This is an article in Life Magazine from 1940 about the Nazi and communist influence in Mexico and their collaborators. One of the most important Nazi 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. The original article is:
A Nazi Fifth Column and Communist Allies are Active in Mexico, Life magazine, June 10, 1940
Rafael Barajas, under the pen name of El Fisgon, wrote a book about the Nazi roots of PAN, the right-wing political party in Mexico. In this video, Barajas talks about the pro-Nazism of Jose Vasconcelos, who was an agent of the Nazis and the leading propagandist for the Nazis in Mexico, as well as all of Latin America. Vasconcelos developed the “La Raza” supremacist concept in the 1920’s and published his book about it “La Raza Cosmica” in 1925. The Nazi-like, mestizo racial theories and Anti-Americanism of Vasconcelos had a major influence on the development of the militant, Chicano political movement in the US of the 1960’s.
After WWII, the Nazis and extreme right were discredited among most people. For that reason the fascist-like, extreme right-wing, Mexican-American followers of these mestizo racial supremacist theories allied themselves with the far left, revolutionary Marxists, communists and leftist anarchists.
Jose Vasconcelos developed a cultural and racial supremacy doctrine for the hispanic mixed race (mestizos), documented in his book “La Raza Cosmica”. This supremacy doctrine has been appropriated by the Chicano political movement in the United States.
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a notorious, anti semitic conspiracy pamphlet, which was used by the Nazis to justify their pogroms against Jews. Vasconcelos defends the pamphlet and concludes that the Jews deserved what they were getting.
This article has been translated and posted not to promote hate, but to show the darker side of Jose Vasconcelos, who was a very influential philosopher, politician and educator in Mexico.
In 1940, Vasconcelos was editor of a pro-Nazi magazine, entitled Timon. Itzhak Bar-Lewaw wrote about this magazine in his book, “La Revista Timon y Jose Vasconcelos”, which was written in Spanish, has been out of print for many years and is not readily available to the public. This translation to English is being posted in order to make some of his pro-Nazi sentiments more accessible.
Below is an English translation of the article entitled, “Ese olvidado nazi mexicano de nombre Jose Vasconcelos” by Hector Orestes Aguilar. Jose Vasconcelos was a very prominent Mexican writer, philosopher and politician Mexico. He produced the “La Raza” racialist concept for the mixed-race Hispanic peoples, on which the La Raza and Chicano political movements in the United States are based, formalized in his book, La Raza Cosmica (1925).
In La Raza Cosmica Vasconcelos developed a racial/ethnic supremacy concept, similar to Nazi racial theory but designed for the mestizo (mixed) race. Many Mexicans knew about his Nazi collaboration at the beginning of WWII, but the embarrassing information was being suppressed by Mexican literary and media elites to outsiders.
However, an American Jewish scholar of Latin America, Itzhak Bar-Lewaw, discovered that Vasconcelos was a Nazi agent and top propagandist, publisher of the pro-Nazi magazine, Timon (the Rudder). Bar-Lewaw publicized the information, starting in the early 1970’s in books and articles. Unfortunately, it is only available in Spanish, which relatively few Americans would find and read. This translation of the article by Orestes makes the information more accessible to the American public.
Jose Vasconcelos, father of “La Raza” Hispanic racialismJose 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.
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.
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.
Nazi Battle Flag vs. Chicano United Farm Workers Flag
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.
Nazi Reichsadler (Reich 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.
A group of masked patriots stand in front of a swastika symbol on a mural in Chicano Park. A photo of it is deleted by Facebook as a “hate symbol”. This just validates our won criticism of this mural as being a display of hate by the radical Chicanos, themselves. Unbeknownst to many, the Chicano political movement was greatly influenced by a Mexican Nazi collaborator, Jose Vasconcelos, who first formulated the La Raza racial supremacy theory.
Chicanos claim that the swastikas that are found all around the park in San Diego are just indigenous symbols. They often use ambiguous symbolism with dual interpretations to disguise their subversive, anti-American message.
This is the “Prophecy of Quetzalcoatl” mural at Chicano Park with five Border Town Patriots posing in front of it. The mural features a huge, rounded, reverse swastika. There are other, smaller such swastikas scattered around the park.
Border Patriots in front of “Prophecy of Quetzalcoatl” mural
“So, we went into Chicano park yesterday to witness the May Day rally. We took a picture next to one of the murals, the one on the southeast corner, the one with the swastika and war bird. Posted it to Bordertown patriots page and it got flagged, we took the swastika out of the image and the word Chicano and still got flagged.” – Border Town Patriots
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When five anglos are placed in front of this Chicano mural it automatically becomes a message of “hate” to some people. In truth, it is a Chicano message of hate before the white people were standing in front of it.
Image of Quetzalcoatl from an original Spanish CodexQuetzalcoatl, the plumed serpent, is the messiah god of the Aztecs. He is in the same mural but just outside the photo taken, a dragon-like figure in this mural. He is prophesied by Chicanos to return as a human and bring on a new utopian age, in this context, a new age for Aztlan. That is, Aztlan will be liberated from American society.
This not unlike the prophecies of a new messiah that were made before Hitler came onto the scene in Germany to bring on a new millennium, a thousand year reich. Not to say, it’s going to be exactly the same, Nazi-ism was unique in history in its brutality, at least so far, but racial identity doctrines have similar features and the Chicano political movement has its own racial identity doctrine called “La Raza”. The militant Chicanos have borrowed quite a lot from Nazi ideology and symbolism.
The Nazis were obsessed with lost territory and so are the Chicanos. The Nazis wanted to regain the territory in the east, lost in World War I. The Chicanos want to takeover “Aztlan,” which they identify as the Southwestern United States, to which they lost their claim in the Mexican-American war. Chicanos teach that the Park is the first park of Aztlan to be occupied.
The Nazis looked back at the Vikings in much the same way that Chicanos look back to the Aztecs, as the pagan source of their artificial, fabricated “culture”.
The Nazis demonized the Jews in a similar was as fanatical Chicanos demonize Anglo society.
The La Raza racial identity doctrine was developed and popularized by Jose Vasconcelos. Vasconcelos was called the father of the Mexican mural movement and the father of the indigenous movement. Vasconcelos’ fingerprints are all over Chicano Park, because it is about La Raza, subversive art in the style of Mexican murals and an obsession with being the heirs of the Aztecs and the other indigenous peoples of the Americas. This gives them in their minds a claim on “Aztlan” and actually the rest of the Americas.
Jose Vasconcelos was also the most important Nazi propagandist in Mexico during World War II. Due to the similarities of the La Raza ideology to Nazi racial ideology and the connection via Vasconcelos to Nazism, the Chicano swastikas can be interpreted in a similar way to the Nazi swastika. That is, it represents the coming Chicano Messiah and the new race (La Raza). Vasconcelos prophesied La Raza would be forged by the melding of the indigenous people of the Americas with the Spanish/Hispanic people and culture of Europe.
Hitler standardized the Nazi swastika in the form that is recognizable today to most people, but the Nazis continued to use many different shapes and styles of the swastika, including a curved swastika similar to the Chicano Park swastika. For example, the most well known was used as the symbol of the Wiking (Viking) Waffen-SS division. The Chicano symbol is the same style, just reversed.
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Below is Chicano graffiti at the Chicano Park site a year before the takeover by Chicano fanatics. It is taken from a San Diego historical Facebook page, Vintage San Diego. Note the historically-standard Nazi swastikas next to the “Chicano Power” slogan. The Chicano Park artists just used a modified version of the Nazi swastika, in order to allow them to deny the parallels to Nazism in the subversive ultra nationalist message that they display in the murals at Chicano Park.
Chicano Nazi Graffiti at site of Chicano Park, before Chicano Park existed.
Here, a local Chicano, Lucky Morales, explains his understanding of “La Raza” mestizo racial doctrine.
In the summer of 2017, the National Council of La Raza changed its name to UnidosUS. CEO Janet Murguia said the name change was to give the movement broader appeal. It seems, however, to be a concession to some their critics.
Patriot groups have been pointing out for years that “La Raza” means “the Race” in Spanish. This has generally been denied by Murguia and other La Raza-related and Chicano groups. They claim it means “the People” not the race, but Spanish has another, more specific word for the “People,” that is “La Gente.” “El Pueblo” can also mean the People. “La Raza” means primarily “the Race.”
It is becoming more widely known that a man named Jose Vasconcelos developed the concept and popularized the term, “La Raza.” His concept of La Raza is described in his book “La Raza Cosmica.” Vasconcelos was a famous philosopher, educator and politician in Mexico. He developed a Nazi-like racial concept in the 1920’s that the ultimate superior race would evolve from the Hispanic mestizo — that is mixed — race, La Raza.
Vasconcelos was an extreme hater of Anglo American society. He was a paid Nazi propagandist during World War II. In this image he is standing next to Arthur Dietrich the brother of Adolf Hitler’s press chief, Otto Dietrich. Arthur Dietrich was heading the pro-Nazi, anti-American propaganda efforts in Mexico, before and during the first part of the war, until Mexico aligned with the Allies. Dietrich paid Vasconcelos to publish a pro-Nazi magazine, called “Timon.”
These historical facts in the background of the La Raza and Chicano movements have been coming more and more to light in recent years to the broader Mexican public and to a somewhat lesser extent in the United States. It seems that the name change is just an attempt to distance the National Council of La Raza from this racialist, pro-Nazi, anti-American history.
Chicano and La Raza groups in the United States have their roots in ultra-nationalist and fascist or fascist-like movements in Mexico. In the US, they allied themselves for convenience more with with Marxism, but they still show many signs of their roots to Nazi-ism and fascism.
The Chicano movement is an ultra nationalist movement, based on ethnic and mestizo racial nationalism, which seeks to gain political control of the southwestern United States and to ultimately join it with Mexico. They are the ideological heirs of the faction of Mexican nationalists, who worked with the German Kaiser in World War I and Hitler in World War II. These earlier Mexican nationalists were promised the territory of the American Southwest as a reward, if Mexico would join with the Germans in waging war against the US. As a nation, Mexico never accepted this deal, but pro-Nazi Mexican factions would have, along with a very large part of the Mexican public.
The term “La Raza” (The Race) was popularized by the book by Jose Vasconcelos, La Raza Cosmica (The Cosmic Race). La Raza Cosmica was a major source of inspiration for the Chicano movement, which began in the late 1960’s. This book is similar to the Nazi racial mythology translated to the Mexican historical, ethnic and cultural environment.
Vasconcelos was identified as the major Nazi propagandist and a member of the Nazi fifth column in Mexico by Life Magazine in their June 10, 1940 issue. He published and edited the journal, “Timon” (Rudder) in the early 1940’s, which was the most important propaganda organ for Nazism in Mexico and actually for all of Latin America. Below is a copy of the Life article in PDF format.
The “Aztlan” myth of the Chicano ultra nationalists is equivalent to Nazi-version of the myth of Atlantis, a home of a fallen race of Gods, who were destined to return to glory. The Chicanos identify the “lost” territories of the southwestern United States with “Aztlan”, though no one knows were Aztlan was or even if it ever really existed.
These two links are English translations of two articles originally written in Spanish.
This is part of a Mexican documentary, Nazis en Mexico, which mentions the work of Vasconcelos with the Arthur Dietrich at about 5:00. The subtitles are not playing on this blog.
The current La Raza/Chicano movement is a strange mix of Aztec neo-paganism and the ideologies of Nazism, Marxism and the indigenous movement. From the point of view of Marxists, Chicano nationalism can be considered to be a movement of national liberation. Marx wrote in his Communist Manifesto that communists will work with any revolutionary movement, which is also trying to overthrow the existing system, their common enemy.
The serpent-like creature in the photo below is Quetzalcoatl, the plumed serpent. Quetzalcoatl is the messiah-god of the Aztecs, who according to Aztec mythology will return in human form to restore the Golden Age. This is similar to how some occult groups predicted the rise of a “messiah” in Germany years before Adolf Hitler appeared on the scene. In the Chicano context, it would mean the Chicanos gaining control of what they call their “lost territories” or “Aztlan” in the American Southwest, not unlike the Nazis were trying to claim Lebensraum in Eastern Europe.
Chicano Nationalist Mural at Chicano Park in San Diego
This is one visible example of Chicanos copying Nazi symbolism. The United Farm Workers is a Chicano / La Raza organization. The design was inspired by that of a historic Nazi battle flag. In the image below the two flags are compared. The Nazi swastika is simply replaced by a Mexican nationalist symbol, an eagle, resembling the Nazi eagle, the Reichsadler. After the resemblance to the historic Nazi flag began to be noticed, the design was slightly altered to make the similarities less obvious.
United Farm Workers Flag Inspired by Nazi Flag
This is Chicano Graffiti at the site where Chicano Park is today with historically accurate Nazi swastikas. The photo is from the Vintage San Diego website and was made, just on year before the takeover of the area now called Chicano Park in San Diego, Ca.
Chicano Power with swastikas
This is a local Chicano in San Diego, Lucky Morales, describing the meaning of “La Raza” supremacy doctrine, the mestizo (mixed) Race.
BOOKS AND FILMS
Here are a couple of books and a documentary film in Spanish about the Nazi fifth column in Mexico that discusses the involvement of Vasconcelos.
La Raiz Nazi del PAN (2014) by Rafael Baraja Duran
Los Nazis in Mexico (2007) by Juan Alberto Cedillo
La Red Nazi in Mexico (2010), documentary film available on Netflix with English subtitles
RELATED POSTS ABOUT VASCONCELOS AND LA RAZA NAZISM
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.
In the summer of 2017, the National Council of La Raza changed its name to UnidosUS. CEO Janet Murguia said the name change was to give the movement broader appeal. It seems, however, to be a concession to some their critics.
