Nazi Father of “La Raza”, Jose Vasconcelos

Jose Vasconcelos was a prominent Mexican writer, philosopher and politician, known throughout Latin America. He produced the “La Raza” racialist concept for mixed-race, Hispanic peoples, on which the Chicano political movement was based.

His ethno-racialist theory is formalized in his book, “La Raza Cosmica,” published in 1925, still available on Amazon and other book dealers. In “La Raza Cosmica” Vasconcelos develops a racial/ethnic supremacy concept for Hispanics, similar to the Nazi racial theory, but designed for the mestizo (mixed) race, published in the same year as Hitler’s “Mein Kampf”, a time when racial supremacy theories were very popular. Vasconcelos apparently thought especially Mexicans and Hispanics, in general, needed their own (mestizo) racial theory.

Many Mexicans knew about his Nazi collaboration at the beginning of WWII, but the information was being ignored, if not actively suppressed after the war. However, an American, Jewish scholar of Latin American Literature, Itzhak Bar-Lewaw, discovered Vasconcelos’ Nazi connections as publisher of the pro-Nazi propaganda magazine, Timon (the Rudder). Bar-Lewaw re-publicized the information, starting in the early 1970’s, but he did it mainly in the Spanish language. It seems Spanish speakers have generally ignored the information and not many English speakers would read it.

Below is an English translation of a 6-page article, linked below, that Bar-Lewaw wrote in Spanish about it.

La Revista «Timón» y la Colaboración Nazi de Jose Vasconcelos (Spanish origianal)

Bar-Lewaw is too kind to Vasconcelos in places. He was a literary fan of Vasconcelos until he found out about the Nazi collaboration. Vasconcelos was extremely anti-American, anti-Anglo and anti-Semitic long before WWII, blaming Anglo society for preventing Mexico from becoming a great nation. He demonized Anglos and America.

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