The essay “La raza cósmica,” written as a preface by the Mexican philosopher and politician José Vasconcelos (1882–1959)—whose presidential aspirations were thwarted in the 1929 elections—expresses the essential idea of a “new civilization” born in the Americas. The book’s subtitle—“misión de la raza iberoamericana”—reflects the same evangelical spirit that can be found in most of the author’s writing. The love he professes to see in action everywhere on the American continent is in fact the antithesis of the anti-spiritual values being promoted by Anglo Americans in their economic policies, subjugation campaigns, and invasions around the world.
The Mexican representative’s book essentially consists of his “Notas de viaje a la América del Sur,” the notes he took during his travels in Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile in 1922. Seeing things through the prism of his own country’s recent experience—Mexico was only just rising from the ashes of the revolution that lasted over a decade—Vasconcelos was impressed with the development he saw during his trip in the southern part of the continent. To some extent, his philosophy sought to create a “miscegenation,” albeit in exchange for the cultural assimilation of all ethnic groups. Begun under the auspices of the official positivist doctrine of the Porfirio Díaz regime, and further refined by Pythagorean and “aesthetic monism” theories, the “cosmic race” eventually contributed to later studies of ethnic values that function as an ethic, and to the practice of seeing ethnic groups as a source of aesthetics. This was its major contribution to the question of Latin American identity.