La Raza Cósmica

Published in 1925, La Raza Cósmica (The Cosmic Race) is an essay written by late Mexican philosopher, secretary of education, and 1929 presidential candidate, José Vasconcelos to express the ideology of a future "fifth race" in the Americas; an agglomeration of all the races in the world with no respect to color or number to erect a new civilization: Universópolis. As he explains in his literary work, armies of people would then go forth around the world professing their knowledge. Vasconcelos continues to say that the people of the Iberian regions of the Americas (that is to say, the parts of the continent colonised by Portugal and Spain) have the territorial, racial, and spiritual factors necessary to initiate the "universal era of humanity". As a form of futuristic race, the people would have major influences from Mongoloids (native Amerindians), Caucasians (colonizing Europeans), and Negroids (black slaves).

Claiming that the Darwinist ideologies are "scientific" theories only created to validate, explain, and justify ethnic superiority and to repress others, Vasconcelos attempts to refute these theories and goes on to recognize his words as being an ideological effort to improve the cultural morale of a "depressed race" by offering his optimistic theory of the future development of a cosmic race.

Usage of phrase

The phrase, "La raza cósmica", in English "the cosmic race", embodies the notion that traditional, exclusive concepts of race and nationality can be transcended in the name of humanity's common destiny. It originally referred to a movement by Mexican intellectuals during the 1920s^{[citation needed]} who pointed out that Latin Americans have the blood of all the world's races (White Europeans, Asian-descended Native-Americans and Black Africans), transcending the peoples of the "old world".

Vasconcelos also used the term when he coined the National Autonomous University of Mexico's motto: "Por mi raza hablará el espíritu".

It has come, often in its shortened version "La Raza", to refer to the mixed race people of Latin America, i.e., primarily mestizos, mulattos, and zambos or all three combined. Vasconcelos also used the expression, "la raza de bronce" ("the Bronze race"), in this same sense.^{[citation needed]}

See La Raza for other uses of the phrase.

See also

• Chicano
• Hispanic
• Latino
• Mexican American
• Mestizo
• Mulatto
• Multiracial
• Race in Brazil
• Race (United States Census)
• Race of the Future

References

José Vasconselos, La Raza Cósmica (Mexico D.F., Espasa Calpe, S.A., 1948), 47-51

External links

• La Raza Cósmica Misión de la raza iberoamericana Notas de viajes a la América del SurAgencia Mundial de Librería, Madrid 1925 (Spanish)