Saturday, December 7, 2013

Some thoughts on Vasconselos' raza cosmica

Vasconselos imagined a new world order in which a fifth race, "la raza cosmica" would be the union of all men: better than any race before.  Civilization will be transformed into this new kind of people that are bringing the previous superiority of the white race and all the mixed raced people together to fuse into a new, utterly good human race.  The new race will completely replace the other four races from before...and this mission will be consummated by no other than the Latin people of the world.

However, I find some problems with this optimistic outlook of the faith of the cosmic human race:
It is somewhat to the detriment of all the other races as Vasconselos assigns the Latin people to be the determinant race.   To his credit, he acknowledges that the Latin people are already the mixture of many races; thus they are the true representatives of a generic human race, his view, however, still emphasizes a superior race, which doesn't fit well in my mind.  There is a notion of eugenics here. No one should have the desire and the will to assign a superior race.  Just let it be; let the world form and shape itself.  The beauty of humans is their diversity.  Powers come and go; nations rise and fall, and it will be as such in continuum as long as there is a world capable of accommodating humans.

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