José Vasconcelos: The Cosmic Race/La raza cósmica

After the Mexican Revolution (1910–20), a jingoistic ethnocentrism emerged among Mexico’s leading intellectuals in the forging of the country’s nationalism. Mexican culture had to pass the test of lo mexicano —the study of the Mexican ethos through a certain psychoanalytical framework—for it to be part of the larger project of mexicanidad (Mexicanness). This new model set the stage for the rise of the “new mestizo,” an ideology that was introduced in the nineteenth century and later popularized by José Vasconcelos in his book La raza cósmica. This phrase has been misinterpreted as “the cosmic race,” but perhaps a better translation should be “the universal people”—a title that better expresses the sentiment Vasconcelos subscribed to in terms of a future “fifth race” in the Americas. This new people would be a composite of all the “races” who would produce a new civilization called “Universópolis.” He envisioned missionaries from Latin America going forth around the world professing this new universal knowledge because, according to Vasconcelos, their territorial, racial, and spiritual history made them ideal candidates for initiating the universal era. In his view, humanity would inherit the best of “the four racial trunks” (white, Black, Asian, Indigenous American), just as Latin America had done, and thus, the age of the universal people would signal the dawn of an evolved, progressed, and liberal society.