José Vasconcelos’s La raza cósmica and the Formation of Chicano Transnational Identity

by

Douglas McRae

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts in Latin American Studies, History; Middlebury College

April 25, 2008

Approved ______

Director, Latin American Studies Program

To the memories of my grandmother Selby Watkins McRae

and my grandfather Douglas Clyde Stone

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction…………………………………………………………………………...... 1

2. José Vasconcelos and the Revolutionary Nationalism of la raza cósmica…….………8

3. La raza as Mexican-American Identity and the Foundations of chicanismo……...... 26

4. The Institution of la raza cósmica in Chicano Academia and Literature………..……41

5. Conclusions…………………………………………………………………………...58

6. Epilogue: Continued Mutations of la raza cósmica………………………………...... 62

Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………..66

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Introduction

The expression “The Cosmic Race” has an undeniably poetic sensibility, implying a people whose singular importance extends eternally throughout time and human history. I first encountered this term in the title of a book I used in a colonial Latin American history course in my sophomore year: The Forging of the Cosmic Race: A Reinterpretation of Colonial Mexico. I initially assumed that the book’s authors had coined the term “Cosmic Race” themselves to project a sense of majesty on the subject of their study: the ethnically and culturally diverse colonial populace of New Spain and ancestors of the future inhabitants of the nation-state of

Mexico. I was not far from the truth, it seemed. The following semester, I discovered that the idea of “the Cosmic Race” had originated in the writings of the well-known Mexican public figure José Vasconcelos.1 From that moment onward, my interest grew in Vasconcelos and his most prominent work La raza cósmica, an ornate essay that presented a prophetic vision of mankind’s future as a complete, indistinguishable mixture (mestizaje) of the four major racial groups of humanity.

José Vasconcelos, the prominent Mexican educator, politician and philosopher; paradoxically remains one of the most revered and criticized figures in 20th century Mexican history. As rector of the National Autonomous University of Mexico in the first half of the

1920s, Vasconcelos revamped and modernized the Mexican public educational system, designing and implementing the humanities in great force, though at the expense of the natural sciences. Vasconcelos enjoyed great popularity among young intellectuals not only within his

1Colin M. MacLachlan and Jaime E. Rodriguez base their interpretation in part on the idea that New Spain’s degree of ethnic and cultural integration made it unique. Furthermore, they explain their book’s title by stating: “The blending of four races in Mexico created a new people—a ‘cosmic race’ to use José Vasconcelos’ evocative phrase.” See MacLachlan and Rodriguez, The Forging of the Cosmic Race: A Reinterpretation of Colonial Mexico: Expanded Edition (Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press; 1980, 1990), 3.

McRae 2 homeland but also throughout Latin America, yet his 1929 presidential campaign suffered a bitter electoral defeat that soured his attitude towards the success of the Mexican Revolution.

Vasconcelos also published prolifically, producing a number of philosophical essays, intellectual and historical commentaries and a multi-volume autobiography during his lifetime, ambitiously expounding upon his concept of Mexican identity. Mexico’s classic murals (including the works of Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros and José Clemete Orozco) also stand as a testament to his historical vision and public sponsorship of the arts, though the contradictions and the capricious flights of his writings have caused later generations to devalue his literary works.2

Yet, despite his decidedly complicated place in Mexican intellectual history, the ideas of

Vasconcelos, particularly those of his 1925 work, La raza cósmica, endure to this day, even beyond the borders of his native Mexico.

Vasconcelos helped establish mestizaje as part of the official Mexican nationalist discourse. Ensuing generations of U.S.-bound immigrants brought with them this sense of mestizo pride through the idea of la raza. For this reason, la raza also fit significantly into the development of Mexican-American political and social consciousness in the mid-20th century.

With the advent of the Chicano movement in the late 1960s, the ideological precepts offered decades previously by Vasconcelos found a new meaning among Chicano intellectuals, searching to create an identity that offered an alternative to assimilation into dominant Anglo-

2Mexican poet and essayist Octavio Paz summarized Vasconcelos’s legacy as: “un momento aislado, que no ha originado una escuela ni un movimiento…no es difícil encontrar en el sistema vasconceliano fragmentos todavía vivos, porciones fecundas, iluminaciones, anticipos, pero no el fundamento de nuestro ser, ni de nuestra cultura.” See Octavio Paz, El laberinto de la soledad (Madrid: Ediciones Cátedra, S.A., 1995), 299-300.

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American society.3 Latin American intellectuals had previously explored the dichotomy between

Hispanic and Anglo-Saxon4 cultures since the end of the 19th century through out Central and

South America. Vasconcelos drew upon a series of threads from both inside and outside of

Mexico in order to address the needs of a country fragmented by the ravages of upheaval. The mestizaje of the people of Mexico (and Latin America as a region) represented, in the eyes of

Vasconcelos, the realization of the aesthetic and spiritual acme of humanity, while at the same time embodying the emotive nature of a future utopian era. These ideas would capture the imagination of Chicano intellectuals in their search for the cultural identity of the Mexican-

American. Variations of Vasconcelos’s mestizo identity resurfaced in Chicano literature, even as the cultural activism of the Chicano movement declined during the 1970s. Mestizaje as conceived by Vasconcelos through la raza cósmica offered an alternative to prevailing racial thought that promoted the ideal of racial purity and demonized racial mixture.

On the surface, Vasconcelos’s theory of human destiny is attractive, primarily because it appears to oppose the idea of racial purity as grounds of superiority. Readers of La raza cósmica may be surprised, however, by the prominence of racial stereotypes and irrational claims through which Vasconcelos’s justifies his philosophy. Contemporary critiques of Vasconcelos should take into account the common explanation of theories based on antiquated models: that they are

3The term ‘Chicano’ should not necessarily be interchangeable with ‘Mexican American.’ The former denotes a political and ideological leaning, while the latter describes parentage. As such, this paper will consider Mexican Americans as persons born in Mexico living permanently in the United States, as well as their direct descendants. I use the hyphenated “Mexican-American” to distinguish the adjective form, i.e. ‘Mexican-American heritage.’

4Again, the terms ‘Anglo,’ ‘Anglo-Saxon’ and ‘Anglo-American’ have specific political meanings within the context of Latin American identity. Although the prefix Anglo- denotes English ancestry, within the works of Latin American intellectuals and Chicano political discourse Anglo refers to English-speaking persons in the United States who identify as ‘white.’ The Anglo is thus set up as the opposite of lo latino: Spanish or Portuguese-speaking persons born in the Americas, typically of mixed racial descent.

McRae 4 essentially products of their time therefore and cannot be judged by modern standards. A far more interesting evaluation of La raza cósmica would consist in the study of the essay’s persistence beyond the historical time and sociopolitical space of its writing. How could academics still viably reference such a problematic theory (i.e., in the title of a prize-winning history of colonial Mexico) without consequence? In considering this initial question, my mind turned to the origins of the Chicano movement, which since its beginning has fostered the idea of la raza; that is, the mestizo heritage of Mexican Americans. These attitudes reflect strands of

Vasconcelian thought reinterpreted to confront a new set of problems facing people of Mexican descent living within the United States, a society that had historically marginalized them.

This paper explores the nature of Vasconcelos’s La raza cósmica as adapted and understood by the intellectual leaders of the Chicano Movement in the United States.

Principally, I will explore four fundamental questions: how did the philosophy of la raza cósmica reflect nationalistic attitudes in the historical context of Revolutionary Mexico? How did Vasconcelos’s idea of la quinta raza build upon prevailing thought within Latin America about the contradiction between Latin and Anglo-Saxon culture, and to what extent did

Vasconcelos’s ideas influence Mexican society? How exactly did the philosophy of Vasconcelos manifest among Mexican-Americans? In what way did Chicano academics incorporate and adapt the ideas of Vasconcelos into the wider movement? I argue, thus, that predominant Chicano thought in the U.S. has used both implicitly and openly the ideas of Vasconcelos’s raza cósmica to help construct a transnational identity opposed to the dominant Anglo-American culture.

The idea of transnationalism works as an important element in tracing the incorporation of the philosophy of Vasconcelos into the Chicano identity. Claiming a traditional nationality proved problematic for those Mexican Americans radicalized by the actions of the Chicano

McRae 5 movement. Dominant American society had marginalized persons of Mexican immigrant descent, while Mexican society did not recognize as ‘Mexican’ new generations born to immigrant families that had grown up accustomed to American culture and institutions.5

Consequently, Chicano nationalism abandoned national allegiances in favor of the creation of a

“transnational space” that encompassed the Mexican and American aspects of their identity.6

This space manifested in the rhetoric of Chicano cultural nationalists as the physical and spiritual space known as Aztlán: ancestral homeland of the Aztec people, now inhabited by their mestizo descendents; that is, the cosmic race of Vasconcelos. Precisely for this reason, the writings of

Vasconcelos attracted Chicano writers, intellectuals and students by instilling this inherently mestizo people with a sense of purpose in their existence.

Studies of Vasconcelos and his work have produced varied critiques of the man and his achievements. Two works published within a decade of Vasconcelos’s death attempt to categorize the many sides of Vasconcelos and his work. The first, José Vasconcelos and His

World by Gabriella de Beer presents a comprehensive study of Vasconelos’s life and his most treated themes, including Mexican history, education and race. Likewise, Dr. I Bar-Lewaw

Mulstock published a Spanish language biography that interpreted Vasconcelos and his diverse output, ranging from his philosophical and sociological writings to his short stories and plays.

Journalist Jose Joaquín Blanco offered in Se llamaba Vasconcelos his “evocación crítica” from a

5Chicano teaching materials published in California in the early 1970s exemplify this conflict. See Jack Sullivan, The Chicano Movement: Self-determination and civil rights (student’s handbook.) (San Diego: San Diego City Schools, 1971) for an example of how Chicano pedagogy framed and approached these issues of conflicting identity.

6See Ewa Morawska’s summary of transnationalism as a theoretical framework, in which the author affirms that “the ‘new transnational spaces’ [immigrants] create de-territorialize or extrapolate (rather than undermine) the nation-states they link.” In The New Americans: A Guide to Immigration Since 1965, ed. Mary C. Waters and Reed Ueda (Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 2007), 149-150.

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Mexican perspective (he states in the introduction that his great uncle was an ardent vasconcelista), but perhaps the most recent and relevant publication for this paper is French historian Claude Fell’s book José Vasconcelos: Los años de águila, which deals with

Vasconcelos’s time as Minister of Public Education. Fell also emphasizes Vasconcelos relation to other Latin American intellectuals as well as his revered status as a “Maestro de la Juventud” in certain South American countries. Scholars of Vasconcelos’s work tend to confine their studies to its influence on Mexican society and culture, where his historical presence is decidedly more pronounced.

One of the most significant historical sources that associate Vasconcelos with the

Chicano movement is Didier T. Jaén’s bilingual edition of La raza cósmica, which establishes a starting point for investigating the role of la raza in forming Chicano identity. In addition to

Jaén’s introductory essay, the 1997 edition includes an afterword by Joseba Gabilondo in which he considers Jaén’s recognition of the re-appropriation of the text by Chicano writers “to reuse

Vasconcelos’s work in new and original ways.” Furthermore, “these writers articulate their position from an awareness of not belonging to the formation of the nation-state; they come after modernity.”7 Jaén goes on to mention the use of the ideas of la raza cósmica by Chicana writer

Gloria Anzaldúa and Chicano theologian Andrés Guerrero, whose works have transcribed the idea of la raza into the frameworks of feminism and liberation theology, respectively. These works represent the evolution of Chicano thought beyond its original nationalist ideology and initial incorporation of the concept of la raza cósmica.

7Joseba Gabilondo, afterword to The Cosmic Race/La raza cósmica, by José Vasconcelos trans. Didier T. Jaén (Baltimore, London: Johns Hopkins University Press; 1979, 1997), 100.

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Several other works have studied the role of mestizaje in the formation of Latin American identity, including Marilyn Grace Miller’s provocatively titled Rise and Fall of the Cosmic Race:

The Cult of Mestizaje in Latin America. Miller recognizes Chicano (and Chicana) appropriations of La raza cósmica, noting that none of the essay’s fundamental flaws seemed to preoccupy its

Chicano revivers.8 Most studies, however, do not devote significant space to how exactly the theory of Vasconcelos came to influence Chicano rhetoric in both the political and academic spheres. Some academic websites for university-level Chicano Studies and Raza Studies programs offer cursory and frequently defensive explanations for their use of term la raza,9 while other modern users of the term la raza prefer to disassociate the term with its inherent

“anthropomorphic and anthropological” meanings, preferring its colloquial and far more neutral secondary definition: simply, ‘the people’ (la gente.)10 While this rationalization is enticing, we must call into question this simple definition in light of Vasconcelos’s utilization of the same word. In conclusion, only a few studies have addressed the origins of vasconcelismo within the

Chicano movement, nor have they assessed the meaning of la raza cósmica as the basis of a transnational identity.

8Marilyn Grace Miller, Rise and Fall of the Cosmic Race: The Cult of Mestizaje in Latin America (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004), 36.

9See “Raza Studies Frequently Asked Questions” Raza Studies Department: San Francisco State University (Brigitte Davil and Noeila “Zap” Mendoza”, 2002) Accessed 26 January 2008. .

10Jorge Bustamente, [Untitled speech] Encuentro chicano mexicano 1988, coor. Axel Ramírez (México, D.F.; Universidad Autónoma de México, 1992), 125.

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José Vasconcelos and the Revolutionary Nationalism of ‘la raza cósmica’

The Mexican Revolution holds the distinction of being the first great social movement of the 20th century. While often imagined as a mass uprising of rural peasants against a brutal long- standing dictatorship, the reality of this conflict is far more complex. The eruption of what

Donald C. Hodges and Ross Gandy call Mexico’s social volcano resulted in the multi-level fragmentation of the country.11 Regional elites clashed with the entrenched central government.

Peons in the south tentatively allied with northern rancheros to demand land reform, while urban workers sought to improve their woeful economic standing. The interests of the Revolution also morphed over time. John Mason Hart divides the Revolution into three distinct phases defining these changes: elite crisis and mass mobilization (1910-1914); class confrontation, American intervention, and worker’s defeat (1914-1916); and finally, elite synthesis and sociopolitical organization (1916-1924.)12 The campaign that began as an anti-reelection platform escalated into a wider exacerbation of grievances reaching throughout Mexican society. The Constitution of 1917, drafted in Querétaro during the presidency of Venustiano Carranza, represented a new chapter in the unfolding of the Mexican Revolution, attempting to satisfy (at least symbolically) all of opposing factions. Against this background, Revolutionary Mexico sought a national identity to represent its regeneration and unity, as well as legitimize its existence.13

11Donald C. Hodges and Ross Gandy, Mexico, the End of the Revolution (Westport: Praeger Publishers, 2002), 9.

12John Mason Hart, Revolutionary Mexico: The Coming and Process of the Mexican Revolution (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1987), 13-16.

13See Anthony D. Smith: “An ideological movement for attaining and maintaining autonomy, unity, and identity for a population which some of its members deem to constitute an actual or potential ‘nation.’” Nationialism: Theory, Ideology and History (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001), 9-10. In addition, Benedict Anderson’s definition of the nation as “an imagined political community– and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign” directs our

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In addition to the political and social issues that dominated the Mexican Revolution, the

Revolution also represented an intellectual rupture from the regime of General Porfirio Diaz: champion of the War of the Intervention against the French occupants, successor to the liberal reforms begun under Benito Juarez and dictator of Mexico continually from 1884 to 1991. The technocrats of the Diaz regime had adapted positivism as the primary political and social doctrine of Mexico.14 Developed by French philosopher Auguste Comte and integrated into the curriculum of the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria by educational reformer Gabino Barreda, positivism emphasized empirical knowledge and science as the true way to comprehend reality, and in turn interpret the historical development of Mexico.15 19th century Mexican intellectuals informed by their positivist education saw positivism as a methodical way to approach and to overcome Mexico’s antiquated colonial economy and perceived backwardness relative to other industrialized nations. Mexican positivism also accepted English philosopher Herbert Spencer’s notion of Social Darwinism; that is, that one could apply Charles Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest to the study of the evolution of society. Positivist technocrats that inevitably dominated Porfirian bureaucracy (including Minister of Public Education Justo Sierra and

understanding of nationalism as designed by a small group of leaders and intellectuals who cannot feasibly represent for all of the communities imagined members. See Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso; 1983, 1991), 5-7.

14Positivism manifested in various forms throughout Latin America during the mid-late 19th century, including in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Cuba, Bolivia, and Peru. See Leopoldo Zea, El pensamiento latinoamericano (Barcelona: Editorial Ariel, S.A.; 1965, 1976), 77-87.

15Mexican positivists thus conceptualized Mexican history as a clear example Comte’s teleological scheme: the religious era (the Spanish colonial era), the metaphysical era (independence and the liberal reforms) and the positivist era (the forthcoming realization of the positivist vision.) See Brian R. Hammet, A Concise History of Mexico: Second Edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1999, 2006), 175-176.

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Minister of the Hacienda José Ivés Limantour) came to be known as científicos, a reflection of the positivist ideology that dictated their actions.

Though students of Mexican history might quickly characterize the Diaz regime as positivist in character, it is interesting to note that neither Porfirio Diaz nor any of the other military men within the Diaz regime were positivists, but rather orthodox liberals inspired by

European ideals of the individual man and rational government.16 An authoritarian dictator who consistently manipulated the democratic process would seem to contradict the latter; however, traditional liberals accepted the stability that the Diaz regime’s tiranía honrada brought by maintaining social order.17 Indeed, Mexico under Porfirio Diaz experienced a great surge in foreign investment and infrastructure growth, though this wave of order and progress did not improve the situation of Mexico’s large rural population. The purported superiority of the political class, thus, stemmed from the idea that Mexico’s white population (which generally dominated the wealthier sector of society) more closely represented the advance towards the positivist phase than the indigenous and mestizo population. Revolutionary writer Federico

González Garza wrote in 1917 that this had been the cardinal error of the científico regime: the belief that the “white population constitutes, forms and exclusively incarnates the Mexican nation and motherland” and thus its interests were the only important ones.18

16 François-Xavier Guerra, México: del antiguo regimen a la Revolución, Vol. I, trans. Sergio Fernández Bravo (México, D.F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica; 1988), 377-378.

17Zea, 390-391.

18Federico González Garzam, ¿Cumplen las escuelas oficiales, especialmente las llamadas preparatorias, su misión educative en México? (Habana: Imprenta “El Siglo XX,” 1918), 20, quoted in Frederick C. Turner, The Dynamic of Mexican Nationalism (Chapel Hill: The University of Chapel Hill Press, 1968), 56.

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A new generation of intellectuals, principally born in the 1880s, began to realize the limitations of the científico ideology. Calling itself the Ateneo de la Juventud, this group of young professionals, writers and artists provided cultural backbone from above by supporting anti-reelection advocate and wealthy provincial elite Francisco I. Madero. With activity as early as 1907, several important figures in the future of Mexico made up the core of the Ateneo, including Antonio Caso, Alfonso Reyes, Dominican writer Pedro Henríquez Ureña, and of course, José Vasconcelos.19 Vasconcelos, a young lawyer born in the state of Oaxaca (the home state of Porfirio Diaz) and raised in Piedras Negras, stood out in the first conferencias sponsored by the Ateneo that criticized positivism and the Diaz dictatorship. In these lectures, Vasconcelos acknowledged Barreda’s significance in terms of introducing recent European ideas of modernization in Mexico, yet at the same time called for a “revindicación del espirítu” and reclamation of free will and individuality.20 New cultural ideologies designed by the Ateneo had the potential to override the former conceptions of Diaz regime and offer alternatives to intellectuals tired of the progressive uniformity demanded by the científicos.

As the Ateneo crystallized as an official group in 1909, Madero invited Vasconcelos to join his newly formed anti-reelection movement. Madero had just published his landmark book

La sucesión presidencial, and though Vasconcelos claimed in his autobiography that he had no personal complaint against the administration, he claimed to have sensed the great injustice inflicted by porfirismo, which he referred to as “podrida y abominable,” on the greater Mexican

19Enrique Krauze, Caudillos Culturales en la Revolución Mexicana (México, D.F.: Tusquets Editores México, S.A. de C.V., 1999), 60-61.

20José Joaquín Blanco, Se llamaba Vasconcelos: una evocación crítica (México:, D.F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica; 1973, 1999), 46-47.

McRae 12 population.21 The extent to which Vasconcelos idolized Madero perhaps explains why

Vasconcelos saw future presidential successors (particularly Venustiano Carranza and Plutarco

Calles) as unfaithful to the idealism of Madero’s original presidential campaign.22 While

Vasconcelos sporadically held governmental and educational posts after the death of Madero, he also lived in exile in the United States, Europe and South America, only making his triumphant return in 1920 following Carranza’s assassination. His continued involvement in the Ateneo de la Juventud (later called the Ateneo de México) until its dissolution and the subsequent scattering of its charter members in 1914 reflects his great commitment to the ideals of these quintessential revolutionary thinkers.23 It would not be until the 1920s, however, that Vasconcelos would reach the height of his influence in the Mexican public sphere.

Vasconcelos had fled Mexico following reactionary Victoriano Huerta’s seizure of power, and while he briefly returned to Mexico under the Carranza presidency, he later worked in exile with General Alvaro Obregón to overthrow Carranza. During the interim government preceding Obregón’s taking of office, President Adolfo de la Huerta appointed Vasconcelos appointed to the position of Rector of the National Autonomous University (UNAM), a position which grew into Minister of Public Education.24 The new Constitution of 1917 had omitted the

Ministry of Public Education, and through its reinstatement, Vasconcelos greatly expanded the

21José Vasconcelos, Ulises criollo: edición crítica, coor. Claude Fell (Paris: ALLCA XX, 2000), 361-363. Vasconcelos also highlights Madero’s support of Ricardo Flores Magón, a writer and newspaper publisher who along with his brothers led an uprising against the Diaz regime before Madero’s movement. See nota explicativa 107 on Ibid., 535.

22See Gabriella de Beer’s analysis of Vasconcelos’s admiration of Madero in José Vasconcelos and His World (New York: Las Americas Publishing Company, 1966), 206-211.

23Ibid., 22-24.

24Ibid., 106.

McRae 13 role of the state in Mexican schools, previously administered completely on the municipal level.

The educational reforms begun by Vasconcelos established national homogeneity as the overarching goal of Mexican public education. Initiatives such as promoting literacy among indigenous populations, sending ‘missionary’ teachers into rural communities, and printing and distributing classic works of literature sought to tame what Vasconcelos saw as a disparately heterogenic indigenous population.25 Though actively seeking to modernize the indigenous population of Mexico, Vasconcelos conceived the pre-Hispanic past as indispensable to understanding the Mexican spirit.

Following his desire to create a national mythology through Mexico’s indigenous past,

Vasconcelos encouraged and publicly patronized the works of arts, particularly the works of the mural painters. This patronage was congruent with Vasconcelos’s cultural program of instilling nationalist Revolutionary values through art.26 Artists such as Diego Rivera with pronounced leanings toward indigenismo created sweeping historical paintings that captured and mythologized on the walls of public buildings a great admiration of the “civilizaciónes bárbaras.”27 These colorful renditions presented figures from Quetzacóatl (the pre-Hispanic deity known as the Feathered Serpent) to Cuauhtémoc (the last of the Mexica royal line, executed by the Spanish conquistadores) as part of an integral if bygone era of Mexican history.

Vasconcelos evidently disliked the realist, political approach that the muralists often took in contrast to his allegorical plans, describing the murals that adorned the walls of the Secretaria de

25Itzhak Bar-Lewaw Mulstock, José Vasconcelos: vida y obra (México, D.F.: Clásica Selectora Editora Librera, 1965), 132-134.

26John A. Ochoa, The Uses of Failure in Mexican Identity (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004), 114.

27Blanco, Se llamaba Vasconcelos, 98.

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Educación as “apologías descaradas de los tipos políticos en boga y con caricaturas soeces de quienes abandonábamos el poder.”28 Vasconcelos played a large role in stimulating the arts in

Revolutionary society, but mural artwork remains as the visual testament evidence of the national identity that Vasconcelos had begun forging.

The election of the authoritarian General Plutarco Calles led Vasconcelos to once again to seek refuge in exile in Europe. During this time overseas, Vasconcelos began lecturing on la raza cósmica, subsequently publishing his ideas in book form: La raza cósmica: misión de la raza iberoamericana, Notas de un viaje a la América del Sur.29 The publication of his personal theories on race initiated a brief period in which he wrote extensively on the topic of race. La raza cósmica (and later, Indología and Aspects of Mexican Civilization) adapted a tone of prophetic heights, cobbling together historical claims and anecdotal evidence that seemed to verify Vasconcelos’s theories, at the same time representing a clear progression from

Vasconcelos’s own personal philosophies.30 In the land of Mexico’s former colonial ruler,

Vasconcelos unfolded his vision of aesthetic mestizaje, exemplified through the descendents of indigenous natives and the Spanish conquerors. Vasconcelos’s model, however, vastly recast the racial composition of Mexican society, focusing on the role of indigenous past and the European conquistadores while de-emphasizing African and Asian influences. This newly simplified

28De Robinson a Odiseo, in Obras completas, t. II, (México, D.F.: Populibros “La Prensa”, 1961), 1676. Quoted in Blanco, Se llamaba Vasconcelos, 99-100.

29The second often over-looked half of La raza cósmica (omitted from Jaén’s bilingual edition) refers to a set of ‘travel notes’ Vasconcelos made during visits as Minister of Education to Brazil, Uruguay Argentina, and Chile in 1922.

30For an overview of Vasconcelos’s philosophical leanings, see Kurt F. Reinhardt, “Facets of Mexican Thought: José Vasconcelos (1871-….),” The Americas Vol. 2, No. 3 (Jan. 1946): 322-334. [JSTOR.] Accessed 9 April 2008 .

McRae 15 vision of race in America represented Vasconcelos’s response to the identity problems he saw facing Mexico, that had turned the country over to Calles and forced him to enter exile.

La raza cósmica has had several printings since its original 1925 Spanish publication in

Barcelona, owing to its position as one of the defining essays of Vasconcelos’s large body of literature. The modern reader of Vasconcelos will most likely encounter the text based off the

1948 edition, which included a reflective prologue by Vasconcelos assessing the meaning of the essay since its publication. Vasconcelos questions in this prologue if “la mezcla ilimitable es un hecho ventajoso para el incremento de la cultura o si, al contrario, ha de producir decadencias, que ahora ya no serían nacionales, sino mundiales,”31 indicating his later equivocating relationship with the validity of his theories. De Beer points out that many commentators on

Vasconcelos have attributed his shift in perspectives with his contested loss of the presidential election in 1929 to Emilio Portes Gil, Calles’s handpicked successor. Defeated at the height of his popularity, the loss greatly diminished his idealistic outlook, at the same time augmenting his dislike for perceived North American imperialism and Protestant infiltration in Mexico.32 This shift in personality did not lead him to suppress completely his former ideas about la raza cósmica, though perhaps he realized his authority on racial topics did not reach beyond his own subjective knowledge.

The 1948 publication also served as the source text for Didier T. Jaén’s bilingual edition, itself in print since 1979. With the exception of his autobiography, La raza cósmica remains one of only a few of Vasconcelos’s works translated, printed and published in the United States.

Originally published through the Department of Chicano Studies at California State Los Angeles,

31Vasconcelos, The Cosmic Race/La raza cósmica, 43.

32De Beer, 127-128.

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Jaén’s introduction to the bilingual edition directly relates Vasconcelos’s text to Chicano identity, stating that La raza cósmica “offered the Chicano the same possibility of exaltation that it offered Mexicans and the rest of Latin America when it first appeared.”33 This exaltation and instilling of racial pride has made La raza cósmica a significant work within two different historical contexts: that of post-Revolution Mexico and the beginnings of Chicano nationalism.

The Latin race represents the combining of “las cuatro etapas y los cuatros troncos” of

Vasconcelos’s worldview: “el negro, el indio, el [mongol], y el blanco.”34 In the Vasconcelian interpretation of race, each of these major racial civilizations emerged from the mixing of other races throughout history endowed with a specific mission leading towards la quinta raza. La raza cósmica is all-inclusive in its makeup of races, an ideal promoter of unification and opposition to the racial segregation proliferated in North America.

Vasconcelian thought as presented in La raza cósmica and its companion volume

Indología combined pre-existing modes of Latin American thought in an attempt to describe an idealized pan-Iberoamerican culture. Vasconcelos drew from the arielismo of his days of involvement with the Ateneo de la Juventud, utilizing the rhetoric of racial determinism to distinguish between the two conflicting cultures of the American continent. Additionally,

Vasconcelos recalled a spirit of indigenismo that mythicized Mexico’s pre-Hispanic past, establishing ancient indigenous civilizations of as the cornerstone of broader Latin American

33Didier T. Jaén, introduction in Vasconcelos, The Cosmic Race/La raza cósmica, xv-xvi.

34Vasconcelos, The Cosmic Race/La raza cósmica, 49. El indio and el mongol are sometimes classified by color as well (rojo and amarillo, respectively.)

McRae 17 culture.35 While the prose of Vasconcelos paints an optimistic vision for the mestizo race of

Latin America, his preconceptions of race result from a vague amalgamation of concepts of culture, civilization, and language combined with a pseudo-scientific eugenic slant, which undermine any serious consideration of his ideas by biologists. Vasconcelos struggled with the contradictions presented by his theories on race after the publication of La raza cósmica; but in a certain sense, he did not have to convince scientists of his decidedly irrational predictions.36 La raza cósmica offered not only hope for a unified mestizo people within a socially fragmented nation, but also a reaction against the people of the north, the much-maligned Anglo-Saxon that dominated the North American continent. The connections to Uruguayan essayist Jose Enrique

Rodó are unmistakable, yet firmly reconfigured to fit the reality of the Mexican Revolution.

The immediate connection often made between La raza cósmica and Rodó’s Ariel stems from the polarization between Latin America and North America. Rodó’s verbose 1900 essay entitled Ariel uses William Shakespeare’s The Tempest as its main conceit, with the wise sorcerer Prospero speaking to a gathering of young students. Prospero invokes the name of Ariel to represent the unbridled and enthusiasm of youth. This spiritualism comes in direct contrast with the physical, materialistic Caliban, representing the overshadowing presence of the United

States, which Rodó typically classifies as North America (el modelo norteamericano.) The

North American model directly opposes to “la contemplación sentida de lo hermoso,” and as a result “sobre la democracia [norteamericana] pesa la acusación de guiar la humanidad,

35Alan Knight, “Racism, Revolution and Indigenismo: Mexico, 1910-1940,” The Idea of Race in Latin America, 1870-1940, Richard Graham, ed. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990), 82-83.

36See Didier T. Jaén, introduction in Vasconcelos, The Cosmic Race/La raza cósmica. xvii-xix for an example of an appeal to look beyond the strict scientific implications and flaws of Vasconcelos’s work.

McRae 18 mediocrizándola, a un Sacro Imperio del utilitarismo.”37 Vasconcelos, too, promotes lo hermoso as the defining characteristic of the people of Latin America due to the widespread mestizaje of its people.38 Vasconcelos classifies aesthetic races (particularly Asian cultures) as decadent a path that, according to Vasconcelos, la raza cósmica will not follow.

The conflict for Rodó and Vasconcelos is that of distinguishing Latin America from

North America, in great part because the former has sought in error to adapt the way of life of the latter. This crisis led to the trend of latinización preached from the founding of the Ateneo and onward.39 According to Rodó, Ariel has been “vencido una y mil veces por la indomable rebelión de las batallas, manchadas las alas transparentes al rozar el ‘eterno estercolero de Job’,

Ariel resurge eternalmente,”40 much in the same way that Vasconcelos prophesizes a reclamation of the destiny of the mestizo race. The influence of Rodó’s essay spread to his upper-class contemporaries throughout Latin America, who wished to distinguish their criollo identities from their European forefathers. Vasconcelos’s idea of la raza cósmica represented a definitive evolution of this pan-Latin American obsession not only with defining lo mexicano, but also lo latino by portraying mestizaje as the key element that would give rise to the spirit of Rodó’s

Ariel.41

37Jose Enrique Rodó, Ariel (México, D.F., Editorial Porrúa, S.A.; 1968, 1991), 23.

38“Quizás no haya nada inútil en los procesos de la Historia; nuestro mismo aislamiento material y el error de crear naciones nos ha servido, junto con la mezcla original de la sangre, para no caer en la limitación sajona de constituir castas de raza pura.” Vasconcelos, The Cosmic Race/La raza cósmica, 60-61.

39Zea, 428.

40Rodó, 58.

41In his 1948 prologue to La raza cósmica, Vasconcelos acknowledges an anomaly in his characterization of mestizaje as inherently Latin American: Argentina. Like the United States,

McRae 19

The unifying possibilities of mestizaje did not actually originate with Vasconcelos, or even with the national crisis of the Mexican Revolution. Justo Sierra, Vasconcelos’s analogue during the Porfiriato in the post of Minister of Public Education, described Mexico’s increasingly prominent “mestizo family” as one of its most dynamic elements, in that it created a superior evolutionary hybrid.42 The reappearance of this classification of mestizo superiority in La raza cósmica correspond with Vasconcelos’s positivist educational upbringing, though it is interesting to note that Sierra eventually supported the anti-positivist Ateneo de la Juventud.43 Vasconcelos also had a supporter in Manuel Gamio, an anthropologist who collaborated with Vasconcelos on the English language collection of lectures Aspects of Mexican Civilization, published by the

University of Chicago Press in 1926 shortly after the publication of La raza cósmica. Gamio’s chapters in this collection deal with the “Indian basis of Mexican civilization,” in which he urges investigation of indigenous populations in order to promote “racial, cultural and spiritual fusion to secure unification of tongue and equilibrium of economic interests.”44 Gamio’s objective of improving the lot of Mexico’s indigenous people through incorporation served as a fitting accompaniment to Vasconcelos’s own essay on the “race problem in Latin America,” which echoes the recently published themes of La raza cósmica.45

Argentina has only succeeded in mixing razas europeas, primarily of Mediterranean descent. See Vasconcelos, The Cosmic Race/La raza cósmica, 45.

42Kelley R. Swarthout, “Assimilating the Primitive”: Parallel Dialogues on Racial Miscegenation in Revolutionary Mexico (New York: Peter Lang, 2004), 61.

43Krauze, 63.

44José Vasconcelos and Manuel Gamio, Aspects of Mexican Civilization, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1926), 127.

45“I have started to preach the gospel of the mestizo [in Mexico] by trying to impress on the minds of the new race a consciousness of their mission as builders of entirely new concepts

McRae 20

One of Vasconcelos’s greatest precursors in terms of racial doctrine came from the island of Cuba. 19th century journalist, writer, and Cuban nationalist José Martí also paved the way for

Vasconelos’s solidarity through mestizaje heritage. Martí, who holds an important place in the pantheon of Cuban national heroes, prefigured the idea of “Afro-European-indigenous” mestizaje as a reaction to the deleterious influence of Yankee racial discourse and imperialism.46 Martí had associated himself with the Cuban independence movement against Spain, yet his critiques of the United States foreshadowed the increased intervention of the U.S. in Latin America. The embracing of mestizo identity would counterbalance the constant threat of North American intervention in Cuba’s politics and sugar industry. In Martí’s view, Latin Americans had hidden their mestizo identities with European trappings that weakened national integrity in face of the powerful presence of the U.S.47 Though Martí passed away three years before the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, which wrested the last remnants of colonial power from Spain in the

Americas, his observations would continue to be relevant in relating to the U.S.’s new role in

Latin American relations. Leaders and intellectuals had proposed ideas for a new America since the independence movements headed by Simón Bolívar in South America, but the commonalities between the issues of national unity facing independent Cuba and Revolutionary Mexico are comparable in their turning towards ethnic nationalism.

The embracing of the mestizo by Vasconcelos broke with European and South American schools of thought promoting a racial purity in which miscegenation would result in the crossing

of life. But if the mixed race is going to be able to do anything at all, it is first necessary to give it moral strength and faith in its own ability.” Ibid., 95.

46Miller, 11-12.

47Zea, 453.

McRae 21 of immutable, individual characteristics of each race that would in turn produce social aberrations.48 Vasconcelos’s cosmic vision of humanity sees a mixture of the best characteristics of all races. Nevertheless, Vasconcelos demonstrated a fixation within the Iberian aspects of the

Mexican mestizo, a particularly pronounced viewpoint in his works Breve historia de México and his aptly titled Hernán Cortés: creador de la nacionalidad.49 In this sense, Vasconcelos emerges as an apologist for the Spanish conquest, a radical stance in light of the hatred of the Spanish popularly perpetrated since Mexican Independence and Miguel Hidalgo’s call to oust the Spanish from Mexico. Vasconcelos sings the praises for the civilizing aspects of the Spanish colonists as well in La raza cósmica either. Herein lies one of the most criticized aspects of Vasconcelos’s philosophy: that he treats the indigenous population as only valuable for the mythical dimension that their past empires lend to la raza cósmica, supporting narrow racial archetypes that confined indigenistas to a “conceptual prison.”50 Criticisms of Vasconcelos’s racial theories arise from such ideas that the mestizaje will save “las razas inferiores” from their own barbarism, leading towards “extinción voluntaria.”51 In this way, Vasconcelos perpetrated an optimistic yet limited

48Claude Fell, José Vasconcelos: Los años del águila (México, D.F., Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1989), 554.

49De Beer, 151.

50 Knight, 87.

51Vasconcelos, The Cosmic Race/La raza cósmica, 72. In the same paragraph: “El indio, por medio del injerto en la raza afín, daría el salto de los millares de años que median la Atlántida a nuestra época, y en unas cuantas décadas de eugenesia estética podría el negro junto con los tipos que el libre instinto de hermosura vaya señalado como fundamentalmente recesivos e indignos, por lo mismo, de perpetuación.” Note Vasconcelos’s idiosyncratic identification of Atlantis (Atlántida) as the ancestral home of la raza roja. Atlantis was a mythical island civilization referenced in the works of Plato that supposedly sank into the ocean in ancient times. In this way, the Chicano designation of Aztlán as a mythical place of origin parallels Vasconcelos’s own ideas on the origins of indigenous civilizations.

McRae 22 understanding of race, an understanding that challenged Social Darwinism while adapting its same limited terminology and racial hierarchy.

The general philosophy of Vasconcelos sought to break from the positivist thought that defined the previous generations, yet it is interesting to note that in La raza cósmica Vasconcelos subscribes to a mirror layout of three states of humanity, oriented towards the emergence of the cosmic era. Vasconcelos identifies these three states as “el material o el guerrero, el intelectual o político y el espiritual o estético” the last of which aligns with “las normas superiores del sentimiento y la fantasía.”52 While the realization of the positivist state must reject the metaphysical, the final stage in Vasconcelos’s scheme recognizes the spirit as the guiding force behind the racial mixing of humanity. Additionally, Vasconcelos conceived of a mission for each of the four races that would facilitate the achievement of the spiritual, aesthetic state. La raza blanca (europea) in Vasconcelos’s conception serves as a bridge towards la quinta raza by conquering and subjugating the other races of the world, but like the other historic races, they have completed their mission and their days will be numbered as the dominant civilization.53

Here, Vasconcelos gives his answer to Social Darwinists convinced of the dominancy of one race: no one race will be superior to another within la raza cósmica, el indio will have to move towards modernity just as el blanco will have to set aside his pride in order to join la raza cósmica.

While nationhood is important to Vasconcelos, La raza cósmica is more predisposed to conceptualize the Americas in terms of regions, each populated by either latinos or sajones.

Indeed, one could interpret any mention of existing countries or nationalities as mere reference

52Vasconcelos, The Cosmic Race/La raza cósmica, 68.

53Ibid., 56.

McRae 23 points. Vasconcelos had expressed in 1923 in a letter to Colombian students his feeling that “la creación de las nacionalidades latinoamericanas ha sido un caso de suicidio colectivo”54, implying that something greater united the people of Latin America. As previously noted,

Vasconcelos seemed to prefer the term Iberoamérica to describe the countries colonized and ruled by Spain in the Americas. The use of the Ibero- prefix demonstrates the importance

Vasconcelos placed on the so-called civilizing influence of colonial Spain and Portugal. The geographical differences between these two regions also explain their differences in cultures and personalities. Vasconcelos anchors the distinctions drawn between ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ cultures with the assertion that “las grandes civilizaciones se iniciaron entre trópicos y la civilización final volverá al trópico.”55 Vasconcelos saw warm, tropical climates as the most suitable environment for the open emotive spirit, while cold climates produced closed and pragmatic beings. Tropical climates also served perfect catalyst for procreation (yet another reason behind the high rate of mestizaje in Latin America.) The divide between the two opposing cultures of the Americas, thus, became a matter of geographical determinism, with Latin America representing the emerging point for the utopia of la quinta raza.

In recent years, critics of Vasconcelos have revealed the shortcomings of La raza cósmica and its damaging effect on Mexican identity. A two-part article appearing in the

Mexican newsmagazine Proceso in October 2007 summarized much of the criticisms of racism generated by La raza cósmica. Rosario Manzanos, the article’s writer, derides Vasconcelos for not recognizing fully the achievements of Mexico’s pre-Hispanic civilizations and disgracing

54José Vasconcelos, “Carta a la juventud de Colombia”, (28 de mayo de 1923), Boletín de la SEP, 4, p. 603. Quoted in Fell, 555.

55Vasconcelos, The Cosmic Race/La raza cósmica, 63.

McRae 24 them by urging their fusion to create a superior race.56 In addition, the article also criticizes the celebration of “El Día de la Raza”57 and links Vasconcelos with Nazism (Vasconcelos apparently directed and wrote for an openly pro-Nazi magazine called Timón in 1940, a frequently cited fact that consistently haunts his legacy.)58 The author’s accusations, while confrontational, reflect an indigenous pride with which Mexican has sporadically related throughout its national history. A higher level of indigenous participation in Mexican civil society in recent years has caused many

Mexicans to reconsider previous conceptions of its indigenous people, provoking reactions such as these against Vasconcelos’s outmoded racial theories.

Mexican anthropologist Roger Bartra offers a more balanced assessment of

Vasconcelos’s writings on Mexican identity in his study of Mexican identity La jaula de la melancolía, Bartra criticizes Vasconcelos for falsifying the myth of the emotive, impulsive

Mexican. Vasconcelos obsession with defining lo mexicano through la nueva raza cósmica

“acaba convirtiéndose en una mascarada patética de machismo sentimental.”59 According to

Bartra, Vasconcelos’s nationalist strategy of contrasting warm spiritual Mexican culture with cold, calculating Anglo culture was not unique. 19th century Russian intellectuals also attempted to cast the Russian people as spiritual opposites of the overly efficient German people. This

56See Rosario Manzanos “El vasconcelismo: desprecio por lo indio” (dos partes) Proceso, 22, 29 October 2007, (Accessed 24 January 2008), (first part) and (second part).

57El Día de la Raza is the October 12 commemoration of the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Americas in 1492, originally established as an official holiday in Argentina in 1917 but adapted in Mexico as well in 1928, under Vasconcelos’s influence.

58Fell, 659.

59Roger Bartra, La jaula de la melancholia: identidad y metamórfosis del mexicano (México, D.F.; Editorial Grijalbo, S.A. de C.V.; 1987, 1996), 124.

McRae 25 nationalist polarization, like that between Mexico and the United States encouraged by

Vasconcelos, created a self-destructive culture in which “el descuido, la despreocupación y el derroche” became positive traits.60 Bartra’s criticisms may seem unfounded, especially since

Vasconcelos intended to create a positive image of the mestizo. Vasconcelos’s image of the mestizo, however, inevitably fails by assigning personal characteristics to an arbitrary racial designation. La raza cósmica thus classifies all Anglo-styled pragmatism as unrepresentative of

Mexican spirit. Bartra’s criticism of Vasconcelos and other promulgators of nationalist identity underscore the continuing debate over the evolution of Mexican identity and ethnic nationalism.61

60Ibid., 125.

61Though I will not discuss in detail the evolution of Vasconcelos’s mestizo identity in Mexico during the remainder of the 20th century, it is worth noting that writers have criticized the “mundo simbólico” created by Revolutionary nationalism as insufficient to describe modern Mexican society. See José Antonio Aguilar Rivera, El fin de la raza cósmica: consideraciones sobre el esplendor y decadencia del liberalismo en México (Editorial Oceano de México, S.A. de C.V.; México, D.F., 2001), 23-33.

McRae 26

‘La raza’ as Mexican-American Identity and the Foundations of ‘chicanismo’

Vasconcelos’s philosophies of mexicanidad formed a link in the chain of nationalist intellectual development in Mexican history, producing a positive (albeit deterministic) description of the Mexican that situated mestizo as the standard bearer for the ultimate destiny of humanity. Though La raza cósmica relied on archaic understandings of race, founded in great deal on Vasconcelos’s own subjective view of human anthropology, these flaws do not detract from the abstract solidarity that the idea of a ‘Cosmic Race’ produced in its readers. Though the publication of his essay certainly provoked discussion among Mexican intellectuals, it cannot be assumed that the greater Mexican population was familiar with La raza cósmica. The public education programs formulated under Vasconcelos, however, helped to inform the developing post-Revolutionary mestizo identity, though these migrants may not have used Vasconcelos’s precise terminology. All levels of society could easily understand the idea of mestizaje and its importance in terms of a collective Mexican identity. Mexican immigrants who relocated to the

United States after the Revolution brought with them a sense of mestizo nationalism evidently inspired by Vasconcelos.

The beginning of the Mexican Revolution marked a turning point in migratory relations between the United States and Mexico. The first three decades of the 20th century saw a huge leap in Mexican immigration to the United States, in great part due to the Revolutionary violence sweeping the countryside. Nearly a tenth of the Mexican population relocated to the United

States during this period, crossing primarily through El Paso and other border towns to settle in

Texas.62 This “tsunami” of immigration (to use Albert Camarillo’s hyperbolic description)

62Albert M. Camarillo, “Mexico,” in The New Americans, ed. Mary C. Waters and Reed Ueda, 506.

McRae 27 steadily continued throughout the 20th century, vastly affecting the economic and social landscape of the American Southwest. Though Texas received many of the new arrivals,

Mexican immigrants also settled in increasing numbers in California, particularly in urban centers such as Los Angeles and San Diego. As Mexican presence increased within the United

States, so did various forms of social discrimination emanating from the receiving society. The

U.S. government encouraged Mexican immigration through acts such as the bracero program

(1942-1964), aimed at helping U.S agribusiness depleted by the Second World War.63 These waves of immigration constructed the base of Mexican American consciousness, which would assert itself as these generations faced the challenge of being an immigrant minority.

Racial discrimination by the dominant society towards Mexican immigrants led to a need for solidarity in the Mexican American community. Mexican Americans had to overcome inferiority stereotypes historically attached to their cultural identity.64 Racism towards Mexican

Americans manifested through practices of educational and housing segregation, as well as the propagation of the idea that Mexicans represented a threat to public health and safety.65

Consequently, Mexican American leaders responded to theses racial denigrations with racial responses. In the 1930s, a Los Angeles-based magazine known as The Mexican Voice voiced such racially charged defenses of the Mexican people and calls to racial pride:

63Ibid., 508. Even though Congress intended the program to provide temporary seasonal labor, by the 1950s the agricultural industry had grown to depend on Mexican labor. Many bracero workers left the program and joined regional Mexican American communities.

64Mexican writer (and contemporary of Vasconcelos) Samuel Ramos explored this Mexican psychological “inferiority complex” in his 1934 work El perfil del hombre y la cultura de México. A direct symbolic example of this perceived inferiority is the hombre agachado, consisting of a seated figure wrapped in a sarape and wearing a giant sombrero, a well-known image in both the U.S. and Mexico. See Bartra, 91-96.

65Camarillo, 506.

McRae 28

…A Mexican must be a Mexican. His heritage of rich Aztec and Spanish blood has provided him with characteristics born of a high cultural civilization. When this rich background has been tempered with the fires of the Anglo-Saxon understanding and enlightenment, you will have something which will be the envy of all.66

The language employed by the article glorifies Mexicans’ blood ancestors (the common

European and indigenous pairing associated with mestizaje) yet the reference to tempering by the

Anglo-Saxon fire reflects a Vasconcelian view of human destiny. By this account, the mestizo

Mexican should eventually absorb the positive characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon, creating a superior being endowed with the knowledge and spirit of all races. The later Chicano idea of la raza would owe a great deal to the ideas formulated in similar newspapers and magazines, aimed at instilling unity within marginalized Mexican-American communities.

In addition to resentment towards Anglo-Americans, tension certainly existed between

Mexican immigrants and formerly established Spanish-speaking populations in the U.S.

Southwest. Spanish colonial settlers had settled in the modern southwestern region of the United

States since the very end of the 16th century. Descendants of Spanish settlers in the territory of modern-day New Mexico, California and southern Colorado shared a lingual heritage and historical connections dating to the colonial period but beyond these shared traits, they maintained distinct identities. Mexican national holidays, for example, such as Cinco de Mayo

(celebrating the defeat over France by Mexican liberal forces in 1867) and Mexican

Independence would mean little to “Spanish Americans” who did not identify with any kind of

Mexican nationalism.67 Additionally, racial identity had developed differently between the old

66Manuel Ceja, “Are We Proud of Being Mexicans?” Mexican Voice, Aug., 1938, 9. Quoted in The Mexican-American People: The Nation’s Second Largest Minority. Leo Grebler et al. (New York: The Free Press, 1970), 402.

67Grebler et. al., The Mexican-American People, 381.

McRae 29 settlers and new immigrants. Gregory Rodriguez provides census data from 18th century

California that implies people of Spanish background favored identifying themselves as white, though in reality most settlers inevitably had some African or indigenous ancestry.68

Nevertheless, the newly arrived Mexican population in the mid-20th, now instilled with nationalist mestizo pride, contrasted with the older Hispanic population that had sought to assimilate to a white Anglo paradigm.

Racial identity notwithstanding, pre-Chicano political activism struggled with the consequences of assimilation into American society versus maintaining ties to Mexican cultural roots. One of the first influential Mexican American political organizations, the League of

United American Latin Citizens (LULAC), tried to establish a middle ground between their

Mexican roots and their loyalty to their new country. Founded by middle-class Texas Mexicans

(U.S. citizens and typically more affluent than immigrant workers) in 1929, LULAC delegates established a code that urged its members to “incorporate yourself in the culture and civilization” of the United States, as well as “maintain its traditions in the minds of your children.”

Furthermore, members should “love the men of your race, take pride in your origins and keep it immaculate; respect your glorious past and help to vindicate your people.”69 The language in these defining statements demonstrates the inner conflict of Mexican Americans in face of the social pressures that derided overt connections to their ancestral land and culture. References to a certain ‘race’ and ‘people’ recall the general meaning of raza, a word that Mexican-American leaders would incorporate into future organizations, political and otherwise.

68Gregory Rodriguez, Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans, and Vagabonds: Mexican Immigration and the Future of Race in America. (New York: Pantheon Books, 2007), 69.

69Quoted in Ibid., 57.

McRae 30

Mexican Americans began to organize before the wave of immigration that followed the

Second World War. In addition to the middle-class based LULAC, at least one coalition of

Mexican berry, onion and celery field workers in southern California, the Confederación de

Uniones Obreras Mexicanas, had organized strikes that often resulted in violence and deportation.70 It would not be until after the end of the Second World War that these organizations would began to express their grievances more openly. By the 1940s, the widespread membership of LULAC had succeeded in establishing itself as a promoter of citizenship and loyalty to the U.S., and as such now sought to become active participants in the country’s political and social institutions.71 At the same time, these leaders’ awareness of the continuing issues of discrimination and mistreatment of Mexican immigrant workers in the U.S. led them to seek a manner by which to unite all people of Mexican descent. Later leaders would look to labor organizers and campesino protesters to inspire their vision of la raza and create a united front against the injustices imposed on people of Mexican descent.

In the post-World War II era, Mexican Americans also experienced greater socioeconomic diversity. Many Mexican Americans had achieved economic success, though mainstream society continued to stigmatize them as non-whites. Pachuco72 culture among

Mexican-American youth provided an exclusive, if not alienating, alternative to cultural

70Arnoldo Carlos Vento, Mestizo: The History, Culture, & Politics of the Mexican and the Chicano (Lanham: University Press of America, 1998),178.

71Ibid., 195

72The term pachuco refers to a Mexican American urban youth culture, complete with a unique dialect (chuco, or caló) and fashion sensibility (most famously the zoot suit). Pachucos tended to be Mexican American, though comic actor Germán Valdéz (Tin Tan) popularized the style in Mexico. A commonly referenced (though increasingly archaic) cultural image, one of the most well known treatments of the pachuo comes from Octavio Paz. See Paz, 143-163.

McRae 31 assimilation, yet at the same time it caused police to classify all Mexican adolescents as hoodlums. The extremes of the delinquent “pachucho” and the Americanized “pocho” perhaps led to the establishment of politically minded proto-Chicano youth and student movements. By

1964, organization of Mexican American students began in earnest on the college level with the founding a student group at Texas A&I in Kingsville, Texas. This group initially focused on discrimination in admissions and housing, but aimed to forge a wider political community upon students of Mexican descent. Texas represented a logical starting point for Mexican-American student organizations since a comparatively large number of students of Mexican descent attended college in the mid-1960s. 73 By 1967, MAYO (Mexican American Youth Organization) had formed at St. Mary’s College in San Antonio, introducing the first strands of militant nationalist rhetoric into Mexican American politics.

The new tactics and rhetoric of youthful MAYO versus those of traditionally liberal

LULAC (which had grown increasingly connected to the Democratic Party) represented in great part a generational conflict that arose in the 1960s. MAYO activists proved to be more confrontational in their approach to the issues of discrimination that their parents had not managed to solve. Racial solidarity once again came to the forefront of MAYO rhetoric. A

MAYO manifesto taped to the door of the courthouse in Del Rio, Texas stated that:

La Raza is the affirmation of the most basic ingredient of our personality, the brownhood of our Indian ancestors wedded to all the other skin colors of mankind. Brown is the common denominator of the largest number among us—a glorious reminder of our Aztec and Maya heritage. […] As children of La Raza, we are heirs of a spiritual and biological miracle where in one family blood ties unite the darkest and fairest.74

73Rodolfo Acuña, Occupied America: A History of Chicanos, 6th Edition (New York: Pearson Longman, 2007), 256-257.

74José Angel Gutiérrez, “Azltán: Chicano Revolt in the Winter Garden,” La Raza I, No. 4 (1991), 34-35. Quoted in Vento, 225.

McRae 32

This passage, penned by MAYO leader José Angel Gutiérrez, references the mixing of all the other skin colors of mankind, yet specifically highlights Indian ancestry as inextricable in the identity of la raza. While la raza contains all ethnic groups (or at least five racial categories), the trend in rising Chicano movements was the emphasis of their ancestral Mexican roots with indigenous heritage holding special significance. As Mexican-American student organizations spread westward towards California, the strong meaning behind the term “La Raza” influenced the nationalist rhetoric of the developing Chicano movement. These descendants included the

Los Angeles newspaper La Raza, La Raza Unida political party, and of course, the wide range of

Chicano studies programs implemented in higher-education curricula in the late 1960s.

The development of a Chicano identity emerged through a process of gradual radicalization during the 1960s as Mexican-American students embraced nationalism and militancy as means to achieve their goals. The intellectuals who conceived of the Chicano identity drew from a number of cultural predecessors. These students, often coming from urban middle-working class origins, had witnessed the effectiveness of concurrent rural movements

(such as the United Farm Workers union, El Teatro Campesino, and the Alianza Federal de

Pueblos Libres.) The founders of the Chicano movement in turn adapted much of the symbolism and rhetoric that these contemporaneous movements used, ranging from romanticized recollections of Mexico’s Aztec (and to a lesser extent, Maya) ancestry to the correlation of the struggles of the time with those of the Mexican Revolution fifty years prior. Both of these approaches emphasized a national and ethnic solidarity among Mexican Americans that the founders of the Chicano movement readily adapted. Understanding the immediate forerunner of chicanismo (Chicano nationalism) highlights the growing importance of ethnic nationalism in defining a people that defied traditional national definitions.

McRae 33

While it would be limiting to say that the impact of Mexican-American political action only originated in the 1960s, a significant change in strategy can be noted beginning mid-decade.

Ignacio M. García characterizes the rise of radical ideology among Mexican-Americans as an outright rejection of the American liberal agenda; that is, the tenets of assimilation espoused by traditional American liberalism, in which the equality of all citizens under the law allows them integrate into mainstream society.75 The highly visible black civil rights movement manifested through the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) strongly related with this integration and acceptance approach. Past immigrants to the United States, particularly of European descent, had also widely assimilated through these ideals into mainstream American society. The rejection of these principles resulted in a movement towards cultural self-determination aimed toward a nationalistic defining of the Mexican-American.

The United Farm Workers Union emerged in the mid-1960s as an effective organizer of

Mexican fruit pickers in the state of California. Cesar Chávez, leader of the UFW, had felt dissatisfied with efforts to unionize Mexican workers through the traditionally liberal

Community Service Organization, and upon formation of the UFW called for first strike on the significant date of September 16, 1965, the 150th anniversary of Mexican independence leader

Miguel Hidalgo’s Grito de Dolores. In the first UFW strike, Chávez spoke of liberating the

Mexican farm worker, and before too long the Mexican independence symbol of the Virgen de

Guadalupe began to appear in picket lines.76 Already a ubiquitous figure of mestizaje,

75Ignacio M. García, Chicanismo: The Forming of a Militant Chicano Ethos among Mexican Americans (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997), 9-14.

76In Mexico, the Virgin of Guadalupe is a venerated religious icon that represents a syncretistic integration of indigenous and European traditions. During Mexican independence,

McRae 34

Catholicism and Mexican patriotism, la Virgen once again became a unifying force among the predominantly Mexican farm laborers.

Six months after the first grape strike, the UFW organized the Delano strike, issuing a plan that according to Juan Gómez-Quiñones contained “echoes from past plans in Mexico, in the Declaration of Havana, and in Catholic pietism,” which in turn inspired further rising urban political activists, who were neither farm workers nor descendants of these.77 Chávez’s admirers often compare him to fellow civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., due to their shared belief in passive resistance and non-violence; however, Chávez could not disavow the importance of cultural symbolism in the workers’ struggle. Chávez stated in an interview in Ramparts

Magazine in 1966 that he designed the black eagle and red banner used by the farm workers to recall the Mexican flag and the mythical figure of the Aztec eagle.78 Despite these cultural elements, Chávez was wary of ethnic nationalism, saying: “We oppose some of this La Raza business… We know what it does. When La Raza means or implies racism, we don’t support it.

But if it means our struggle, our dignity, or our cultural roots, then we’re for it.”79 Chavez’s disassociation with what would become a central part of Chicano rhetoric reflected the UFW’s

the Virgin was adapted by Father Miguel Hidalgo as a unifying symbol of Mexico and the battle standard of her people. See Brian R. Hamnett, A Concise History of Mexico: Second Edition (New York: Cambridge University Press; 1999, 2006); 101-103, and Acuña, 24.

77Juan Gómez-Quiñones, Chicano Politics: Reality and Promise, 1940-1990 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1990), 105-106.

78Quoted in Luis Leal, “In Search of Aztlán” trans. by Gladys Leal, in Aztlán: Essays on the Chicano Homeland ed. Rudolfo A. Anaya and Francisco A. Lomelí, (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989), 7.

79John R. Chávez, The Lost Land: The Chicano Image of the Southwest (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1991), 129. Quoted in Rodriguez, 206.

McRae 35 vision of equality for all workers, though his acknowledgement of ethnic nationalism’s effectiveness demonstrates its draw of intellectual supporters.

Chávez’s organizational efforts had great impact, particularly through the image it generated of the semiliterate worker rising up and taking control of his or her situation. While the

UFW oriented itself more towards political change through its strikes, the influential Teatro

Campesino represented a greater emphasis on potential cultural symbolism within the farm worker’s resistance movement. Driven by the sharp writing and direction of co-founders Luis

Valdez and Agustín Lira, both of whom had been Central Valley California fruit pickers, teatro troupes toured and performed in flatbed trailers in both rural and urban settings. Many of the musical compositions written by the Teatro Campesino became important protest songs even among urban protesters, including the aptly titled El picket sign. The Spanish-language song

(ironically titled with an Anglicism) invokes the names of Mexican Revolution peasant leader

Emilio Zapata and the first indigenous president of Mexico Benito Juárez who ended the period of French intervention in Mexico in 1867. The song also tells of “organizing the people [the race] in all the fields”80 using raza as an essential inclusive term for farm workers. The use of historical images sought to link the plight of farm workers to cultural memories of the Mexican

Revolution, a relatively fresh landmark in the minds of Mexican-Americans of all social levels.

Luis Valdez’s own posterior reflections on the Teatro Campesino offer insight into his creative inspirations. In an interview with Bettina Grey in 1993, Valdez calls describes himself as “an American in the larger sense,” a convergence of all cultural experiences. Furthermore,

Valdez (who professes to be a “neo-Mayan spiritualist”) illustrates this convergence through the

80Originally: “Organizando la raza en todos los files” Available on: Los Alvarados, et al., Rolas de Aztlán: Songs of the Chicano Movement [compact sound disc]. Washington: Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 2005.

McRae 36

Mayan concept of cuatro caminos: a white road, a black road, a red road, and a yellow road that meet to create this cultural convergence.81 Although Valdez does not explicitly mention la raza cósmica, mestizaje or even chicanismo during the interview, this alleged Maya symbolism coincides with a typically Vasconcelian image, such as his proposed allegorical patio for the new

Palace of Public Education in Mexico.82 The roads of Valdez’s images clearly relate to the four races, which converge into the “modern Mexican” personified by Valdez. This type of subtle imagery shaped Valdez’s artistic creativity as he sought to create solidarity in the rural workers of California during the 1960s.

In contrast to the relatively oblique tactics of the UFW and the Teatro Campesino, the most militant of antecedent manifested through Reies López Tijerina and his Alianza Federal de

Mercedes (later known as Alianza de Pueblos Libres) in New Mexico. Tijerina, a Pentecostal preacher by profession, knew how to appeal to the emotional core of his fellow Alianzistas.

Tijerina’s attempt to link the Mexican-American struggle with the reclamation of their ancestral lands (allegedly stolen over time by U.S. encroachment) led to a course of direct action that impressed Chicano leaders. Tijerina openly sought to radicalize the Alianzistas by embracing ethnic politics and forming partnerships with black power advocates.83 His brash attempt to reclaim New Mexican territory and later attempted citizen’s arrest of the district attorney of Rio

Arriba County exemplified a clear breaking point with all Mexican-American protest mechanisms up until that point in time. The Alianza’s ideological goals implied physical

81Bettina Gray, Luis Valdez and El Teatro Campesino Videocasete (Princeton: Films for the Humanities and Sciences, 1993).

82Vasconcelos, The Cosmic Race/La raza cósmica, 79-80.

83García, 32-33.

McRae 37 secession from the United States through the reclamation of Mexican territory, leading

Alianzistas such as Moctesuma Esparza to describe the movement as though “[Mexican

Revolution figures] Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata were alive again.”84 Although Chicanos altered the message of territorial separation, the idea of a distinct geographical space inhabited by the members of la raza figured prominently in the eventual conceptualization of the Chicano homeland of Aztlán.

Tijerina’s actions in New Mexico inspired ex-boxer turned youth organizer and disenchanted Democrat Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzalez. Gonzalez’s response to the Mexican-

American struggle, the free-verse poem “I am Joaquin” served as a landmark in the formation of

Chicano identity. First published in 1967, the poem’s central figure, Joaquín, described his modern plight:

I—am Joaquín I am lost in a world of confusion caught up in the whirl of an Anglo- Society. Scorned, by attitudes Suppressed by manipulation, and destroyed by modern society.85

Joaquín’s tells his story as one of uncertainty and struggle to reconcile with his mestizo identity, paradoxically stating: “I ride with Revolutionists/Against myself/I am Rural/Course and brutal/I am the mountain Indian, superior overall.”86 This excerpt, which references the violent conflict of the Mexican Revolution, vividly displays the internal conflict that Joaquín feels as a mixture

84Chicano!: History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement (Episode 1: Quest for a Homeland) Videocassette. Executive Producer: José Luis Ruiz. (Los Angeles: NLCC Education Media, 1996).

85Rodolfo Gonzalez, “I am Joaquín.” Reprinted in Sullivan, 43-48.

86Ibid. Rural refers to the federal troops that used an iron fist to maintain rural social order in the Mexican countryside in the early part of the 20th century.

McRae 38 of these two polarized forces, that of the criollo rulers and the indigenous pueblo. Joaquín portrays himself as on trial “before the court of justice/Guilty for all the glory of my Raza to be sentenced to despair”, yet he urges the resistance of his people when he states: “I am the masses of my people and I refuse to be absorbed!”87 Gonzalez summed up the sentiment brewing in many young Mexican Americans with the publication of “I am Joaquín” and succeeded in motivating the reconciliation of their multi-faceted ethnic heritage.

Preceding the rise of the Chicano movement, the term chicano signified, in Mexican

Spanish, a person of poor social status. Gonzalez’s Joaquín, however, identifies with this designation of Chicano. By the end of Gonzalez’s poem, he has repossessed and applied to himself offensive term that asserts legitimacy for the Spanish-speaking sides of his identity (in other words, Chicanos did not attempt to reclaim an offensive English label.) The official reclamation of the term Chicano came through the 1969 manifesto introduced at the First

Chicano National Conference in Denver, organized by Corky Gonzalez. This manifesto, entitled

El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán, unified three principal elements of Chicano rhetoric: the individual designation of Chicano, the unifying rallying cry of La Raza, and the spiritual homeland of

Aztlán. The conference attendees, consisting of members of student organizations that had developed on regional college and university campuses, declared in their spiritual plan that

“nationalism as the key to organization transcends all religious, political, class and economic factions or boundaries,” thus making it “the common denominator that all members of La Raza

87Ibid.

McRae 39 can agree upon.”88 The shared mestizo identity and culture of Mexican Americans would be the factor that united them as Chicanos.

The authors of the El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán, utilize ethnic rhetoric throughout the document to establish their place as the heirs to the territory of Aztlán. The manifesto’s introduction states: “before the world, before all of North America, before all of our brothers in the bronze continent, we are a nation, we are a union of free pueblos, we are Aztlán.”89 The plan’s general goals of “political liberation” along with economic and cultural autonomy continuously refer to Chicanos as a group as “La Raza” or alternatively, “La Raza de Bronze.”

The various conjoining lingual elements of this document represent the complex formation of

Chicano identity. Aztlán (a Nahuatl word meaning approximately “the place of the white herons”) represented the indigenous origins of the Chicano, cast as the mythical place of origin that produced the Aztec Empire. Along with this recollection of an idealized indigenous past, the Plan intersperses its English prose with Spanish words and phrases (the expression “La Raza de Bronze” being a specific example.) La Raza operates in a space between the nationalities of

Mexico and the United States, and thus has knowledge of both the English and Spanish language. This lingual duality (known as ‘code-switching’ in linguistics) is particularly present in “I am Joaquín” and would become a hallmark of Chicano literature. El Plan Espiritual structured the broad goals of the movement (La Causa) and called on Mexican Americans to unite with their people to bring about their liberation from, as the Plan bluntly puts it, “ the

88First Chicano National Conference: Denver, Colorado; 1969, “El Plan de Aztlán.” Aztlán: Essays on the Chicano Homeland, ed. Rudolfo A. Anaya and Franciso A Lomelí,. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989), 2.

89Ibid., 1.

McRae 40 foreigner gabacho who exploits our riches and destroys our culture.”90 From this initial plan, the various arms of the movement began to coalesce on a united level towards lifting up the oppressed Chicano.

90Ibid. Gabacho is a derogatory Mexican term for people of Anglo-European descent, particularly in the United States.

McRae 41

The Institution of La raza cósmica in Chicano Academia and Literature

Chicano intellectuals’ search for meaning in Mexican intellectual precedents led to a rediscovery of the literature of Vasconcelos, particularly La raza cósmica, which captured the attention of Chicanos already familiar with the colloquial use of la raza among Mexican

Americans in the United States.91 As Chicano students and academics strived to strengthen ties with their mother culture and language,92 they looked with particular admiration on the intellectuals of the Mexican Revolution, who had advanced Mexican thought in significant ways in spite of the positivist spirit of the Porfirian hegemony. Chicano intellectuals would have read not only La raza cósmica but also his Aspects of Mexican Civilization, strongly identifying with the idea of cosmic race that evidently overshadowed all races that had come before it. Chicano historian Ignacio M. García relates a personal anecdote in which he and his high school friends would write in “brown” when asked to check off their race on job, scholarship, and financial aid applications.93 He connects this form of protest to the desire for young Chicanos to connect with a unique racial category like la raza cósmica. The incorporation of the gospel according to

Vasconcelos into prevailing ethnic nationalism would shape student organizations, political parties, and the burgeoning genre of Chicano literature.

The biography of Vasconcelos could have also drawn the attention of Chicano intellectuals due to his incidental connection to the Mexican-American border experience.

91Jorge A. Bustamente, “Chicano-Mexican Relations: From Practice to Theory,” in Chicano-Mexican Relations, ed. Tatcho Mindiola, Jr. and Max Martinez,. (Houston: University of Houston, 1986), 10.

92See Francis B. Kent, “Student Roams Mexico Hunting Chicano Past.” The Los Angeles Times. 18 September 1969. [Proquest Historical Newspapers] Accessed 10 October 2007. .

93García, 72.

McRae 42

Vasconcelos details in his autobiography his time spent as a child living in the border town of

Piedras Negras, Coahuila, crossing daily into Eagle Pass, Texas, to attend primary school. The impact of this interaction with American society during Vasconcelos’s formative years had an effect on his budding sense of identity and his later contribution to Mexican nationalism.

Mexican and American children attended school together, though according to Vasconcelos: “El odio de raza, los recuerdos del cuarenta y siete, mantenían el rancor. Sin motivo, y sólo por el grito de ‘greasers’ o ‘gringo’ solía producirse choques sangrientos.”94 In the classroom, a young

Vasconcelos stubbornly rejected his teacher’s affirmation that “Mexicans are a semi-civilized people” (though the teacher immediately added, “But look at Joe, he is a mexican, is’nt [sic] he civilized?, is’nt[sic] he a gentleman?”)95 It was precisely during this period that Vasconcelos began to question himself “¿Quién soy?” and read (by his own account) literature and philosophical texts beyond his eleven years of age. Chicano intellectuals reading Vasconcelos’s memoir nearly sixty years later would have related strongly with his experiences in Eagle Pass, and would have seen his work as a clear bridge between the struggles of the past and the plight of Chicanos in the United States.96

One of the main aspects of the Chicano struggle was recognition on the academic level.

As one of its immediate consequences, El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán initiated a consolidation

94Vasconcelos, Ulises criollo: edición crítica, 26. “Los recuerdos del cuarenta y siete” refers to the Mexican-American War from 1846-`848, which resulted in the loss of half of Mexico’s territory to the United States.

95Ibid., 33.

96For a contemporary example of this integration of Vasconcelos’s autobiography into Chicano nationalism, see Greg Moses “Chicano Nationalism and its Philosophical Roots in Texas” 2 October 2007. Texas Civil Rights Review. Accessed 12 April 2008. .

McRae 43 among the student groups at California universities. Two years before the Denver conference in the spring of 1967, campus chapters of organizations such as the Mexican American Student

Association (MASA) at East Los Angeles Community College and the United Mexican

American Students (UMAS) on May 13, 1967 at Loyola College had taken root.97 These groups focused on issues ranging from campus discrimination and community improvement to more universal issues, such as protesting the U.S.’s ongoing involvement in the Vietnam War.

Therefore, it is not surprising that a month after the Denver Conference, Chicano students and faculty members from various institutions met in Santa Barbara and merged their organizations into the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MeCHA.) The Santa Barbara Conference also produced a comprehensive curriculum for Chicano studies entitled El Plan de Santa

Barbara, which directly acknowledged Vasconcelos as an inspiration. The plan, which the conference attendees would work to implement at their home universities, contains typical

Chicano visual images that evoke the indigenous past and the Mexican Revolution, most notably paraphrasing the Vasconcelos-coined motto of the National Autonomous University of Mexico

(UNAM): POR MI RAZA HABLA EL ESPIRITO[sic].”98 The opening manifesto also attributes a direct quote to Vasconcelos: “At this moment we do not come to work for the university, but to demand that the university work for our people.”99 Accordingly, Chicano intellectuals felt a great affinity between their efforts in higher education and those of

Vasconcelos in his national educational reforms.

97Acuña, 256-257.

98The Chicano Coordinating Council on Higher Education, El Plan de Santa Barbara: A Chicano Plan for Higher Education (Oakland: La Causa Publications, 1969), 8.

99Ibid., 11.

McRae 44

El Plan de Santa Barbara, like El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán, strongly portrays its desire for complete autonomy for Chicano studies within the university within the university, disparaging “tio tacos” (Mexican Americans seen as complacent to the existing social order) as well as status quo university administrators. One passage outlining initial steps to be taken in institutionalizing Chicano studies programs reads: “Enfortunately[sic] some programs are already being subverted by individuals whose commitment to La Raza is questionable. Keep the

‘tios’ and the reactionaries out.”100 Here, and throughout the document, “La Raza” acted as an inclusive term for all adherents to the proposals of the present plan. The curriculum proposals offered by the plan sought to strengthen the ties between Chicanos and their Mexican heritage, while emphasizing the unique cultural position of Spanish-speaking people born and raised in the

American Southwest. The plan included several different models and sample course syllabi for existing degree programs, and although none explicitly listed La raza cósmica, the bibliographies include ethnohistorical accounts that would evoke mestizo pride.101 All proposed programs offered courses in Mexican and Latin American thought that surely considered Vasconcelos, judging by his presence in El Plan de Santa Barbara itself.102 The most pronounced statements of la raza cósmica emerge, perhaps, in describing the more abstract foundations of Chicano

100Ibid., 18.

101Such titles included Eric Wolf’s Sons of the Shaking Earth, an at times overly romanticized view of pre-Hispanic cultures and Julian Samora’s La Raza: Forgotten America, which emphasized the mestizo identity of the people of the Southwest.

102See El Plan de Santa Barbara, 92-152 for the complete collection of programs and syllabi. Courses that might have included discussions of Vasconcelos’s work include “Mexican National Identity” and “Mexican Philosophy” at University of Santa Barbara (99) and “Contemporary Mexican Literature in Translation” at San Diego Mesa College, which focused on “the writings of the revolution and to present day Mexican Literature and how it underlines Mexican’s[sic] search for an identity” (128).

McRae 45 identity, for example in the following passage on developing a Chicano political consciousness in Mexican Americans:

A Chicano ideology, especially as it involves cultural nationalism, should be positively phrased in the form of propositions to the Movement. Chicanismo is a concept that integrates self-awareness with cultural identity, a necessary step in developing cultural identity. As such, it serves as a basis for political action, flexible enough to include the possibilities of coalitions. The ‘related concept of La Raza provides an internationalist scope to Chicanismo and La Raza Cosmica furnishes a philosophical precedent.103

A large number of incipient academic publications as well as regional and community newspapers proved to be important resources for Chicano thought. Academic journals reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of Chicano studies began integrating new sociological methodologies, historical interpretations and literary forms through its articles. One salient example of these new Chicano journals was El Grito, founded by anthropologist Octavio

Romano-V. at the University of California Berkeley. Though Romano-V. never officially associated himself with the creation of Chicano Studies programs, he produced several important articles that would serve as a reaffirmation of the Chicano identity.104 One of his most influential articles, “The Historical and Intellectual Presence of Mexican Americans” endeavored to link the

Mexican American student with his Mexican intellectual predecessors, apart from the academic norms of Anglo progeny. Romano-V. directly references Gonzalez’s “I am Joaquín”, relating the eponymous character to figures ranging from the last Aztec prince Cuauhtémoc to Mexican

Revolution visionary Francisco Madero, as well as polemic figures such as 15th century Spanish

103Ibid., 51.

104Carlos Muñoz, Jr., Youth, Identity, Power: The Chicano Movement (New York: Verso, 1989), 143-144.

McRae 46 conqueror Hernán Cortez and 20th century presidential usurper Victoriano Huerta.105 The establishment of a Mexican intellectual heritage coupled with an increased study of mestizo identity allowed for the dissemination of culturally nationalistic ideas in the academic sphere.106

El Plan de Santa Barbara also compiled a list of several Chicano news publications deemed suitable for keeping La Raza informed of current events. The newspapers listed in the plan’s “select bibliography” are based primarily in the southwestern United States, though a few are as far away as Wautoma, Wisconsin; Chicago, Illinois; and Del Ray Beach Florida.107

Chicano newspapers varied in editorship and audience: some originated within student movements such as MeCHA while others had ties to individual urban Chicano communities or groups such as the Brown Berets, a militant Chicano youth organization. Many Chicano newspapers, often bilingual, invoked La Raza in their titles, including the Los Angeles-based La

Raza, Prensa de Bronce, and the Azusa-based La Raza Cósmica. These newspapers focused primarily on informing the community on Chicano issues, particularly cases of discrimination or political oppression, as well as publicizing Chicano community cultural events. Chicano periodicals also frequently contained cultural essays that used raza terminology, yet they rarely touched on the meaning la raza cósmica and its applicability to the Chicano situation, almost as if their readers already fully grasped the concept of the Cosmic Race.

105Octavio I. Romano-V., “The Historical and Intellectual History of Mexican- Americans,” Voices: Readings from El Grito, A Journal of Contemporary Mexican American Thought, Octavio I. Romano-V., ed. (Berkeley: Quinto Sol Publications, 1971), 81.

106García, 48, 51-52. Examples of other academic journals include Aztlán, De Colores, Regeneración, and Encuentro Femenil. Caracol was a literary journal, while Quinto Sol Publications in Berkeley would emerge as an important Chicano publishing house.

107El Plan de Santa Barbara, 73-75.

McRae 47

Writers in Chicano newspapers referenced “La Raza” “La Raza Cosmica” and the “The

Bronze Race”, but did not generally engage in discussion over its meaning or origins. As early as 1968, one explanation of the term La Raza Unida began to circulate in newspapers, in response to the formation of the independent Chicano political party of the same name.108 This explanation, frequently reprinted during the next few years in other newspapers, asserted:

‘La Raza’ is not a racist term. It is quite the opposite, borrowed from countries south of the Rio Grande where it connotes a blending of a new family of man composed of the original inhabitants of the Americas, the Indian, and all other immigrants from throughout the earth, who since the time of Columbus have come to the new world in search of a new creation… There is, then, a tendency to glorify ‘La Raza’ simply because ‘La Raza’ as a universalistic term points to a number of precious human values.109

A later newspaper from 1970 called The Enterado, based out of Richmond, California, also associated Columbus with the formation of La Raza in an article on the significance of October

12, El Día de la Raza, stating “celebramos la hermandad de todos los hombres. Celebramos la concepción de nuestra RAZA magnífica de BRONCE. Celebramos el origen de nuestra RAZA

Cósmica.”110

108García, 101-106.

109“What is La Raza Unida?” La Raza. Los Angeles, California, 1968. See also La Raza Yearbook; September, 1968: which, like El Plan de Santa Barbara, paraphrases Vasconcelos, by stating: “Por nuestra Raza hablará el espíritu.”

110“12 de octubre día de la Raza” The Enterado. Richmond, California, 1970. Compare this explanation to the one provided on National Council of La Raza’s website, which does explicitly acknowledge Vasconcelos’s influence: “…The term ‘La Raza’ has its origins in early 20th century Latin American literature and translates into English most closely as ‘the people,’ or, according to some scholars, ‘the Hispanic people of the New World’…the full term coined by Vasconcelos, ‘La Raza Cósmica,’ meaning the ‘cosmic people,’ was developed to reflect not purity but the mixture inherent in the Hispanic people. This is an inclusive concept, meaning that Hispanics share with all other peoples of the world a common heritage and destiny.” “NCLR Q&A” National Council of La Raza (NCLR, 2008) Accessed 26 January 2008. .

McRae 48

Like any social movement, the Chicano movement cannot be classified as uniform, despite its attempts at organization. The abundance of Chicano publications exemplified the wide range of opinions on Chicano mestizo identity. Some tended towards an identity similar to

Vasconcelos’s original conception: that Chicanos represented the amalgamation of all races.

Others emphasized the blending of the European/indigenous binary, some going as far as viewing themselves as direct descendants from the Aztecs who had only incidentally and reluctantly absorbed European influences. Behind this discussion of ethnic identity, however, loomed the influence of Vasconcelos, virtually never invoked by name but clearly present through the ideas presented in the Chicano movement’s conception of mestizaje. Mestizo pride translated into the Chicano sense of purpose, defining the members of la raza as a nationalist entity that corresponded with a spiritual homeland, Aztlán. As the Chicano movement began to evolve in the 1970s, members of the movement would reference Vasconcelos more directly, particularly in the growing body of Chicano prose and poetry.

Though Vasconcelos’s La raza cósmica did not wholly define the politics of the Chicano movement, its influence is clear on the movement’s literature and language. The publication of

Didier T. Jaén’s bilingual edition of La raza cósmica maintained the interest level in

Vasconcelos’s works, particularly among students and academics.111 The philosophical and aesthetic aspects of La raza cósmica led Chicano writers to deconstruct more deeply the meaning of la raza and the make-up of the mestizo. The imaginative inspiration that the idea of la raza

111See Malcom S. MacKenzie, “Review of The Cosmic Race/La raza cósmica, by José Vasconcelos; Didier T. Jaén,” Hispania Vol. 66 No. 2 (May 1983): 304-305, [JSTOR], Accessed 3 April 2008 . MacKenzie praises Jaén’s “clear and concise” introduction, but criticizes Vasconcelos’s essay as “fanciful, erratic, and marred by stereotypical thinking.” He does concede, however, that “the powerful psychic need of a people for an ideational framework for their cultural identity and development makes The Cosmic Race of continuing interest.”

McRae 49 cósmica gave to Chicano writers is evident in an anonymous poem entitled “La Raza Cósmica” published in 1973 in the Chicano newspaper Es Tiempo! in Los Altos Hills, California:

Your unique powers of time and space has put me together in human race, a race for space for one and all for building […] for La Raza Cosmica you shall return to guide the world to a better land where everyone takes care and there’s no greed.112

This fragment represents the esoteric purpose that the idea of the Cosmic Race gave to Chicanos.

During the 1970s, however, revisionists from within the movement would reinterpret the meaning of Chicano identity through la raza. One of the reasons for the decline of the student movement was in fact this sense of fragmentation, caused by Marxist and feminist Chicana critics who felt that the male-dominated cultural nationalism had certain limits. Certain writers however, found ways to use established rhetorical patterns involving mestizaje and la raza cósmica to develop their ideas on Chicano identity.

Chicana writer Gloria Anzaldúa exemplified the need for a female perspective on

Chicano identity in her 1987 book Borderland/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, a collection of reflective essays and bilingual poetry on female mestiza identity. Anzaldúa, a self-proclaimed

“seventh generation American” descended from Spanish settlers in Texas, (and thus without any

“real ‘original Mexican’ roots”)113 had participated in MeCHA during the Chicano movement,

112“La Raza Cósmica” Es Tiempo! August 1973: Los Altos Hills California.

113Karin Ikas, “Interview with Gloria Anzaldúa” in Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Second Edition, by Gloria Anzaldúa, (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books; 1987, 1999), 234-235.

McRae 50 and later went on to teach and lecture in Chicano Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.114

Frustrated by male-dominated Chicano politics (which in her opinion reflected traditional

Mexican machismo), she began to explore her own identity as a bilingual, multiracial lesbian living in the borderlands between Mexico and the United States. Borderlands/La Frontera is significant, thus, not only for its feminist approach to mestizo identity, but also for its exploration of the meaning of the inherently transnational Borderlands as a geographical, spiritual and psychological zone. Appropriately, Anzaldúa found direction in part in the pluralism of

Vasconcelos’s raza cósmica and its historical relevance to the Borderlands.

In the chapter of Borderlands entitled “La conciencia de la mestiza: Towards a New

Consciousness,” Anzaldúa paraphrases Vasconcelos’s motto to describe the essence of the new mestiza: Por la mujer de mi raza hablará el espíritu.”115 Anzaldúa addresses Vasconcelos’s theory directly when she describes la raza cósmica in her own words:

At the confluence of two or more genetic streams, with chromosomes constantly ‘crossing over,’ this mixture of races, rather than resulting in an inferior being, provides hybrid progeny, a mutable, more malleable species with a rich gene pool. From this racial, ideological, cultural and biological cross-pollinization, an “alien” consciousness is presently in the making— a new mestiza consciousness, una concienca de mujer. It is a consciousness of the Borderlands.116

The concept of mestiza presented here weaves in and out of two cultures, continually crossing a cultural border and not conforming to one singular norm. Mestiza identity allows the Chicana to combine analytical “convergent” reasoning with “divergent” thought that shuns set patterns and

114Ibid., 228.

115Anzaldúa, 99. Anzaldúa acknowledges in a footnote her creative liberty with the phrase, but appears to attribute the original motto erroneously to the text of La raza cósmica, when in fact the original (instituted during Vasconcelos’s rectorship) came from the official seal of the UNAM: “Por mi raza, hablará el espíritu.”

116Ibid.

McRae 51 tries to encompass the larger perspective.117 This hybrid mindset will liberate her from the social forces of machismo that subjugate her due to her ethnicity and gender. The combination of rational “Western” thought with a cosmic mindset recalls Vasconcelos’s own recognition of the necessity of eventually incorporating the technological ideals of the white race with the emotive, aesthetic aspects of la quinta raza.118

The new mestiza of Anzaldúa’s design occupies the Borderlands: a distinctive blended space that corresponds with her mixed identity. The concept of the Borderlands also mirrors closely the idea of Aztlán; that is, a distinctly Chicano homeland that lends territorial legitimacy to Chicanos. Though the Borderlands (like Aztlán) do not conform to recognized political borders, its inhabitants are foreigners in both the United States and Mexico. In her opening essay in Borderlands, “The Homeland, Aztlán/El otro México”, Anzaldúa gives a side-by-side account of mestizo history and the formation of the Borderlands119, showing the mestizo’s inherent ties to a region without a standard national identity. Anzaldúa also offers her own assessment of increased migration from Mexico towards the United States as “el retorno to the promised land” which has in turn created “a shock culture, a border culture, a third country, a closed country.”120

Descriptions of perilous frontier crossings and stalking border patrols contrast from the mestizo utopia that idyllic images of Aztlán recall; instead, these descriptions reflect the problems and prejudices imposed by white society within the Borderlands. Beyond the feminist perspective

117Ibid., 101.

118Vasconcelos, The Cosmic Race/La raza cósmica, 65.

119Anzaldúa, 25-30.

120Ibid., 33.

McRae 52 offered by Borderlands, Anzaldúa makes definitive statements about the geographical space associated with and inherently connected to a more mestizo identity.

Criticisms of Anzaldúa’s ideas have their base in the fundamental problems noted in

Vasconcelos’s essay. Marilyn Grace Miller recognizes that Anzaldúa’s idea of mestizo identity appears to homogenize and equalize the wide range of experiences among mestizos since

Columbus’s arrival in 1492.121 Like all proponents of la raza cósmica, Anzaldúa only extracts the Spanish and indigenous aspects of mestizo identity, only mentioning in passing African and

Asian ancestry as part of the makeup of the mestizaje. The ideology of la raza in Anzaldua’s work sharply draws the line between Chicano and Anglo society, making itself the

“counterideology” to expansionist ideals (Manifest Destiny) nurtured within the Anglo-

American mentality.122 Anzaldúa continues the dichotomy utilized since the rise of Mexican-

American self-identification through the idea of La Raza, though she augments it by incorporating dichotomy of machismo vs. feminism, even going as far as saying: “The modern meaning of the word ‘machismo,’ as well as the concept, is actually an Anglo invention.”

Today’s macho has doubts about his ability to feed and protect his family. His “machismo” is an adaptation to oppression and poverty and low self-esteem. It is the result of hierarchical male dominance. The Anglo, feeling inadequate and inferior and powerless, displaces or transfers these feelings to the Chicano by shaming him. In the Gringo world, the Chicano suffers from excessive humility and self-effacement, shame of self and self- depreciation.123

121 Miller, 38.

122 Noel P. Gist and Anthony Gary Dworkin, The Blending of Races: Marginality and Identity in World Perspective (New York, London, Sydney, Toronto: Wiley Inter-Science, 1972), 182.

123 Anzaldúa, 105.

McRae 53

Thus, the suffering of Chicanas under their self-doubting husbands, fathers and brothers stems from the fundamental contradictions between Anglo and mestizo society. The acceptance of la raza cósmica represents the overcoming of the hardships faced by all Chicanos.

The idea of surpassing social limitations through the idea of la raza cósmica also appeared in Andrés Guerrero’s A Chicano Theology, a thematic evaluation of Chicano identity and liberation, particular in relation to socio-cultural symbols such as “Nuestra Señora de

Guadalupe” and, of course, Vasconelos’s racial prognostications. Originally completed as part of his doctoral studies at Harvard Divinity School, Orbis Books published Guerrero’s treatise on

Chicano identity and its spiritual extensions in 1987. The publication of A Chicano Theology by

Orbis Books (the publishing arm of the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers) is significant, as it directly connected Guerrero’s ideas to those of liberation theology, which had grown in popularity among left-leaning Latin American Catholics during the previous decade. Liberation theology, with its emphasis on social justice and empowering impoverished people, was an apt basis for Guerrero’s ideas, particularly because it connected the Chicano struggle with the atmosphere of political and social upheaval in Latin America in the 1980s.124 Though A Chicano

Theology has since gone out of print, its appeal to the promotion of Chicano identity is evident from its recognition of Catholicism as one of the unifying factors among Latin Americans.

Fittingly, Vasconcelos and other Latin American intellectuals made similar observations on the

124 See quote on back cover of Andres Guerrero, A Chicano Theology (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1987) by Moises Sandoval, editor of Maryknoll and Revista Maryknoll: “…[Guerrero] constructs a theology of liberation that is uniquely Chicano because it goes beyond biblical reflection to the message and meaning of Our Lady of Guadalupe. And the end of the journey is not just liberation for us Chicanos but a commitment to join in the struggle of our brothers and sisters in Latin America and in other poor nations.”

McRae 54 unifying factor of religion125, as did faith-based Chicano groups such as Católicos por La Raza who criticized the Church’s ostensible ignorance of pressing Chicano social issues.126

Guerrero’s linking of the Chicano experience with that of poor and oppressed people around the world leads him to place special significance on the word ‘cosmic,’ particularly its use by Vasconcelos to describe the people of Latin America. The universality of the word

‘cosmic’ appeals to Guerrero, and he labels it “symbolic” of “the triumphs of the first culture to be truly universal,” referring of course to Chicanos.127 Guerrero proceeds to reiterate Chicano historian Rodolfo Acuña’s theory of internal colonialism, a historical model originally proposed in the landmark Chicano history survey text Occupied America in 1972. This model stated that

“Mexican Americans were a conquered people subjected to the conditions of a colonial society: discrimination, a dual wage system, the cooptation of its elites, and ruthless violence”128, and even though Acuña abandoned this model, Guerrero used it as the framework for Chicano liberation. The denial of civil rights and the lack of spiritual leadership lead Guerrero to conclude that Chicanos as a people have been “treated as strangers” on their own land and within their own church.129

Accordingly, Guerrero’s chapter A Chicano Theology devoted to la raza cósmica declares Vasconelos’s idea as a cure for racism, the “social disease” and “living nightmare” that

125Fell, 647.

126“Catolicos por la Raza”, Aztlán: An Anthology of Mexican American Literature. ed. Luis Valdez and Stan Steiner, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), 391-392.

127Guerrero, 19-20.

128García, 147.

129Guerrero, 25.

McRae 55 had disenfranchised Chicanos. Guerrero also hails Vasconcelos’s ideas of racial inclusiveness as

“social genius” of combining the four races of the world,130 yet at times it remains unclear which races la raza cósmica really contains. A pastiche of quotes and interviews with Chicano leaders does not succeed in definitively answering this question either. Rubén Armendariz and Guerrero himself seem to go beyond the sole consideration of indigenous-Spanish mestizaje by suggesting the combination of many racial colors, yet others such as Reies Lopez Tijerina and Lupe

Anguiano only mention the blending of two races. Guerrero appears to eventually side with this second model, stating: “The mestizaje of the oppressor and the oppressed would bring about a new person, neither oppressor or oppressed but a blending of the two.”131 Like Anzaldúa and other Chicano supporters of la raza cósmica, Guerrero found it simpler to reduce his vision of

Chicano identity to the binary of the European and the Indian, removing any real consideration of the other equally important dimensions of this multicultural identity.

Under Guerrero’s interpretation, la raza cósmica contains greater religious meaning for

Christians, and is in fact comparable to the New Creation discussed by the apostle Paul in the

New Testament. Just as in Christ there is no East or West, in la raza cósmica there are no racial colors, thus creating a secular parallel to the New Creation referenced by the apostle Paul in his letter to the Galatians.132 The Chicano’s ultimate destiny as the paradigm for the future utopian state of humanity, thus, corresponds with Christian theology. From this perspective, Guerrero decided that Vasconcelos ideas of beauty as a principle criterion for la quinta raza. The idea that ugliness, poverty, and misery will simply fade away during Vasconcelos’s aesthetic age

130Ibid., 122-123.

131Ibid., 131.

132Ibid., 133.

McRae 56 contradicts the “raising up” of the poor people as espoused by liberation theology.133 In this way, Guerrero acknowledges the racism of Vasconcelos’s original model, though he claims la raza cósmica still has special significance for Chicanos, and theologians should work to remove its racist elements. All of the Chicano leaders that he interviewed for A Chicano Theology are in agreement with him on the point that la raza cósmica should be the central element of a Chicano theology of liberation.

Guerrero’s work, which at times reads like an extended sermon, has strong convictions, yet the clear personal bias in his work seems to undermine his ideas. Guerrero recognizes criticisms of Vasconcelos as valid (his continued use of eugenic models in his ideology, a

“hierarchy of values with the whites first and the blacks at the end”) but agrees with the Chicano leaders he interviews, one of whom declares: “One cannot get into [Vasconcelos’s] life, or understand why he did that. The theme of La Raza Cósmica in itself is not racist.”134 Like his contemporary Anzaldúa, Guerrero had no qualms with making the historical parallel between

Vasconcelos’s philosophy and the modern struggle of the Chicano: they both reflect a mestizo people’s struggle against the oppressive forces of racial purity. The problems of Vasconcelos’s work run deeper than eugenic racial models. Neither Anzaldúa nor Guerrero have the inclination to incorporate other racial elements beyond European and indigenous into their symbolism, save for a few brief mentions of the hardships of blacks. In the same way, these works homogenize the diversity of Mesoamerican indigenous culture, looking towards the Aztec culture as the only

133Ibid., 149.

134Ibid., 134.

McRae 57 important predecessor of pre-Hispanic peoples.135 Though these authors have reconstructed

Vasconcelos’s ideas, some of the basic limitations of la raza cósmica obscure the best intentions of their authors.

Both Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera and Guerrero’s A Chicano Theology find inspiration in la raza cósmica, which they passed on to at least a few of their readers. Students continue to read Anzaldúa’s work and view it as an important part of the development of

Chicano literature, while Guerrero’s work is fairly obscure. Anzaldúa’s essays in

Borderlands/La Frontera called for a break from the threads of chicanismo that had originated from the male-dominated movement of the 1960s, causing an impression on a new generation of radical Chicana writers. On the other hand, Hispanic scholars at the University of California,

Berkeley and Loyola Marymount University have pushed for the reprint of A Chicano Theology, citing the work’s collection of interviews with Chicano community leaders as “crucial in a time when the Latino lacks clear and public national leaders.”136 In conclusion, Anzaldúa and

Guerero’s strong statements have not gone unnoticed, transferring la raza cósmica to yet another generation of activists, writers, and students.

135Especially important in this analysis is Guerrero’s parallel study of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe (the Virgin of Guadalupe,) whose representation as the combination of the Catholic Virgin Mary and “an Aztec maiden” show the codification of Aztec culture into the official Mexican (and by extension, Chicano) identity. See Ibid., I05.

136Jesse Fanciulli, “A Different American” The Tribune. 17 March 2002. Accessed 20 April 2008 .

McRae 58

Conclusions

Beginning in the late 1960s, Chicano movement intellectuals renovated Mexican nationalist thought in order to achieve the unity they needed to receive recognition and responses within U.S. society. Within the hyper-racial milieu of the U.S., the redeployment of José

Vasconcelos’s idea of la raza cósmica served their purposes well, not just for polarizing socially and culturally aware Mexican-American students, but also for creating an identity separate from established nationalist programs within the U.S. and Mexico. This transnational identity created both an imagined physical and spiritual territory (Aztlán, or alternately, the Borderlands), inhabited by the definitive mestizo synthesis conceived in Vasconcelos’s original essay.

Vasconcelos’s nationalist project trickled down and influenced a sense of mestizo identity among the larger Mexican population. The development of Vasoncelos’s ideas followed with the development of Latin American thought in the early 20th century, as intellectuals from Cuba to

Uruguay sought to define the Latin American spirit, particularly in contrast to the imposing national figure of the United States. For Mexican intellectuals like Vasconcelos, this question became particularly acute, due to the national crisis of the Mexican Revolution and Mexico’s proximity to the United States.

Vasconcelos’s solution to the predicament of national identity emphasized the racial diversity of the people Mexico, an ultimate mixture of humanity’s four racial divisions.

Vasconcelos viewed each race as endowed with a mission oriented towards creating the final quinta raza, which would herald in an era of utopia: a harmonious union of the material and the spirit. The results of Vasconcelos’s ideas, along with his noted reform of the Mexican public education system, influenced several generations of Revolutionary nationalism, and have only faced serious criticism in the past few decades. Meanwhile, as immigration towards the United

McRae 59

States has steadily increased, Mexican migrants settling in the United States have brought with them mestizo identity constructions, often times reduced to what they considered their most prominent roots: European and indigenous culture. Early movements to mobilize Mexican-

American populations heavily emphasized this importance of la raza, though they did not mention Vasconcelos by name. Only with the commencement of the Chicano movement would

Mexican-American students and leaders rediscover Vasconcelos’s original writings and adapt them for the Chicano experience.

Chicano incorporation of la raza cósmica into the movement’s ideology primarily manifested through its rhetoric and writing, as evidenced by documents such as El Plan de Santa

Barbara and community and student newspapers in the late 1960s and early 1970s. As Chicano academic created concrete plans of studies, more opportunities arose to teach future generations of Chicano students the tenets of la raza cósmica, whether through studies of Revolutionary literature, Mexican-American psychology, or indigenous heritage. As the Chicano movement matured into mainstream professional and political organizations, the student and intellectual arm continued to reinvent itself, even as its visibility faded. The cases of the works of Gloria

Anzaldúa and Andrés Guerrero in the 1980s represents new articulations of la raza cósmica, which differ strongly from the predecessors by openly acknowledging their direct connection to the ideas of Vasconcelos. These works of strong conviction spoke idealistically about the futures of la raza cósmica, yet could not come to terms with the original essay’s ever-present contradictions.

Marilyn Grace Miller summarizes the central problem of Vasconcelos’s work for people who continue to accept its futurist vision: though Vasconcelos denounces the idea of the superiority of one race over another in La raza cósmica, his “questioning of a dominant ideology

McRae 60 in both formal and thematic terms… did not so much challenge racial stereotypes as reformulate them.”137 Vasconcelos revived what had been previously considered negative characteristics of

Mexican identity (irrationality and emotiveness) and placed them at the forefront of his multiethnic society. Aspects of Mexican identity became part of a positive and, paradoxically, superior destiny which persons of Mexican descent could not avoid. This identity also created a sense of purpose in the formation of the transnational space created by Mexican-Americans who feel like foreigners within the standard national contexts of Mexico and the United States. Albert

C. Camarillo profiles this transnational space as “Mex-America”, referring to a population of

Mexican origin primarily concentrated (approximately 75%) in the southwestern United

States.138 This group contains a great deal of diversity itself, with the term “Chicano” still experiencing a degree of popularity. Gregory Rodriguez, on the other hand, uses the more pointed “Mongrel America” to describe this space, a term that reflects Mexican Americans’ both empowering and damning refusal to conform to one “pure’ racial category. In spite of this non- conformation, Rodriguez quotes Ohio Congressman Tom Sawyer to point out that “traditional measures of ethnicity and race may no longer reflect…growing diversity.”139 The diversification of the United States increasingly muddles traditional definitions of race, both in a biological and cultural sense, also affecting our former conceptions of race-based nationality.

Alan Knight ends his brief survey of indigenismo in Mexico during the Revolutionary years with the observation: “The racial theorists of the Porfiriato may have been relegated to

137Miller, 42-43.

138Camarillo, 513-517.

139Rodriguez, 260.

McRae 61 dusty bookshelves, but the daily practice that their theories rationalized continues.”140 We could make a similar observation about post-Porfiriato racial theorists such as José Vasconcelos, whose theories have prevailed despite stiff criticisms and radical adaptations, especially among

Chicanos in the United States. The book title that ignited my initial curiosity highlights the unwavering presence of these theories in the way we approach the history of the Americas as well as modern Mexican-American identity. The purpose of this paper has been to reveal part of the origins of Chicano identity and its strong tradition of mestizo pride within U.S. society. My respect for the struggles of Mexican Americans, be they immigrants or U.S.-born, and for all civil rights movements has led me to present these criticisms of La raza cósmica, with the hopes that racial frameworks and essentialist models can be superseded by all and that subjectivity of skin color will no longer predetermine a person’s personality and character.

140Knight, 102.

McRae 62

Epilogue: The Continued Mutations of La raza cósmica

In light of the influence of la raza cósmica on Chicano intellectuals and their search for identity, it is ironic to note that Vasconeclos distanced himself from his racial theories soon after he published la raza cósmica. Vasconcelos seems to have reconsidered the gravity of his claims, stating in the introduction to his following work Indología that he did not really recommend the present work and that he promptly planned to abandon the topic of race.141 Although La raza cósmica would later be reprinted in various editions, Vasconcelos appeared to disown his former ideas of race, as if he realized its practical limitations. Vacillation defined Vasconcelos’s later life, as he grew disillusioned with the direction of post-Mexican Revolution governments, particularly the administration of the virulently anticlerical Plutarco Calles. Vasconcelos even eventually clarified the meaning of the UNAM motto, stating that: “por la raza hablará mi espíritu” referred to the Holy Spirit, a reflection the more conservative Catholic stance of his later years.142 La raza cósmica has tenaciously persisted, however, despite Vasconcelos’s personal doubts, and has taken on different forms since the creators of the Chicano movement adapted its themes of mestizo pride. The decline of the Chicano movement during the 1970s notwithstanding, recent years have seen a continued interest in the meaning of the changing ethnic makeup of American society. These further mutations are innovative and often empowering (as was the nationalist rhetoric of the Chicano movement) but we must consider them as well through the same critical lens that I have applied above to Vasconcelos.

141De Beer, 302-303.

142See Cristina Pacheco, “Ha Muerto Ulises (Una Antievocación)” In Ulises criollo: edición crítica, Claude Fell, coor., 1069. This alarming first-hand account of an admiring student’s interview with Vasconcelos in his later life shows the extent of his later life pessimism.

McRae 63

Educator, journalist, and former U.S. diplomat Raymond Gonzales has specifically mentioned Vasconcelos’s “Cosmic Race” as a model for a new American multicultural society, a viewpoint that subtly breaks from the Chicano viewpoint that Mexican Americans embodied the realization of this mixture through La Raza. Gonzales mentions in a 1995 article in Hispanic

Link that Time Magazine devoted a special issue to the topic of American multiculturalism and in particular racial miscegenation in the United States, stating that: “this new America ‘whole’ is what Vasconcelos was envisioning in his essay on the Cosmic Race.”143 In a keynote address delivered at the Heritage of America awards banquet, Gonzales reiterated Vasconcelos’s relevance to modern American society by situating Vasconcelos’s forward-thinking ideas as the polar opposite of long-standing “view of the super European race envisioned in [Friedrich]

Nietzshez’s [sic] work.”144 For Gonzales, an increasingly cosmopolitan American society (in both cultural and genealogical terms) represents a new kind of national unity. The new “Cosmic

Race” of American society will replace older ideologies that scorn the racial mixture proposed in

Vasconcelos’s work. While there is no direct mention of from the Chicano movement in these pieces, Gonzales clearly draws influence chicanismo in shaping his image. Despite historical nativist sentiment spurred on by white society, Gonzales sees the United States as containing the

143Raymond J. Gonzales “Vasconcelos’ Cosmic Race Shifts to the North…Forging the World’s First Multicultural Society” A Lifetime of Dissent: Passionate and Powerful Articles on Critical Issues of Our Times. (XLibris, 2006), 149.

144Idem, “Keynote Address, Heritage of America Awards Banquet,” 125. This statement is highly ironic, as Vasconcelos was certainly an admirer of the 19th century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (whose concept of the übermensch has been accused of inspiring Nazi ideology.) Nietzsche’s influence in Vasconelos’s own philosophy of aesthetic monism is most evident in his admiration of ancient Greece, his recognition of spiritual “Apollonian” and material “Dionysian” tendencies, and his belief that art and aesthetic will restore wholeness to contemporary life. See Swarthout, 106.

McRae 64 legal and social conditions that will produce the new people of America, very similar to

Vasconcelos’s raza cósmica.

Gonzales’s appeal to Vasconcelos’s ideas shines with the same idealism that Vasconcelos himself once expressed towards the goal of inevitable, indistinguishable mestizaje. The model of racial diversity and cultural plurality will trump old racial divisions, creating a new American identity championed by U.S. society. At heart, however, la raza cósmica remains Mexican and

Latin American in character, used by intellectuals and artists alike to inspire pride in the mestizo people that can only be found through the Latin American experience. Avant-garde Artists

Guillermo Gómez-Pena and Roberto Sifuentes explored the mestizo experience in their traveling performance art exhibition from the mid 90s: the Temple of Confessions. In this piece, presented throughout the American Southwest and other parts of the United States, Gómez-Peña and

Sifuentes dressed and presented themselves as stereotypical Mexican Americans, named “El Pre-

Colombian Vato” and “San Pocho Aztlaneca”: two Borderland santos. Visitors to the exhibition could “confess” their reactions to the exhibit or their own intercultural fears to these hybrid figures. In this kitsch-religious space, divergent peoples and races come together and often confront each other before models and portrayals of contemporary mestizaje.

Journalist Ed Morales, in an essay included in the “performance notes” version of Temple of Confessions, connects Gómez-Peña and Sifuentes’s bold artistic statement with la raza cósmica:

While the presence of La Raza Cosmica is felt throughout the efforts of almost every political/academic/advocacy think tank/community organization/university club that has anything to do with Latinos, its most palpable manifestation can be found in [Temple of Confessions.] …The central issue in Gómez-Peña and Sifuente’s techno-piracy is access: access by a misinterpreted meta-ethnicity to a re-sanitized American technological infrastructure and

McRae 65 access by mainstream America to the historical and cultural memory of a hybrid Nafazteca south-of-the border being.145

The mestizaje of la raza cósmica persists, even as the mediums change from books, murals, and newspapers to post-modern performance art and new technological interactions. Particularly in the realm of information technology and cyberspace, ideas and dialogue on the meaning of la raza cósmica continue to manifest, including some of its harshest critics.146 Morales’s assessment of the influence of la raza cósmica in the United States rings true: Vasconcelos’s idea of mestizaje has clearly guided the thinking of those seeking a form of Latino (and not solely Chicano) political, social, and cultural solidarity in face of dominant American society.

As the United States becomes increasingly more ethnically and culturally complex, the ever- evolving permutations of la raza cósmica continues to update and reframe the meaning of mestizo identity in North America.

145Ed Morales “Los Techno-Subversivos: The End of False Purity in Cyberspace,” in Temple of Confessions, Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Roberto Sifuentes (New York: powerHouse Books, 1996), 136-137.

146The U.S.-based pro-indigenous identity website Mexica Movement: Indigenous Liberation of Anahuac provides extensive radical criticisms on mestizo identity, claiming that terms such as La Raza, Aztlán and Latino have Euro-centric origins and diminish the essential indigenous origins of the true “Mexica” identity. The website’s actual readership and impact is unknown and at best outlying, but it is the first Google search result for the query “Mexica.”

McRae 66

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