The clip shows a few details of how many Mexicans collaborated with the Nazis and had sympathy for Nazi Germany during the first part of WWII. Mexican audiences used to applaud the Nazis in newsreels shown in the cinemas. To Mexicans, the USA was the evil empire and not the Nazi Reich. Mexico did eventually declare war on Nazi Germany, because the Americans pressured the Mexican Government, but they did not contribute much to the war effort directly.
Widespread Nazi sympathy and collaboration did not stop at the US/Mexico border and this sympathy helps explain some similarities of the La Raza / Chicano nationalist movements with the symbols and concepts of Nazism. Hispanic ethnic nationalists aligned with Marxists in the United States after the war, however, and that explains why political La Raza / Chicano-ism have features of a hybrid of both Nazi-like, ultra nationalism and neo-Marxism.
Jose Vasconcelos, who appears in this clip, developed the mestizo racialist concept of “La Raza” and documented it in his book “La Raza Cosmica” (The Cosmic Race), published in 1925. Vasconcelos is featured in this clip and was the most important pro-Nazi propagandist in Mexico during WWII. His concept of “La Raza” is a Nazi-like, racial theory for the Hispanic, mestizo (mixed) race.
To see subtitles in English, start video, then click on the settings wheel and turn on “captions”.
The image below shows the Nazi Battle flag and the original United Farm Workers flag. The UFW is a part of the Chicano political movement and a part of the greater “La Raza” movement. It’s just one example of the similar symbolism and concepts that La Raza shares with Nazi ultra nationalism.
Both flags are red with a white circle that contains a national symbol. The Nazi flag has a swastika and the UFW flag a Mexican eagle. The eagle in the UFW flag, however, still looks more like a Nazi reichsadler than a Mexican eagle.
This is an article in Life Magazine from 1940 about the Nazi influence in Mexico and Mexican collaborators. One of the most important collaborators was Jose Vasconcelos, an important Mexican, educator, writer, philosopher and cultural figure. Vasconcelos was the father of the “La Raza” racial theory, which became a basic concept for the Chicano political movement in the United States.
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