Latest / Tales From Aztlantis / Episode 79: 100 Years of Cosmic Racism!

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Episode 79: 100 Years of Cosmic Racism! · Tales From Aztlantis

• 0:41
  SPEAKER_03: Greetings, dear listeners, and welcome to Tales from Aslantis, where we take you on a journey through Chicano, Mexicano, and Mesoamerican history and archaeology, and we help combat the spread of disinformation about these very topics.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_03: We are your hosts, Curly Tlapoyawa.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_03: And Ruben Ariano Tlaka.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_03: What's up, man?
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_03: You ever get a song stuck in your head?
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_03: Sometimes, yeah.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_03: And it's just there, and like you can't it it'll even keep me awake at night.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_03: You know what?
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_03: There's a song that's been stuck in my head, man.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_03: And it goes, We are Chicanos from Outer Space.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_03: That's why they call us the Cosmic Race.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_03: That's a good one.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_03: It is a good one.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_03: And um by Chicanos from Uranus.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_03: That's a good one.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_03: No, I I can't take credit for it myself, but it was a song released by the Chicano Secret Service back in the day during their live performances.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_03: Alo Alcaraz and his crew.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_03: God, this must have been like 1991, 91, early 92.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_03: They came to Albuquerque.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_03: It's the first time I met Lalo and they put on a show at this community center.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_03: And uh they came out and they sang that song.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_03: I don't remember the the rest of the uh the lyrics, but that that line in particular stuck out.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: And it's just like it reminds me of um Juan Tela, friend of the show Juan Tehela.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: So he's um back in the 70s, when I was doing research at at the Benson Library at UT from a dissertation, I found uh a bunch of like, you know, back in the day they used to do the floricantos and then they wouldn't do a collection of the various poems that they you know recited for those events and stuff.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_02: And so it was something similar.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_02: They called it 13 aliens or something like that.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like a bunch of poems in Spanish and Nahuatl and English, and basically, you know uh taken from that idea of being alien, you know, quote unquote alien.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_03: I think one of the the the other lyrics was um ah man, you you can't be our raza because we siphon all your pinche gasa or something like that.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_03: Next time I talk to Lalo, I'm gonna ask him what the lyrics are to that song.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: Since we're on the on the on the whole alien tip, you know, uh one of my most favorite Chicano paintings ever is uh by Chicana uh Laura Molina who did uh Amor Alien.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_02: You ever seen that one?
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_02: Where it's like it looks like they're like on a moon or something, and it's like this uh like it's uh um it's it's reminiscent of of the uh the one of the paintings, the famous Mexican paintings paintings uh that were in the calendars.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_02: I'm blanking on on the artist's name, uh Elguera, I think was his name.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_02: He did you know, like this old panarena painting so there's that one where you have like the Aztec warrior and he's got like the like the the woman, like he's holding her and on on in his lap or something.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_02: So it's like that, but it's it's a take on that, but it's like two aliens, and like I think the female is like in green skin or something, so like Kirk style, right?
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_02: So this idea of being an alien or being cosmic has been around for for quite a while, and maybe I mean it could be because of the individual that we're gonna be talking about today.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: I mean I believe so.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_03: In fact, it it it is the 100th year anniversary, is it not, of the publication of publication, yeah, of uh his infamous screed.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_03: Would you call it a screed?
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh you know, they call it an essay, but don't call it a comeback.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_02: Don't call it a comeback because he's been dead for years.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_03: Too soon.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_03: Is it too soon for that?
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_03: It's funny because it's true.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_03: We are, of course, talking about the infamous Jose Vasconcelos, author of the.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_03: What is the name of this episode again?
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_03: Uh the name of this episode is 100 years of cosmic racism.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_03: Nice.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_03: Good one.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_03: And his infamous book, La Raza Cosmica.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_02: Oh man, that book seriously had such a tremendous impact.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_02: Not just in Mexico, but like here in the US among the Chicanos.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um wow.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_02: So do we want to just dive into it?
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: Let's do it, sir.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_02: Let's do it.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_02: Alright, so um the following is um material that I gathered uh when I was conducting research for my dissertation.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_02: Most of it uh is culled from that.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_02: It's been tweaked a little bit, but by and large, um, this is kind of what I had to say because you know, Vasconcelos uh he looms large in the historiography of not only Mexico, but uh Chicano history as well.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_02: So here we go.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_02: Jose Vasconcelos was born in 1882 and died in 1959.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_02: You know what?
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't even bother to research exactly where he was born and where he died.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_02: I'm assuming he probably died in Mexico Cities, but I'm not sure exactly where he was born.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_02: In any case, he was a towering figure in post-revolutionary Mexico, as a philosopher, educator, and politician.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_02: His influence profoundly shaped the cultural and educational landscape of the nation in the early 20th century.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_02: As Secretary of Public Education from 1921 to 1924, Vasconcelos spearheaded an ambitious program to promote literacy and cultural unity, commissioning the magnificent murals by artists like Diego Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco to adorn public buildings, bringing art and history to the masses.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_02: His work was pivotal in constructing a new national identity for Mexico after the tumultuous revolution, seeking to integrate diverse indigenous and European heritage into a cohesive whole.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_02: So that was his whole on that.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_02: You know, he was trying to blend the two, you know, the whole idea of mestizaje, right?
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: So beyond his practical contributions, Vasconcelos is perhaps best known for his philosophical treatise La Rasa Cosmica or The Cosmic Race, published in 1925.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_02: And here we are, 2025.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's been 100 years, so we figured, hey, let's let's do an episode on Mr.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: Vasconcelos to commemorate this 100 years, as you say, of racism.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_02: This influential essay posited a bold vision for the future of humanity, particularly in Latin America, uh, through the concept of a quote unquote fifth race, right?
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_02: That's what he called it, the fifth race.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: Cinco, the fifth son, but the fifth race.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know, maybe there's some connection there.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I was gonna say, I wonder if there's a if he drew from the Quinto Solid.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_02: Could be.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_02: Emerging from the mixing of all existing races.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_02: So he was thinking about, you know, uh the all the mixing of all the of all the uh various uh in um human races to make this fifth race, right?
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_02: This concept and the broader intellectual current it represents became a cornerstone in the forging of Mexican nationalism, giving rise to a jingoistic ethnocentrism among Mexico's leading intellectuals.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_02: Anything related to Mexican culture had to pass the test of quote unquote lo mexicano for it to be part of the larger project of Mexicanidad, the latter defined as things pertaining to Mexicanness or the quality thereof being Mexican, right?
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_02: So lo Mexicano refers to the study of the Mexican ethos through a psychoanalytical framework that addresses post-revolutionary manifestations of cultural nationalism and philosophical questions of ethnic identity.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_02: The Mexicanist paradigm served as the bedrock for post-revolutionary nationalism and its handmaidens, ethnocentrism and nativism, because of course they were.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_02: It also set the stage for the rise of the quote unquote new mestizo, which was a liberal nationalist ideology from the 19th century that largely went unnoticed until Vasconcelos revived it under the guise of La Rasa Cosmica.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_02: And so, in my opinion, the phrase I think La Rasa Cosmica has been translated too literally and misconstrued as quote unquote the cosmic race.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_02: In my opinion, a better interpretation of the term should be quote the universal people, because that's what it's referring to, which better conveys the sentiments that Vasconcelos made in his essay La Rasa Cosmica.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_02: It's also worth mentioning that mestizo refers to a mixed race person, in case you weren't sure what that meant, uh, often used as an identity by Mexicans and people throughout Central and South America.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_02: And I've met a lot of people when I have asked them how they identify, and they say that they are mestizos, as if that was an actual identity.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, we're not going to get into the whole debate and and the discussion about um mestizo as an identity.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_02: That's something that um, you know, I think we've discussed before on this podcast, but maybe we need to do uh an episode just solely on that and and what uh Jack D.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_02: Forbes, for instance, had to say in his very influential essay about Mestizahe.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_02: In the book, Vasconcelos explained his concept of a future fifth race in the Americas, which would be a composite of all the races in the world, regardless of skin color, to produce a new civilization called Universopolis.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_02: Universopolis.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_02: So that's a strange name for a people for a new race.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, what are you?
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_02: I'm an Universopolis.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_02: Universopolismo.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_02: There you go.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_02: Vasconcelos envisioned the armies of people.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_02: Think about this, armies of people going forth around the world professing their universal knowledge, and that the people most suited for this endeavor naturally were from Central and South America.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: This was so because as he thought, they had the territorial, racial, and spiritual factors necessary to initiate the universal era of humanity.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_02: For example, Vasconcelos wrote this.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, there's just too much shit open on my computer.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_03: So I I clicked on something and it just like went to something else.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_03: So what you read me in the one sentence?
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_03: The last sentence?
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_02: Hold up.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_02: I needed blah blah blah blah blah blah.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_02: This was so because they had the territorial, racial, and spiritual factors necessary to initiate the universal era of humanity.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_03: For example, Vasconcelos wrote The purpose of the new and ancient continent.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, wait, what?
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_03: The new and ancient continent.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_03: All right.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_03: Let me start that over.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_03: That threw me off.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_02: But then again, you have to remember this is this is also a translation that was done from the Spanish by a guy whose name sounds French, and I don't know like if French was his first or second language.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_03: So it could just be a translation issue.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's a translation issue.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_03: The purpose of the new and ancient continent, America, is much more important.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_03: Its predestination obeys the design of constituting the cradle of the fifth race, into which all nations will fuse with each other to replace the four races that have been forging history apart from each other.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_03: The so-called Latin peoples because they have been more faithful to their divine mission in America, are the ones called upon to consummate this mission.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_03: Such fidelity to the occult design is the guarantee of our triumph.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_02: And so uh something to keep in mind to the listener is that this is uh a translation that was done by someone who uh, as we will mention at the end of the of the episode, has kind of a French sounding name.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_02: So some of the translation might sound a bit off, and it could be just because this individual might uh uh might not English might not be their first language, so just keep that in mind.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_02: As previously mentioned, the word cosmic as used by Vasconcelos should be translated to mean universal.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_02: Likewise, the word raza is better understood as referring to people or humanity in general, and not necessarily in the sociological construct of taxonomic race.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_02: And predestination is an idea with Christian theological origins which refers to the belief that everything that happens has already been determined by God.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_02: Convenient.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_02: In his point of view, a universal futuristic humanity would inherit the best of quote the four racial trunks, the black, the Indian, the Mongol, and the white.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_02: Again, this is his words, not mine.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_02: Thus the age of the so-called the universal people would signal the dawn of an evolved, progressed, and liberally minded society.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_02: Vasconcellos envisioned a global utopia spearheaded by the quote Latin peoples who would achieve this ideal by spreading the gospel of Mestisake around the world.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_02: His penchant for utopian idealism heightened Vasconcellos' argument against scientific racism and eugenics.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_02: He claimed, for instance, that social Darwinism was a theory developed to validate and justify white superiority while suppressing the racial other.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_02: Social Darwinism is the long refuted theory, quote unquote theory, that individual and groups and peoples are subject to the same Darwinian laws of natural selection as plants and animals.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_02: It was used in the late 19th and early twentieth centuries to justify political conservatism, imperialism, and racism.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_02: His essay clearly refuted those ideas by portending the future development of a universal man.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_02: However, his work contains strands of Mexican conservatism, ethnic chauvinism, Eurocentrism, and extremely problematic racialized language, as I'm quoted above.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_02: In their essay Return to Astlan, the Chicano rediscovers his Indian past, Guillermo Lux and Maurillo Vihil validate this point.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_03: But they also go a bit further and suggest that Vasconcelos developed the theory of La Rasa Cosmica, at least partially as a minority reaction to the Nordic notions of racial superiority.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_03: Vasconcelos developed a systematic theory which argued that climactic and geographic conditions and mixture of Spanish and Indian races created a superior race.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_03: The concept of La Rasa connotes that the Mestizo is a distinct race and not a Caucasian, as is technically the case in Return to Aslan, page ninety-four.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_02: Countless scholars such as Lux and Vihil have tackled the concept of the cosmic race, and a good amount of that scholarship has been critical of it, and rightly so.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_02: The Basconcelos' Mestizake theory took decades to formulate and it was greatly influenced by Western philosophy and Eastern esotericism.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_02: His notions of universal and racially mixed superhumans existing in an enlightened state are now seen as a utopian intellectual exercise.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_02: Nevertheless, none of that diminishes the fact that ironically his ideas were just as racist towards indigenous people as the Anglo-eugenicists he criticized.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_02: It's now understood that Vasconcelos' ideas paved the way for the insensitive assimilationist policies enacted by the Mexican government towards indigenous groups, an attitude akin to that of Richard H.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_02: Pratt's stance on Native people.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_02: Pratt was a late 19th century U.S.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_02: Army captain who opened the first boarding school for Native American youth in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_02: He famously said that to civilize Native people, you had to quote, kill the Indian to save the man.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_02: In many ways, Vasconcelos' mestizo theory followed in that tradition of encouraging native people to abandon their indigenous ways in favor of modernization and progress.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_02: Furthermore, Vasconcelos' indigenismo project was just an updated version of the positivist ideologies of the previous century.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_02: Ironically, this continuity of liberal intellectual thought ensured that the theory of Mestizaje, which was really an updated version of Hispanismo, would prevail and become the preferred identity for many Mexicans.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_02: And here we have the conundrum of Mexican nationalism.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_02: On the one hand, liberal progressives advocated a mestizo identity for the nation, while people with a more romanticist indigenous view sought to restore the country to its quote unquote Indio roots.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_02: This identity crisis, if you will, is evident in the literature of the time.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_02: For example, take the Mexican poet, journalist, educator, and statesman Amado Nervo, whose poem in the honor of Benito Juarez entitled La Rasa de Bronce, the people of Bronze, followed the typical indigenous tone of eulogizing the Indian past.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_02: And so here I'm gonna uh recite the Spanish version and Curly will uh translate it for us.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_02: Señor, deja que diga la gloria de tu raza, la gloria de los hombres de bronce cuyamasa, meyo de tantos yelmos y escudos laosadia, O Caballeros Tigres, O Caballeros Leones, O Caballeros Aguilas, Ostraigo Mis Canciones, O Enorme Rasa Muerta de Trego Mielegia.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_03: Lord, let me tell you the glory of your people, the glory of the men of bronze, whose club dented audacity out of so many shields and helmets.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_03: O Tiger Knights, O Lion Knights, O Eagle Knights, I bring thee my songs.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_03: O great dead race, I bring you my eulogy.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_03: In Lira Eroica, no page number given.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_02: So there you have it.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_02: Nervo's poem nicely expresses the mainstream Mexican position of acknowledging its indigenous past, but in terms that emphasized its death, in other words, its irrelevance to the present.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_02: I mean that's the way it always is, right?
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_02: So while Nervo exemplified the prevailing view of most Mexicans, Romantic indigenous disagreed and took their ideology to the cultural opposite, one that emphasized indigeneity.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_02: What is interesting is that the ideologies of both Mestizaje and Indigeneity appear to have emerged almost simultaneously in the post-revolutionary period.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_02: On the one hand, you had Vasconcelos proposing the mestizo concept of a transcendental, cosmic, or universal man, and on the other, there were individuals such as Juan Luna Cardenas, whom we've talked about before on this podcast, who advocated the suppression of European elements altogether in favor of a strictly indigenous self-identity and the restoration of Aztic splendor.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_02: And so what I want to do here is uh read an excerpt of Vasconcelos' La Rasa Cosmica.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and this is taken from the book that I mentioned earlier, Didier T.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_02: Jane's translation.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not even sure if I'm saying that right because it sounds like a French name to me.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and the pages are roughly between 18 and 22 from that version.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_02: It might be different depending on what version you get, because I believe that his book has or his essay has been published and republished numerous times.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_02: Uh you'll get to the first time.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'm not even sure who put out the one I have.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_02: If uh Curly, if you don't mind doing us uh the honors here and starting us off with a document text, and I'll um follow up with interpretation and we'll do this several times.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_03: In the process of our ethnic mission, goddamn, that's a rough way to start out.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_03: I don't want to sound like a racist or anything.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_03: We have a mission with our ethnics.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_03: Holy smokes.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_03: In the process of our ethnic mission, the war of emancipation from Spain signals a dangerous crisis.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_03: I do not mean that this war should not have been waged or should not have succeeded.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_03: In certain epochs epochs I've never known how to pronounce that word either the transcendental end must be postponed.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_03: The race can wait while the fatherland presses upon us, and the fatherland is the immediate and indispensable present.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_03: It was impossible to continue depending on a scepter which from mishap to mishap and from misfortune to embarrassment had been going down until it fell into the dishonored hands of Ferdinand the Seventh.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_03: Oh that Ferdinand.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_03: Oh Ferdy.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_02: In this passage from Rasa Cosmica, Vasconcelos reflects on the various American wars of independence from Spain.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_02: He acknowledges that while These wars represented a quote dangerous crisis for the ongoing quote ethnic mission, which he elaborates on elsewhere as the formation of a new superior cosmic race through Mestizahe, they were nonetheless necessary and justifiable.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_02: Vasconcelos argues for a prioritization of the immediate and tangible fatherland during times of pressing need, so you know, when things get rough, look to the fatherland.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_02: He asserts that the continued dependence on a Spanish monarchy that had become weak, ineffective, and ultimately dishonored under Ferdinand VII was untenable.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_02: Therefore, the fight for independence, despite potentially diverting attention or resources from the broader ethnic project, was an essential and unavoidable step for the self-determination and immediate well-being of the emerging nations.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_02: See, you have to take your time with this.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's a process.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, as he says, it's gonna take some time.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_02: You have to tackle it one step at a time.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_02: First, you build a nation, and then you have to, you know, go about with the ethnic mission mission.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_02: So in effect, Vas Vasconcelos is saying that sometimes the grand overarching vision must be temporarily deferred to address urgent practical realities.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_02: Which they were at the time, right?
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_02: You know, they had to become independent because of Ferdinand, apparently.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_02: The immediate need for political liberation from a decaying colonial power superseded for a time the slower, more organic process of ethnic and cultural synthesis.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_02: This interpretation would have been present in the minds of the late 19th century intellectuals who were dreaming up the theory of quote unquote forjando patria or forging the nation, meaning the process of actively creating it.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_02: So they had to create the nation before they can enact the mission.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_02: If that makes any sense.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely it does.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_03: Document text.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_03: The organization of a free Castilian Federation could have been worked out at the courts of Cadiz.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_03: The monarchy could not have been answered except by the defeat of its envoys.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_03: On this point, Mina's vision was complete.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_03: First, to establish freedom in the New World and later to overthrow the monarchy in Spain.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_03: Since the imbecility of the times kept this genial design from fulfillment, at least let us try to keep it present in our minds.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_03: Let us recognize that it was a disgrace not to have proceeded with the cohesion demonstrated by those to the north, that prodigious race which we are accustomed to lavish with insults only because they have won each hand at their secular fight.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_03: They triumph because they join to their practical talents the clear vision of a great destiny.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_03: They keep present the intuition of a definite historical mission, while we get lost in the labyrinth of verbal chimeras.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_03: It seems as if God himself guided the steps of the Anglo Saxon cause while we kill each other on account of dogma or declare ourselves atheists.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_03: Hey now.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_03: How those mighty empire builders must laugh at our groundless arrogance and Latin vanity.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_03: I always laugh at Latin vanity myself.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_03: They do not clutter their mind with the Ciceronian Ciceronian weight of phraseology, nor have they in their blood the contradictory instincts of a mixture of dissimilar races.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_03: But they committed the sin of destroying those races while we assimilated them.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_03: And this gives us new rights and hopes for a mission without precedent in history.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_03: God damn.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_03: Sounds a little racist.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_02: Well well yeah.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_02: Another way to put it.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_02: Here Vasconcelos reflects on the missed opportunity for a unified and free Castilian Federation that could have emerged from the Cortes of Cádiz.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_02: The Castilian Federation is an imagined confederation of states comprised of former Spanish colonies in the Americas.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_02: And in fact, wasn't there one for a time in Central America, the Central American States or something like that?
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_02: The Cortes of Cádiz were Spanish courts which claimed legitimacy as the sole representative of Spanish sovereignty, assuming administration of the American dominions and granting them representation.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_02: So you have various actors, imagined and real, that Vasconcelos is sort of pitting the Mexican nation uh against, right?
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_02: Vasconcelos, uh Lo Mexicano, uh he posits that the Spanish monarchy was an insurmountable obstacle to such a federation, and he admires the strategic vision of figures like Francisco Javier Mina, who recognized the necessity of first securing freedom in the New World before dismantling the monarchy in Spain.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_02: So grandiose visions again.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_02: Vasconcelos laments that his genial design was not realized due to the quote, the imbecility of the times.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that's yeah, and we can interpret that in many different ways, right?
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_02: Vasconcelos then draws a stark contrast between the so-called, quote, Latin American experience, as if there's only one, and that of the quote, prodigious race to the north, referring to the Anglo-Saxons, the white people of the United States.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_02: So he's acknowledging that the while that while Central and South America uh often lavish with insults those Anglo-Saxons, they, the latter, consistently succeed because they possess a combination of practical talents and a clear vision of their historical destiny.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, I mean, like he's referring to the whole manifest destiny without even mentioning it, right?
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_02: And that mission of spreading from sea to shining sea.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_02: So in contrast, he says, in contrast to that, Vasconcelos criticizes Latin Americans for getting, quote, lost in the labyrinth of verbal chimeras, which again, you know, all this infighting and referring back to that, that um uh short-lived uh uh uh uh Central American uh nation of states.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's kind of what he was alluding to as well.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_02: Like, we tried doing this, but it didn't work, right?
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_02: Engaging in internal conflicts over dogma and displaying groundless arrogance and Latin vanity.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_02: Latin vanity, that sounds like like a punk band, don't you think?
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_03: Didn't Latin vanity, didn't she used to sing with prints?
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_02: Latin vanity.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I think you're right.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_02: However, Vasconcelos also highlights a crucial distinction.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_02: While the Anglo-Saxon Saxons, quote, committed the sin of destroying those races, meaning the indigenous, the Native Americans, the so-called quote-unquote Latins assimilated them.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, isn't that great?
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_02: They assimilated the the the Latins assimilated the indigenous.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_02: And so he thinks this is a great thing.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_02: This act of assimilation, despite its complexities, provides Latin Americans with, quote, new rights and hopes for a mission without precedent in history.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_02: Can you imagine?
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_02: Like, okay, we conquered you people.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_02: That gives us rights over you.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_02: Like that's basically what he's saying, isn't it?
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_02: This suggests that while he admires Anglo-Saxon pragmatism and unity, Vas Vasconcelos believes Central and South America's unique racial and cultural synthesis offers a distinct and potentially more profound historical destiny.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_02: You know, again, I mean this is um I've I've thought about this for a while, and this is kind of like uh a Mexican manifest destiny of sorts, but through a more sort of uh racialized uh cultural lens.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_02: So thus Vasconcelos is urging his compatriots to learn from the practical success and clear vision of the Anglo-Saxons while simultaneously recognizing and embracing their own unique historical path forged through the racial assimilation, which he believes holds the key to a future cosmic race.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_02: He advocates for a move beyond internal squabbles and rhetorical excesses toward a more unified, purposeful, and self-aware identity.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_02: He's calling for unity among all the Latins.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_02: What do you think about that?
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_02: You you down for the Latin unity?
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_02: I'm good.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_03: That's too all right.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_03: Was that Lighter Shader Brown?
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_03: That was.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_03: That was triggering some memories.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_03: If you will, sir.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_03: Sorry.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_03: Document text.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_03: For this reason, adverse obstacles do not move us to surrender, for we vaguely feel that they will help us to discover our way.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_03: Precisely in our differences, we find the way.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_03: If we simply imitate, we lose.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_03: If we discover and create, we shall overcome.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_04: We shall overcome.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_03: The advantage of our tradition is that it has greater sympathy towards strangers.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_03: This implies that our civilization, with all defects, may be the chosen one to assimilate and to transform mankind into a new type.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_03: That within our civilization, the warp, the multiple and rich plasma of future humanity is thus being prepared.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_03: This mandate from history is first noticed in that abundance of love that allowed the Spaniards to create a new race with what the fuck?
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_03: God damn.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, we're gonna give a kick out of that one.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_03: This man for you, baby.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, is first noticed in that abundance of love that allowed the Spaniard to create a new race with the Indian and the black, profusely spreading white ancestry through the soldier who begat a native family.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_03: God damn.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_03: Occidental culture through the doctrine and example of the missionaries who placed the Indians in condition to enter into the new stage.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_03: The stage of World One.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_03: Is this like Super Mario?
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_03: Started out World One genocide.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_03: Spanish colonization created mixed races.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_03: This signals its character, fixes its responsibility, and defines its future.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_03: The English kept on mixing only with the whites and annihilated the natives.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_03: Even today, they continue to annihilate them in a sordid and economic fight, more efficient yet than armed conquest.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_03: This proves their limitation and its indication of their decadence.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_03: The situation is equivalent in a larger scale to the incestuous marriages of the pharaohs, which undermined the virtues of the race, and it contradicts the ulterior goals of history to attain the fusion of peoples and cultures.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_03: To build an English world and to exterminate the red man so that northern Europe could be renovated all over an America made up with pure whites is no more than a repetition of the triumphant process of a conquering race.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_03: This was already attempted by the red man and by all strong and homogeneous races, but it does not solve the human problem.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_03: America was not kept in reserve for five thousand years for such a petty goal.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_03: So America was just waiting.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_03: It was just there waiting.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_03: Again, you know, ripe for the taking.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_03: Predestination.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_03: The purpose of the new and ancient continent is much more important.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_03: Its predestination obeys the design of constituting the cradle of a fifth race into which all nations will fuse with each other to replace the four races that have been forging history apart from each other.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_03: The dispersion will come to an end on American soil.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_03: Unity will be consummated there by the triumph of Facund love and the improvement of all the human races.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_03: In this fashion, the synthetic race that shall gather all the treasures of history in order to give expression to universal desire shall be created.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_03: Man.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_03: Good grief.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_02: This is this is this is the great influencer of Mexican thought and culture.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_02: And by extension, a lot of Chicano rhetoric.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_02: It's unbelievable, right?
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_02: Vasconcelos argues that humanity is destined to evolve towards a fifth race, a synthetic cosmic race that will emerge from the fusion of all existing races.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_02: He believes that Central and South America, particularly the regions colonized by Spain, is the cradle of this new humanity due to its history of racial mixing or mestizaje.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_02: Vasconcelos highlights the Spanish tradition's greater sympathy towards strangers.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they were very sympathetic, suggesting that despite its flaws, Spanish derived civilization is uniquely suited to assimilate and transform humankind.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_02: This implies a historical mandate for Spain to facilitate the creation of a new human type.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_02: You see, what's it was in the Spanish all along, this whole time.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_02: We should have known.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_02: He sees Spanish colonization as fundamentally different from English colonization and praises the Spanish for creating mixed races with indigenous peoples and black individuals.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_02: See, it was, you know, they were there were the good guys in this whole process.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_02: It was an abundance of love.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_02: Abundance of love.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_02: In contrast, he criticizes the English for their policy of mixing only with themselves, the whites, and annihilating native populations, which he calls a quote, sordid and economic fight more efficient than armed conquest.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_02: He views this as a limitation and a sign of their decadence, comparing it to the incestuous marriages of the pharaohs, which I thought was kind of a weird analogy.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_02: That undermines their race.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_02: What does that have to do with anything?
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_02: He sees it as a narrow, self-serving goal that contradicts the larger historical purpose of racial and cultural fusion.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_02: America as the crucible of the fifth race, where all nations will fuse, replacing the four distinct races that have shaped history separately.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_02: This dispersion will end on American soil through facund.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not even sure.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_02: What does that even mean?
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_02: What is he trying to say with Facund love?
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_02: Facun, what is Facund?
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not even sure.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_02: Facun, synonyms for Facun, you have fertile, you have rich, you have prolific, you have productive.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, what the heck is he trying to say?
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_02: And the improvement of all human races, leading to a synthetic race that embodies the treasures of history and expresses universal desire.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_02: Whatever that means.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_02: Vasconcelos' argument presents a teleological view of history, where the ultimate goal is the creation of a unified, superior race that transcends existing and racial divisions.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_02: He frames Spanish colonization, despite its violence and injustices, as a historically progressive force because it facilitated this crucial and racial amalgamation.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_02: See, they were again the good guys.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_02: In stark contrast, he condemns those Anglo-Saxons and their colonialism for its exclusionary and annihilatory practices, seeing them as a regressive attempt to maintain racial purity that ultimately leads to decline.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I mean, I can't argue with him too much there.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_03: Uh he's got a what's funny is that those those arguments, um that like, well, yeah, the Spanish did some bad stuff, but not as bad as as the English.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_03: Like that's an argument that's made by the Hispanos of New Mexico all the fucking time.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_02: And they're probably drawing from this guy.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_02: For Vasconcelos, the cosmic race is not merely a biological blend, but a spiritual and cultural synthesis.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_02: It represents the culmination of human evolution, a race that will inherit the best qualities of all previous races and usher in a new era of universal understanding and progress.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_02: His vision, while controversial and rooted in the racial theories of his day, presented a significant intellectual and unifying narrative for Latin America and challenged the prevailing Anglo-Saxon notions of racial superiority.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_02: He envisioned a future where the diversity of the Americas would lead to a superior human humanity rather than being a source of weakness.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_02: Above all, the underlying framework in his vision necessitates the complete decline of American indigenity and the dominance of a Eurocentric worldview.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_02: Despite Vasconcelos' attempts at dismantling the positivism of his ideological forebears, his vision leans on that same idea.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_02: The Indian past is dead and the cosmic future is progressive.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_02: What a bleak future that is.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_02: Indigenous people are always required to give up their culture and lifeways to make room for the colonial project that is eternally wrapped in the flag of progress and futurity.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_02: All this cosmic race mixing reminds me of the Borg drone civilization in Star Trek that assimilates all humanoid species it encounters.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_02: At the precise moment of absorption and conquest, the Borg cry out in unison.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_02: Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_02: After a hundred years of mestizo ideology, it's time to move on with our own prime directive of cultural resilience and political sovereignty.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_02: So, no, Senor Vasconcelos, resistance is not futile, the raza is not cosmic, and I will not be assimilated.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_03: Chao It's funny hearing people referred to as a synthetic race because it makes me think of like Terminators.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_03: Like that's a very bleak future.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_03: It's not the utopian future that he's imagining.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_03: It it just makes me think of very dystopian uh you know.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_03: And the other thing is holy shit, like when you sit down and you just look at the dude's words and you go over them, it sounds like this crazy, new agey, like I don't know, like esoteric kind of, you know, this we are a universal people and we will create this utopia in the future, and all races will be, you know, unified.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_03: And it's just I don't know, like it's the kind of shit that I would expect to see in like a like a racist fucking you know, Southern California wine mom's diary or something.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_02: She consulted her shaman and and uh Exactly in Tixamayahuasca.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, and um I had to look it up because it was getting on my nerves.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_03: It was called the Federal Republic of Central America.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_03: That's what it was, yeah.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, God damn it.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_02: And it was made up of was it is it uh Guatemala, Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Costa Rica and Nicaragua.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_02: And so they tried for a while, like what was it, like 20, 30 years of the Central American Federal was it, Federal Republic of Central America?
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_02: Federal Republic of Central America.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_02: So it's been attempted and uh it didn't quite work out.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it didn't catch.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_02: It didn't catch.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_02: Too too many if too man too too much competition for for leadership and and uh you know different different goals, I guess.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_02: I mean you could say the same thing here in the US, right?
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, people in Texas, uh you still hear it.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you still hear hear these fools now they they're calling it Texit, you know, like Brexit, but Texit, these people that want to secede.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_02: Seriously.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_03: But anyway.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I I would like to read a line from La Raza Cosmica, which is my favorite line because it's so fucked up.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and I like to quote this one a lot.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_03: I throw this one into the into the faces of the Latinos whenever I can.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_03: The latrinos.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_03: I uh so in my edition, this is from page four oh seven, and it says, and this is a direct quote the Indian has no other door to the future but the door of modern culture, nor any other road but the road already cleared by Latin civilization.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_03: That's right, because Latin.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_03: The future is Latin.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_03: So weird.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_03: Like just like I said, it it just strikes me as it almost sounds like a it reads almost like a science fiction novel.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_03: Like a you know, it's like a Philip K.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_03: Dick.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_02: What was that movie called?
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_03: Which one?
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_03: The Logan's Run's Run where you turn like 30 and your hand starts glowing.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_02: Is that what it is?
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_02: That's kind of what it reminds me of.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_02: I pick like when I'm reading this, I'm picturing this whole Universopolis and the cosmic man.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_02: That's what I kind of like I get those images from that movie for some reason.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it it's just batshit crazy, like the stuff that he's writing.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_03: And the guy ran like the Department of Education, right?
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_03: Right in in Mexico.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_02: And he pushed this whole idea of the mestizo identity, and then Chicanos like they just glommed onto it like it was, you know, the next best thing to freaking slice tortillas.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 47:09
  unknown: It
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that you know, the famous symbol, right?
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_02: You got the indigenous, the the conquistador, and then you have the Chicano in the front, I guess.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_03: The uh the synthetic.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_03: The synthetic man.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_03: The synthetic man, like we're in fucking Blade Runner or something.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_03: We can have a future in the off-world colonies.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_02: Instead of Chicano, call ourselves uh syntanos?
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_03: Los synthetics.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_03: Los syntheticos.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_03: Los syntheticos.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_03: Good grief.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I I did want to touch on something, and this would have normally been like the uh the bonus extended portion of the show, but it's something that I I wanted everybody to have access to it.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_03: And it's this idea that I see repeated all the time on like Instagram and TikTok, just all over social media, and it's usually the the Wokosos that are pushing it, right?
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_03: You'll have somebody use the word rasa, and they'll just use it in like a really innocuous way.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, this is for the rasa, you know.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_03: It's just shout out to all me rasa out there.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_03: And sure enough, somebody will pop in and be like, Well, actually, uh Josevas Gonzalo invented that idea, and it's uh that's exactly what they sound like too.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_03: That's what I imagine they sound like.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_03: I've never spoken to one in person because my head would really explode.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_03: But that's what I imagine the walk also's sounding like.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_03: And I would just like to point out that the word raza in reference to Mexicans, not only Mexicans, but to Mexican Americans.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_03: The word raza was in use way before Vasconcelos uh published his book.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, the book came out in 1925, and you had Jovita Idar and her family in Texas publishing La Crónica, and they were really at like the forefront of pushing this idea of raza as a unifying term for Mexicans on both sides of the border, regardless of like if you held Mexican nationality or US nationality, their point was no, we're raza, and we need to back each other up, and we need to position ourselves in a way as like a united front to fight against the racism and the discrimination and all the shit that that they were facing in Texas.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_03: And one of the things that they did was they let me pull out this book.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_02: Well, uh while you're doing that, oh there you go.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_02: Go ahead.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, Redeeming La Raza.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_03: Uh they held they held the first Mexican Congress on in September of 1911 in Laredo, Texas.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_03: And the the motto of the conference was Todo por la raza y para la raza.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_03: Para la raza, yep.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_03: And this was 1911.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_03: And so, you know, when when the Wokosos like jump up in arms over the use of the word raza, it's like, well, hold on, pump the brakes.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_03: Like when my when my dad was talking about going to La Raza Park, you know, in in Albuquerque, he wasn't like, and by the way, Vasconcelos said, you know what I mean?
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_03: Like, he didn't know about that shit.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_03: He didn't give a shit about that.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_03: He just knew that since back in the day, Chicanos were using the word raza as a term of endearment for each other.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_03: And um and it started with this family.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I mean, I don't know if it started with them because well, yeah, I don't know if it started, but I mean, this is an example of uh of an earlier use.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_02: The term goes actually back to the 19th century because when I was doing research, I encountered some documents where they used the term la raza to refer to um Mexicans.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_02: And in fact, uh, the poem that we read for this episode, Amado Nervo, that comes from his La Raza del Bronce, which was published in 1902.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, that's from 1902.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_02: That's from 1902.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, I mean the point stands though, right?
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_02: The argument that you that you're making is that it wasn't Vasconcelos who came up with this idea of La Raza.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_02: His his take on it was La Raza Cosmica.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_02: He added the cosmica.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_02: He threw a twist on it.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the part that these people that you that you're referring to don't understand.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_02: That La Rasa has predates Vasconcelos.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_02: His ideas, he just you know added on to the idea of the people.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_02: That's why I keep saying that when people translate, and it's it's it's a problem with the translators.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_02: For instance, the the the book that we used by my readers here, so I can read it.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_02: This is D D A, and this spelled D-I-D-I-E-R.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't it sounds French to me.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_02: D D A D Dier, whatever T Jane, J A E N, whatever.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_02: It's like a French name, and and reading the translation, like it's it's a little stilted.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_02: Like there's some some things in there that I'm like, okay, that's kind of weird, phraseology.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a it's a yeah, it's a matter of translation.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_02: And the people who originally translated La Rasa Cosmica literally into the cosmic race did a disservice to Vasconcelos, too.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_02: You know, not that I'm trying to defend him because I I can't stand the idea, but still, like the idea that it's race in in the taxonomic sense is not quite right.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_02: It's race in this sense means people.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_02: And so when people say when they criticize people for saying la raza, they're they're they're making the assumption that people who use that that term are are making a racial comment when they're just saying people, our community, our gente.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, right?
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_02: La raza, they won't say our people.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_03: That's in it in it that's not only does it disservice to the work, but it does a disservice to the people who are trying to interpret the work because they're going off of the wrong uh premise, right?
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_03: Like they're not understanding what was actually meant because I I'll guarantee you this I don't think any of the Wacosos have actually read the Oh hell no, you know they haven't.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_03: Because it's a long book.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_02: Someone in school, they they told them about this guy, and they probably had him read like a little excerpt like what we just did, and they did an exercise for one day, and that's their experts on La Raza Cosmica and Masonos now.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_02: That's the extent of it.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_02: I guarantee it.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_03: Can I can I read you uh one of my other favorite parts just to just to hone in on how batshit crazy this book is?
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_03: Indulge us.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_03: Alright, so this is from pages 411 and 412.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_03: It's a single paragraph, but it splits across the two pages.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_03: Only the Iberian part of the continent possesses the spiritual factors, the race, and the territory necessary for the great enterprise of initiating the new universal era of humanity.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_03: All the races that are to provide their contributions are already there.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_03: The Nordic man, who is today the master of action, but who had humble beginnings and seemed inferior in an epoch, again, epic, I don't know, in which already great cultures had appeared and decayed.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_03: The black man as a reservoir of potentialities that began in the remote days of Lemuria.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yes The Indian who saw Atlantis perish, but still keeps a quiet mystery in the conscience.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_03: Are you kidding me?
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_03: We have all the races and all the aptitudes.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_03: The only thing lacking is for a true love to organize and set in march the law of history.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_03: So this motherfucker's talking about Lemurria and Atlantis, both of them like in the same sentence.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_02: He's like, I'm not even gonna pick, I'm gonna drop both names in here.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_03: It's like fuck it.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_03: I'm just gonna come out hard.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_03: Jeez.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, that's what I mean.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_03: Like, like reading this book is like it's pretty wild.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_03: And I think anybody who's interested in like pseudo history, pseudoscience, especially as it relates to like racial pseudoscience and racial pseudo history, I think you owe it to yourself to actually read this book.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_03: From cover to cover.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, just it's it's it's fascinating.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_03: It's a fascinating read.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_03: And make sure you have a pencil handy and some flags.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_02: And uh drink of your choice.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_02: Take a shot every time he says the Murray and well, maybe not to every time he says something crazy and outlandish, like the Facund Love.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_02: What the heck?
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_02: That this throws me for a loop.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_02: Facund love.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_02: Or is it feckund?
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_02: Feckund or Facund?
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not even sure how you say that.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_03: I can't hear you, homie.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_03: Damn it.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_03: What's going on?
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_03: So I did a I I did a quick search and uh Atlantis appears three times in the book.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_02: But do you have like a PDF copy of it or what?
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_02: Again, I lost you.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_02: What's going on with your with your audio?
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_03: It's so I'll tell you what I gotta edit this out.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_03: I learned a keystroke to like help me mute myself when I cough, but I keep hitting the fucking keystroke accidentally and muting myself when I'm just trying to talk.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, is there some kind of uh set in here that you that you need to fix?
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it auto mutes when it doesn't when when it's yeah.
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm sorry, so you said you had a like a PDA copy of it or ebook or what?
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I've so I've got a PDF.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, no wonder.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_02: And um I'm not gonna slog through that thing.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sorry.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_02: Someone else can do that shit.
• 56:52
  unknown: I'm not doing it.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_03: I remember that when I was in in college the first time, somebody really recommended that I read this book.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_03: But why?
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_02: Like were they being like serious or were they like being able to read this book?
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, because I was, you know, I was like the super Chicano dude on on campus, and it was a very small campus.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_03: I started off at the uh the Valencia, it's called the Valencia uh branch, the Valencia campus down in uh Los Lunas of the University of New Mexico.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_03: So it's just a little satellite campus, not very big.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_03: Mainly, you know, it's all the same people you go to high school with.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_03: So I was like the the super chicano on campus, and I gave a presentation in one of my classes, and afterwards this this cat came up and was like, hey man, you really gotta read this book.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_03: So I did.
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_03: Um I was like, Nope, that's not for me.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_03: The same ed, Bob.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_03: Sorry, sir.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_03: But uh yeah, the the this information about Jovita Idar, by the way, comes from this great book, uh Redeeming La Rasa.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_02: Redeeming La Raza, yeah.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_03: Transborder Modernity, Race, Respectability, and Rights by Gabriela Gonzalez.
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_03: And if you have not read you know, fuck La Rasa Cosmica, but you know, forget what I said.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_03: Don't read that.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_03: Read this book.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_03: Read uh Redeeming La Raza uh for a very in-depth, uh super helpful look at this amazing woman.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm still pissed off, man, that so they put out the quarter, the the Jovita Idar quarter.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_03: I still haven't seen it.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_03: Have you?
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_03: I haven't seen it either.
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_03: And apparently there was a fuck up when they pressed them, so now they're like super rare and super valuable.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_03: So the odds of me ever seeing one are slim to none.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_03: Damn.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_03: That sucks.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it does suck because I was really excited when they announced it.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, oh shit, I'm gonna get me one of those.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_03: And uh, of course they fucked it up.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't know if they did another run of them without without the error.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_03: Whatever they've done, I haven't seen a single one.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_02: Because I've been looking.
• 59:03
  unknown: Yeah.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, I don't really use a lot of cash nowadays.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know about you, but like when I do use cash, like Yeah, you got you got mark of the beast it up.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_03: I did.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_02: You got the the mark on the back of your neck on the back, and I'm jacked in too as we speak.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_03: Um okay, so check this out.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_03: I was at um which airport was it?
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_03: Because we we flew out to the East Coast for Quetz's graduation, and in one of the airports they had this little enclosed area that was like a Whole Foods or like a little place, like a little supermarket basically, but it was in this giant glass box, and you could walk in and buy some food and it charged you as you walked out.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_03: And apparently, so I looked into it.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_03: I guess Whole Foods is owned by Amazon now, and they've developed some sort of biometric scanning technology where you could just pay by being scanned at checkout.
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_03: But if you don't have an Amazon account, how does that work?
• 1:00:01
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_03: I think eventually we're all right.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_02: But how does it know that you are connected to any particular account?
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, did you upload your account?
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't look into that part.
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_03: Did you upload your ID or something?
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_03: If I was a conspiracist, I would be all up about this.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_03: But I'm not you know, I'm all for the I've I've even said it in the in the past.
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_03: Like just mark of the beast me up, man.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_03: Just scan my ID.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_02: RFID or barcode.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_02: It changes, right?
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_02: With the the generations with the technology.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_02: That's how you know it's bullshit because like Yeah, well, first it was uh the chip.
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_03: The chip.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_03: Oh no, no.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_03: First it was the the barcode, wasn't it?
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_03: And then it was the chip.
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_02: And it was the chip, and now it's like what um what's what's the modern-day equivalent of i scan or your your your thumbprint, thumbprint, i scan, facial recognition recognition, DNA thing.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_03: I remember when we lived in Fort Worth, we went to the um Michelle must hate me for this.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_03: I drugged her to the uh Y2K Expo in Dallas.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_03: I remember that.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_03: Because Y2K was about to happen.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, oh my god, we gotta go check this out.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_03: Bunch of prepper shit, right?
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_03: Well, yeah, prepper plus you know, so there was a group of there was a group of cops there giving a presentation on the uh danger, the existential threat of Ostlan.
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, great basically.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_03: And it was a group of cops from Dallas, and they were like, You guys need to know about so I'm like, okay, I need to go to that talk, obviously.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_02: But they were just talking about how like the Mexicans are gonna take over and you know that was because of what's his face who wrote the book uh in the late 90s.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um the old congressman uh forget the fuck what his name was.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_02: But he wrote a book, he broke he wrote um several books where he was like talking about the Reconquista and all this stuff.
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, right.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_03: The Reconquista.
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_03: That was the big thing.
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_03: That's what the cops kept saying.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_03: Ozzetlon.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_03: Like Mazatlon.
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_03: What the hell are you guys saying?
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_03: But anyway, the reason I brought this up is they had a booth there where for like$10 or something, they would scan your body looking for the uh the chip.
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, for fuck's sake.
• 1:02:16
  unknown: Oh my god.
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_02: The one that the aliens put in there in cahoots with the evil government.
• 1:02:21
  SPEAKER_03: The one that the cosmic racists.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_03: In my cosmic car.
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_03: In your cosmic car.
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_03: That's why they call us the cosmic race.
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you know what, man.
• 1:02:35
  SPEAKER_03: Going to uh to space.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_03: I think people are just afraid of the truth, my friend.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_03: And you know what I say about the truth.
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's cosmic.
• 1:02:45
  SPEAKER_03: Truly, cosmic truth is like cosmic medicine.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_03: It doesn't always taste cosmic, but it's always cosmic for you.
• 1:02:53
  SPEAKER_03: There you go.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_03: Universal