(Dis)Articulating La Raza Cósmica: The Chicano/a engagement with José Vasconcelos

This essay examines the late 1960s and early 70s Chicano/a incorporation of José Vasconcelos’ seemingly benign notion of the “cosmic race” in Chicano/a scholarship. As a theory that crossed the US-Mexico border, Mexican... [ view full abstract ]

This essay examines the late 1960s and early 70s Chicano/a incorporation of José Vasconcelos’ seemingly benign notion of the “cosmic race” in Chicano/a scholarship. As a theory that crossed the US-Mexico border, Mexican mestizo nationalism became reinterpreted and reimagined from the perspective of a negatively racialized, and for the most part, working class population. In the first section of the essay I analyze Vasconcelos’ mestizaje ideology and highlight some of the most problematic and racist aspects of his work, including his little known 1940 work as editor of a pro-Nazi magazine El Timón. In the second section of the essay, I discuss what I see as four general Chicano/a engagements with Vasconcelos’ mestizaje ideology; these are: 1. dismissal, 2. willful misreading, 3. selective appropriation, and 4. direct critique. My aim in identifying these different Chicano/a re-formulations of Vasconcelos’ mestizaje ideology is to highlight the existence of an alternative Chicano/a discursive genealogy critical of evolutionary formulations of mestizaje, one that ultimately stood in stark contrast with Vasconcelos’ racist view of indigenous people. The centrality of mestizaje discourse in contemporary Chicano and Latino thought has made deconstructing its ideological roots and the work of José Vasconcelos, in particular, necessary.