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The Cosmic Race / La raza cosmica (Race in the Americas) (Paperback)

~ (Author), Didier T. Jaén (Translator) "The central thesis of this book is that the various races of the earth tend to intermix at a gradually increasing pace, and eventually will..." (more)
Key Phrases: rata cósmica, tercer período, raza cósmica, Latin America, United States, New York (more...)
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"The Aesthetic Age posited by Vasconcelos, in which a mixture of all races is embraced, hasn't arrived yet, but we have seen previews of it in the 'Flower Power' movement of the sixties, the 'new age' craze of the eighties, and the current multicultural realities of North, Central, and South America and the Caribbean. With the millennium fast approaching Vasconcelos' vision of a new era in human existence is perhaps just around the corner." -- Eugene Holley, Hispanic



Book Description

In this influential 1925 essay, presented here in Spanish and English, José Vasconcelos predicted the coming of an Aesthetic Era, in which joy, love, fantasy, and creativity would prevail over the rationalism -- and ethnic differences would give way to a fully mixed race, a "cosmic race," in which all the better qualities of each race would persist by the natural selection of love.

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Product Details

  • Paperback: 160 pages
  • Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press (June 25, 1997)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0801856558
  • ISBN-13: 978-0801856556
  • Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #397,619 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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José Vasconcelos
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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The central thesis of this book is that the various races of the earth tend to intermix at a gradually increasing pace, and eventually will give rise to a new human type, composed of selections from each of the races already in existence. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
rata cósmica, tercer período, raza cósmica, cosmic race, tres estados, las razas, fifth race, las gentes, todos los hombres
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Latin America, United States, New York, Mexico City, New World, Nuevo Mundo, José Vasconcelos, Estados Unidos, North American, Emerald Table, Hermes Trismegistus, Octavio Paz, Buenos Aires, Fondo de Cultura Económica, Our America, Prado Museum, San Francisco, Santiago de Cuba, Sylvia Molloy
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3.7 out of 5 stars (6 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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116 of 118 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars an out of the ordinary book, January 8, 2001
By Brian Roach "bdroach" (Salt Lake City, UT United States) - See all my reviews
This book basicly revolves around a central thesis that all of the races on earth tend to intermix at a gradually increasing pace, and eventually will give rise to a new human type, composed of selections from each of the races already in existence. This race will be called the Cosmic Race. It is an interesting theory that in some ways is similar to the darwinist doctrine. This book is exceptionally well written and very compelling. I enjoyed this book and would recommend trying it out.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Spiritual and not scientific, July 7, 2004
By A Customer
If read in the light of race, Vasconcelos at first appears disturbing. However, Raza Cosmica needs to be read in the light of the spiritual vs. materialist debate raging in Latin America through the 19th century into the mid 20th. The Author is reflecting on "Anglo" materialism vs. "Hispano" spiritualism, and the idea of race is really secondary when compared to his vision of the future. An absolute must read for the debates of the Revolution in Mexico and all of Latin America trying to find a place in the world of a North Atlantic economy.
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Essential for Understanding "La Raza" - Vasconcelos' Anti-Americanism, March 13, 2009
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Vasconcelos work is jarring to contemporary readers, but essential for understanding early 20th century Mexican intellectual tradition, the origins of the Chicano movement in the late 20th century, and the intellectual constructions brought to the U.S. by Mexican immigrants throughout the 20th century. The following is not a review of Vasconcelos' work so much as it is an exploration of the theme of anti-Americanism as present in his "La Raza Cósmica". References to authors such as Gabilondo and Jaén are to the authors who have contributed to this particular edition of Vasconcelos' work, available on Amazon. (Note: This is an excerpted passage from a longer essay I produced on Mexican resistance to (and desire for) English-language acquisition in the early 20th century.)

* * *

Joseba Gabilondo claims, in reference to the Chicano movement of the late 20th century, that Vasconcelos' "influence is most meaningful to those who do not fall within the limits of the nation-state." (Gabilondo 110) Vasconcelos' popularity was not limited to the latter half of the century but (as noted by his English-language translator, Didier T. Jaén), also permeated "the Latin American public which received the essay with unquestionably ethnic enthusiasm in 1925, and again in 1948." (Jaén xvii) As Gabriella de Beer notes, the theory of the Cosmic race `in its day fell upon very receptive ears and had great appeal for those people of mixed racial stock.' This does not mean, however, that some readers have not read other implications in the work." (ibid) One of these other implications of Vasconcelos' La Raza Cosmica, emerges in his disparagement of Anglo-American race and culture and, by implication, encouragement of Mexican immigrants in the U.S. to resist acquiring English-language, despite (or more precisely, in pursuit of) his unifying vision of a synthetic, cosmic race, originating in Mexico and Latin America. As Jaén notes, "He was firm, however, in his antagonism towards the United States and the Anglo-Saxon world in general for the materialism and utilitarianism they represented." (Jaén xxiv)

Vasconcelos criticizes the United States on the basis of several authoritative claims, biographical and intellectual. His own biography places him as a member of the cultural elite and empowered: before publication, as national minister of Education from 1921 - 1924 (Jaén xxiii), and after publication as an almost-successful candidate for president of Mexico in 1929 (Jaén xiii). His personal experience as a frequent traveler in the U.S. bolsters his authoritative voice: in the 19th century as an immigrant child in Texas (Jaén xvi), in 1910 as an political refugee in New York from the Diaz regime (Jaén xxii), and in 1926 as a lecturer at the University of Chicago (Jaén xxiii). His omnivorous intellectual references also serve to justify his authority: from "Spencer to Hermes Trismegistus" (23), from the Atlantean mythology of Plato to the geologic theories of Wegner (7). His historical citations referencing U.S. history attempt to demonstrate his claim to speak authoritatively on the U.S.: from references to the 1803 Louisiana Purchase (12), the 1846 - 1848 Mexican-American War (10), right up to the contemporaneous anti-Asian exclusionary acts of 1924 (19).

Jaén presents Vasconcelos' first significant contacts with English-language acquisition, "My experience in the school of Eagle Pass was bitter ... There I saw North American and Mexican children seated before a teacher whose language I did not understand." (Vasconcelos in Jaén xvi) Parental pressures triumphed and he learned English, but when given the chance in 1895 to continue at the University of Austin, he rejected the English and American educational opportunity and went to Mexico City to pursue higher education. (Jaén xx) Vasconcelos career thus became a model for what he and the Mexican government would later promote: migration to the U.S. to learn skills and a return to Mexico to use those skills in service to the patria. What Arredondo refers to as a "lack of desire to become U.S. citizens" (Arredondo 172) is, in Vasconcelos' case, an active component of his own Mexican nationalism.

In his writing, Vasconcelos is not exclusively negative towards the U.S. His most complimentary passages are in his prologue to the 1948 edition in which he cites "the powerful North American nation" as "the nation with the most vigorous drive" (5). He is serving a backhanded compliment however, noting that it is "nothing but a melting pot of European races" (4, emphasis mine), and has excluded blacks.

While Vasconcelos does refer to the "United States" as such (5, 13, 19, etc.), he also describes its citizens as "yanquis" (11, 20, or 51, 60, etc.) and the nation as "the Anglo-Saxon union" (11) or "la Unión sajona" (51). To a great degree, the U.S. functions for Vasconcelos as a continuation of the long-standing conflict between the "Castilians and the British" (9, 12). "Our age has become, and continues to be, a conflict of Latinism against Anglo-Saxonism; a conflict of institutions, aims and ideals." (12) As such an institution, the U.S. is also the preeminent retardant on pan-Latin unity by promoting a divide-and-conquer strategy among Latin nations (11). His excoriation of Napoleon shows his opinion of U.S. hegemony, "Without Napoleon, the United States would not exist as a world empire, and Louisiana ... would have to be part of the Latin American Confederation... [but] the destiny of the race was in the hands of a fool" (13). In all of these references he places the United States, the Anglo-Saxon, the English, and the "yanquis" as representatives of the "White" and the "dolichocephalic" (34).

The United States is subject to a harsh critique for its racial inflexibility "that separates the Blacks from the Whites in the United States, and the laws, each time more rigorous, for the exclusion of the Japanese and Chinese from California." (19) His criticism of the U.S. as a racist society (or race) even makes a nod to gender issues, "Americans simply do not like Asians, even despise them. The ladies of San Francisco have refused to dance with officials of the Japanese Navy, who are men as clean, intelligent, and in their way, as handsome as those of any other navy in the world." (20)

Though it may have had scientific, economic and political force in his day, he saw the U.S. as spiritually bankrupt. "The Anglo-Saxon mission has been accomplished sooner than ours" (21). This bankruptcy plays itself out in the classroom, even in U.S. universities (73: universidades norteamericanas), " ...any teacher can corroborate that the children and youths descendant from Scandinavians, Dutch and English found in North American universities, are much slower and almost dull, compared with the mestizo children and youths from the south." (33) The delusion of power with which the White race "asserts through the mouth of their scientists the ethnic and mental superiority of the Whites from the north" (32) is associated with English-language speaking: "[T]he White, particularly the English-speaking White, is presented as the sublime culmination of human evolution..." (33) Thus, for Vasconcelos, the racial rigidity of the U.S. is not merely a function of race, but is also a derivative of language, the English language in particular.

There is no denying the multiplicity of reasons why Mexican immigrants in the early decades of the 20th century did not rapidly acquire English-language skills. It is little wonder, with Vasconcelos' text circulating to great popular acclaim, and his ideas diffusing and disseminating even among the non-literate population of Mexico, that immigrants coming from Mexico to the U.S., familiar with this style of thinking, might have been hesitant or even actively opposed to learning English language, depending on their affiliation with Vasconcelos' intellectual, political, and spiritual positions.

In Vasconcelos unitary vision of a united "raza cosmica", the cradle for that race was to be in Latin America, and not the spiritually bankrupt, English-speaking, white-European United States. The U.S., its culture, and its language are divided out of Vasconcelos' vision. While the direct impact of Vasconcelos' anti-U.S./anti-English-language positions may be impossible to gauge in terms of their effect on Mexican migrants in the 1920's and 1930's, there remains a distinct possibility that Mexican resistance to English-language acquisition may have begun not in the harsh economics of Depression-era U.S. labor demands (cf. Gloria Molina), nor simply in observations of the racist structure of U.S. society (cf. Gabriela Arredondo), but rather in the fertile mythological fields of Vasconcelos' La Raza Cosmica.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars Vasconcelos was a pure racist!!
Um, does no one realize that Vasconcelos thought black people were dirt and that the best they could do was mix with other races to ultimate disappear? Read more
Published 7 months ago by xiomara

5.0 out of 5 stars racist psycho
vasconcelos was a man who used racism to promote his views. an extremely interesting, yet equally disturbing essay. if curious about race in mexico, this is an important read.
Published on August 25, 2003 by lincoln restler

5.0 out of 5 stars racist psycho
vasconcelos was a man who used racism to promote his views. an extremely interesting, yet equally disturbing essay. if curious about race in mexico, this is an important read.
Published on August 25, 2003 by lincoln restler

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