Cosmic California

Abstract

One of the more controversial themes in contemporary readings of race is the Mexican author José Vasconcelos’s 1925 call for a “cosmic race” (raza cósmica) to transcend all prior races in the course of the inauguration of an “aesthetic era” (era estética) in human evolution. Although his language was later picked up by Chicano celebrants of La Raza and has received a variety of endorsements and critiques within the burgeoning literature comprising Latino/a critical race theory (CRT), no suggestion that contemporary California civilization may be the most compelling candidate for Vasconcelos’s project has yet been essayed. Carefully analyzing Vasconcelos’s arguments, this article exposes important shortcomings in his brief on behalf of a future Latin American race, clarifying the failure of his political efforts to redirect Mexican revolutionary politics in the 1920s and exposing the bankruptcy of his later flirtations with fascism. The article takes up the most promising feature of Vasconcelos’s arguments, namely his advocacy of a mingling of all races (mestizaje), to sponsor contemporary California as containing key features of that particular vision. To locate this Californian alternative, the article highlights the relevance of Oaxaca for its role in the origins and development of California’s naming and its overall myth. It explicates the importance of that role through the larger history of Mesoamerican civilizations and the primary importance for that history of the culture hero Quetzalcóatl.