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| {{Short description|Non-fiction book by Jose Vasconcelos}}
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| {{Infobox book
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| | name = La Raza Cosmica
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| | image = Caratula_del_Libro_La_Raza_Cosmica_de_Jose_Vasconcelos.jpg
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| | country = Mexico
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| | language = Spanish
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| | author = [[Jose Vasconcelos]]
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| | subject = [[Psychology]]
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| | published = 1925
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| | pages = 164
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| }}
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| '''''La raza cósmica''''' ('''''The Cosmic Race''''') is a Spanish-language book written and published in 1925 by Mexican philosopher, secretary of education, and 1929 presidential candidate [[José Vasconcelos]] to express the ideology of a future "fifth race" in the Americas; an [[Multiracial people|agglomeration of all the races]] in the world with no respect to color or number to erect a new civilization: Universópolis.
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| Claiming that [[social Darwinist]] and [[racialist]] ideologies are 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.
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| 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".
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| == Critiques ==
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| The ideas put forth in ''La raza cósmica'' are held to be rather controversial.<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal|last=Juárez|first=Nicandro F.|date=1972|title=José Vasconcelos and La Raza Cósmica|journal= Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies|volume=3|pages=51–82}}</ref><ref name=":1">{{Cite journal|last=Celarent|first=Barbara|date=November 2014|title=La raza cósmica / The Cosmic Race, bilingual ed. By José Vasconselos. Translated by Didier T. Jaen. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. Pp. xxxiii+126. A Mexican Ulysses: An Autobiography . By José Vasconcelos. Abridged and translated by W. Rex Crawford. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1972. Pp. 288.|url=https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/680064|journal=American Journal of Sociology|language=en|volume=120|issue=3|pages=998–1004|doi=10.1086/680064|issn=0002-9602}}</ref><ref name=":2">{{Cite journal|last=Palacios|first=Agustín|date=November 2017|title=Multicultural Vasconcelos: The optimistic, and at times willful, misreading of La Raza Cósmica|url=http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41276-017-0095-6|journal=Latino Studies|language=en|volume=15|issue=4|pages=416–438|doi=10.1057/s41276-017-0095-6|s2cid=148672285 |issn=1476-3435}}</ref> For example, Celarent notes that many felt that the work and its author were exceedingly racist, such as when Vasconcelos' wrote “the Chinese, who under the holy counsel of Confucian morals multiply like rats."<ref name=":1" /><sup>(p1000)</sup><ref name=":3">{{Cite book|author=Vasconcelos, José|url=http://worldcat.org/oclc/278473643|title=The cosmic race|date=1997|publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press|isbn=0-8018-5655-8|oclc=278473643}}</ref><sup>(p19)</sup> However, when it was first written, Vasconcelos' piece was to be a reaction or refutation of Social Darwinism and biological racism, although Juárez suggests that Vasconcelos' may have added to Mexican Conservative thought by doing so.<ref name=":0" /><sup>(p51)</sup>
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| In order to refute the ideas of racial superiority, Vasconcelos conceptualized a fifth race, the cosmic race, something that is an agglomeration of all of the other races.<ref name=":3" /> As Palacios notes, this race is called cosmic as it suggests that humanity will become combined and reach its destiny as inferior traits are lost through synthesis and a new Spiritual Era is reached.<ref name=":2" /><sup>(p420)</sup> Juárez offers a critique to this concept against biological racism by suggesting that Vasconcelos reduced non-white races in order to uphold "Anglo-Saxon propaganda" and "Nordic educational, social and governmental systems."<ref name=":0" /><sup>(p70)</sup>
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| Another critique is offered by Palacios on the basis that while Vasconcelos did not support so-called "negative eugenics" or Social Darwinism, he did advocate for a "eugenics of aesthetics." Palacios describes eugenics of aesthetics as a survival of the beautiful, as compared to Darwin's survival of the fittest.<ref name=":2" /><sup>(p422)</sup> Palacios suggests that this viewpoint alongside other comments made by Vasconcelos show that he held some races as better than others.<ref name=":2" /><sup>(p422)</sup>
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| ==Usage of phrase==
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| The title {{lang|es|La raza cósmica}} embodies the notion that traditional, exclusive concepts of so-called "[[Race (human categorization)|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 who pointed out that so-called [[Latin Americans|"Latin" Americans]] have the blood of all the world's so-called "races": European, Asian-descended native Americans, and Africans, thereby transcending the peoples of the "[[Old World]]".
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| Vasconcelos also [[Allusion|alluded]] to the term when he coined the National Autonomous University of Mexico's motto: "{{lang|es|Por mi raza hablará el espíritu}}" ('Through my race the spirit will speak').
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| === Contemporary usage ===
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| Contemporarily ''La raza cósmica'' has become about ''mestizaje'' (racial mixture) and [[mestizo]]s/[[Métis]] rather than the creation of the cosmic race.<ref name=":2" /> Palacios describes how the [[Chicano Movement|Chicano movement]] appropriated and transformed the ideas of Vasconcelos' fifth race into that of Mexican national thought, focusing on the words from a poem by [[Alurista]], "a [[bronze]] people [an ethnic [[alloy]]] with a bronze culture [an [[alloy]] of traditions]."<ref name=":2" /><sup>(p428)</sup> Palacios also gives the example of Valdez, a Chicano writer, who focused on trying to create a society that was less [[Eurocentrism|Eurocentric]] or Western rather than following Vasconcelos' idea to evolve the Indigenous and mixed into something better.<ref name=":2" /><sup>(p430)</sup>
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| Mestizaje as the contemporary notion of cosmic race is shown in ''The Land of the Cosmic Race'' by Christina A. Sue. King and Moras give an overview of this piece and claim that Mexico has been re-founded on 3 pillars: mestizaje, non-racism, and non-blackness.<ref name=":12">{{Cite journal|last=King|first=Martha|date=March 2015|title=Land of the Cosmic Race|url=http://doi.wiley.com/10.1111/socf.12157|journal=Sociological Forum|language=en|volume=30|issue=1|pages=248–251|doi=10.1111/socf.12157}}</ref><sup>(p249)</sup><ref name=":22">{{Cite journal|last=Moras|first=Amanda|date=November 2014|title=Land of the Cosmic Race: Race Mixture, Racism, and Blackness in Mexico. By Christina A. Sue. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. xii+234. $24.95.|url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/678443|journal=American Journal of Sociology|volume=120|issue=3|pages=956–958|doi=10.1086/678443|issn=0002-9602}}</ref><sup>(p956)</sup> They claim mestizaje is the new cultural identity of Mexico; non-racism is applied through this fact, as a place can't be racist if everyone is a mestizo (mixed race); and non-blackness is the removal of blackness from the culture, as a race category, and from the make-up of mestizos.<ref name=":12" /><sup>(249)</sup> Both King and Moras note that Sue suggests that the removal of blackness allows the population focus on uplifting their Mexican identity, which she claims has more basis in whiteness.<ref name=":12" /><sup>(249-50)</sup><ref name=":22" /><sup>(p457)</sup>
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| ==See also==
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| *[[Race and ethnicity in Latin America]]
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| *[[Race of the Future]]
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| *[[Racial democracy]]
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| *[[Postracialism]]
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| *[[Chicano]]
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| *[[Mixed Race Day]]
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| *[[Hispanic]]
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| *[[Latin America]]
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| *[[La Raza]]
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| == References ==
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| <references />
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| == External links ==
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| * [http://www.filosofia.org/aut/001/razacos.htm La Raza Cósmica Misión de la raza iberoamericana Notas de viajes a la América del Sur – Agencia Mundial de Librería, Madrid 1925] (Spanish)
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| {{DEFAULTSORT:Raza Cosmica}}
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| [[Category:1925 non-fiction books]]
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| [[Category:Spanish-language works]]
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| [[Category:Latin American culture]]
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| [[Category:Politics and race]]
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| [[Category:Multiracial affairs in the Americas]]
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| [[Category:Books about race and ethnicity]]
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| [[Category:Race (human categorization)]]
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| [[de:Kosmische Rasse]]
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