the Americas (that is to say, the parts of the continent colonised by Portugal and Spain) have the territorial, racial, and spiritual factors necessary to initiate the "universal era of humanity".
Critiques
The ideas put forth in ''La raza cósmica'' are held to be rather controversial.
For example, Celarent notes that many felt that the work and its author were exceedingly racist, such as when Vasconcelos' wrote “the Chinese, who under the holy counsel of Confucian morals multiply like rats."
However, when it was first written, Vasconcelos' piece was to be a reaction or refutation of Social Darwinism and biological racism, although Juárez suggests that Vasconcelos' may have added to Mexican Conservative thought by doing so.
In order to refute the ideas of racial superiority, Vasconcelos conceptualized a fifth race, the cosmic race, something that is an agglomeration of all of the other races.
As Palacios notes, this race is called cosmic as it suggests that humanity will become combined and reach its destiny as inferior traits are lost through synthesis and a new Spiritual Era is reached.
Juárez offers a critique to this concept against biological racism by suggesting that Vasconcelos reduced non-white races in order to uphold "Anglo-Saxon propaganda" and "Nordic educational, social and governmental systems."
Another critique is offered by Palacios on the basis that while Vasconcelos did not support so-called "negative eugenics" or Social Darwinism, he did advocate for a "eugenics of aesthetics." Palacios describes eugenics of aesthetics as a survival of the beautiful, as compared to Darwin's survival of the fittest.
Palacios suggests that this viewpoint alongside other comments made by Vasconcelos show that he held some races as better than others.
Usage of phrase
The title embodies the notion that traditional, exclusive concepts of so-called "
race" and
nationality
Nationality is the legal status of belonging to a particular nation, defined as a group of people organized in one country, under one legal jurisdiction, or as a group of people who are united on the basis of culture.
In international law, n ...
can be transcended in the name of humanity's common destiny. It originally referred to a movement by Mexican intellectuals during the 1920s who pointed out that so-called
"Latin" Americans have the blood of all the world's so-called "races": European, Indigenous Native Americans, and Africans, thereby transcending the peoples of the "
Old World
The "Old World" () is a term for Afro-Eurasia coined by Europeans after 1493, when they became aware of the existence of the Americas. It is used to contrast the continents of Africa, Europe, and Asia in the Eastern Hemisphere, previously ...
".
Vasconcelos also
alluded to the term when he coined the National Autonomous University of Mexico's motto: "" ('Through my race the spirit will speak').
Contemporary usage
Contemporarily ''La raza cósmica'' has become about ''mestizaje'' (racial mixture) and
mestizo
( , ; fem. , literally 'mixed person') is a term primarily used to denote people of mixed European and Indigenous ancestry in the former Spanish Empire. In certain regions such as Latin America, it may also refer to people who are culturall ...
s/
Métis
The Métis ( , , , ) are a mixed-race Indigenous people whose historical homelands include Canada's three Prairie Provinces extending into parts of Ontario, British Columbia, the Northwest Territories and the northwest United States. They ha ...
rather than the creation of the cosmic race.
Palacios describes how the
Chicano movement appropriated and transformed the ideas of Vasconcelos' fifth race into that of Mexican national thought, focusing on the words from a poem by
Alurista, "a
bronze
Bronze is an alloy consisting primarily of copper, commonly with about 12–12.5% tin and often with the addition of other metals (including aluminium, manganese, nickel, or zinc) and sometimes non-metals (such as phosphorus) or metalloid ...
people
n ethnic alloy">alloy.html" ;"title="n ethnic alloy">n ethnic alloywith a bronze culture [an alloy of traditions]."
Palacios also gives the example of Valdez, a Chicano writer, who focused on trying to create a society that was less Eurocentrism, Eurocentric or Western rather than following Vasconcelos' idea to evolve the Indigenous and mixed into something better.
Mestizaje as the contemporary notion of cosmic race is shown in ''The Land of the Cosmic Race'' by Christina A. Sue. King and Moras give an overview of this piece and claim that Mexico has been re-founded on 3 pillars: mestizaje, non-racism, and non-blackness.
They claim mestizaje is the new cultural identity of Mexico; non-racism is applied through this fact, as a place can't be racist if everyone is a mestizo (mixed race); and non-blackness is the removal of blackness from the culture, as a race category, and from the make-up of mestizos.
Both King and Moras note that Sue suggests that the removal of blackness allows the population focus on uplifting their Mexican identity, which she claims has more basis in whiteness.
See also
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Race and ethnicity in Latin America
*
Race of the Future
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Racial democracy
*
Postracialism
*
Chicano
Chicano (masculine form) or Chicana (feminine form) is an ethnic identity for Mexican Americans that emerged from the Chicano Movement.
In the 1960s, ''Chicano'' was widely reclaimed among Hispanics in the building of a movement toward politic ...
*
Mixed Race Day
*
Hispanic
The term Hispanic () are people, Spanish culture, cultures, or countries related to Spain, the Spanish language, or broadly. In some contexts, Hispanic and Latino Americans, especially within the United States, "Hispanic" is used as an Ethnici ...
*
Latin America
Latin America is the cultural region of the Americas where Romance languages are predominantly spoken, primarily Spanish language, Spanish and Portuguese language, Portuguese. Latin America is defined according to cultural identity, not geogr ...
*
La Raza
References
External links
La Raza Cósmica Misión de la raza iberoamericana Notas de viajes a la América del Sur – Agencia Mundial de Librería, Madrid 1925(Spanish)
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La Raza cósmica : misión de la raza iberoamericana ' Paris : Agencia Mundial de Librería.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Raza Cosmica
1925 non-fiction books
Spanish-language works
Culture of Latin America
Indigenismo in Mexico
Politics and race
Multiracial affairs in the Americas
Books about race and ethnicity
Race (human categorization)
Eugenics
Racism in Mexico
Books by José Vasconcelos
de:Kosmische Rasse