La utopía de
forjar una sola raza para la nación. Mestizaje, indigenismo e hispanofilia
en el México
posrevolucionario*
Omar Fabián González Salinas[1]
Universidad
Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo
DOI:
http://dx.doi.org/10.19053/20275137.4197
Reception: 01/02/2016
Evaluation: 29/04/2016
Approval: 25/05/2016
Research and
Innovation Article.
Resumen
Este artículo estudia
distintos proyectos de construcción nacional que durante el México
posrevolucionario propusieron forjar una sola raza para asegurar un prometedor
porvenir de la nación. Se abordan las ideas raciales de tres de los
intelectuales que más destacaron en este ámbito, así como el discurso oficial
con cual el Estado mostraba cuál era la “raza mexicana”. En el estudio se
utiliza la categoría “utopía”, entendida como todo proyecto a futuro que surge
de la crítica y necesidad de superar los problemas del presente mediante una
transformación radical. Se considera pertinente este método, pues los debates
raciales estudiados tuvieron especial interés en el futuro, proponiendo
distintos caminos para reconstruir la nación. Finalmente, se realiza un balance
sobre el éxito o fracaso que a largo plazo ha tenido el binomio de raza y
nación en México.
Palabras
clave: Raza, nación, utopía,
indigenismo, hispanidad, mestizaje.
The Utopia of a Single Race for the Nation. Miscegenation, Indigenism and Hispanophilia in
Post-revolutionary Mexico.
Abstract
This article
studies different nation-building projects which, during post-revolutionary
Mexico, attempted to establish a single race in order to ensure a promising
future for the nation. We will examine the racial ideas of three of the most
important intellectuals of this time, as well as the official discourse with which
the state demonstrated what was the “Mexican race”. We use the category
“utopia” in the study, in defining a project set in the future that emerges
from the criticism of and necessity to overcome the problems of the present
through radical transformation. This method is considered pertinent, due to the
fact that the racial debates examined had a special interest in the future,
proposing different paths to reconstruct the nation. Finally, we make a balance
between the long-term success or failure of the pairing of race and nation in Mexico.
Key words: Race,
nation, utopia, indigenism, hispanidad,
miscegenation
L’utopie d’une seule race pour la nation. Métissage,
indigénisme et hispanophilie dans le Mexique postrévolutionnaire
Résumé
Cet article analyse différents
projets de construction nationale qui pendant la période postrévolutionnaire
ont proposé la constitution d’une seule race pour assurer à la nation un avenir
prometteur. On étudie à ce propos les idées raciales des trois intellectuels
les plus renommés, ainsi que le discours officiel avec lequel l’État montrait
quelle était la « race mexicaine ». Nous utilisons la notion d’ « utopie »,
définie comme tout projet d’avenir naissant de la critique et la nécessité de
dépasser les problèmes du présent par une transformation radicale. On considère
pertinente cette méthode, parce que les débats raciaux étudiés ont eu une
préoccupation marquée par futur, en proposant des différents chemins pour
reconstruire la nation. Finalement, on effectue un bilan sur le succès ou
l’échec qui à long terme a eu le binôme race et nation au Mexique.
Mots-clés: Race, nation, utopie, indigénisme, hispanité,
métissage.
1. Introduction. Nation, race and utopia?
From the onset of political
modernity in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the world began
to be interpreted as a conglomeration of nations, each inhabiting its own
territory and led by a state. We now know that behind this worldview, what
really existed was a historical process of national construction in which each
state appealed to nationalism as a kind of "social engineering" to
forge nations where they did not exist before and to give a national identity
to those who used to be defined in terms of religious identity, ethnicity or
according to their place of origin. From then on, the modern nation - an object
of the sovereignty of the new states - emerged as a community in which all its
members imagine themselves as equals, share symbols of union, rights and
obligations, as well as a past, present and future. As for national identity,
that is to say, the feeling of belonging to that community, it is only possible
to develop it through a process of socialization in which a collective
imaginary is internalized that persuades the subject to belong to a particular
nation. National identity may be a subjective element, but it has broad social
effectiveness. All this implies that nationalism has preceded nations, not vice
versa; and that both nations and national identities have been cultural
constructions that are constantly changing based on the different processes of state
formation, economic conditions, the means of dissemination of a narrative of
nationhood and the degree of acceptance that the society achieves[2].
Nationalism, national
identity and nation were three conceptions that from the 19th century encompassed
racial ideas that maintained that all members of a nation shared biological,
moral, cultural and intellectual characteristics that distinguished and
differentiated them from other nationalities. These elements served as a basis
for proposing that there were "superior" and "inferior"
races. Soon, "race" became one of the subjects of major political
importance, as it was incorporated as part of the national identity under which
the exercise of political power in the modern state is legitimized[3]. In the Mexican case, since
the nineteenth century, the idea was of a
nation whose race was mestizo, but which had a characteristic element that was
not Spanish or Hispanic, but indigenous[4].
In Mexico, as in the rest of
Latin America, the relationship between nation and race led to the conception
of whites as a superior race, and the natives as inferior. This led to
discrimination justified based on ethno-cultural criteria. Also, migration in America
became a process of racial selection: groups considered as racially inferior
were rejected, as they had biological and moral elements that were
"pernicious" to the race of the receiving nation. At the other
extreme, the migration of certain European groups was seen as a solution to
enhance the exploitation of resources and to undertake "improvement of the
race". Social Darwinism was eventually added to this, which gave a
"scientific" basis to the racial discourse. With this, one of the
ideas - or myths? - of the modern era was strengthened: that the world is
divided into nations and races[5].
But where is the
relationship between the process of national construction and its racial
discourse with utopias? Before answering this question, it is necessary to
define what is a utopia. Etymologically it means "the best place that does
not exist," that is, as an impossible dream and nothing more. However, new
studies - especially those inspired by the proposals of Ernst Bloch - have
"rehabilitated" the concept, by understanding the utopian as a
project that is not just a capricious desire, but rather has the possibility of
"being able to exist " in reality. Now is when we began to strip the
utopia of the heavy slab that it carried on its shoulders and forced it to be seen
as belonging to the domain of the idyllic that never materializes[6].
According to these new
perspectives; the crisis of, dissatisfaction with and nonconformity to the
prevailing social, political or economic order, is what engenders the utopia,
therefore, this directs the critique of what exists. If the present represents
what the utopia must transform, in the future it places the hope of the new
order, since reality has an unfinished nature and therefore constitutes a pool
of possibilities. Utopia is not reduced to the field of ideas, but must ground
itself in the material world in order to change reality, so it differs from
theoretical thought, because while this is limited to the understanding of the
world, utopia seeks its transformation[7]. Nor is it an
"esoteric path of the culture" or a distraction from the class
struggle, but rather a fundamental part of building the future[8].
Now,
starting from these principles, it is possible to state that if nations and
national identities are not immutable natural realities, but instead products
of a changing "social engineering," that is nationalism, then the
process of national construction can develop utopian projects; a utopia arising
from dissatisfaction with the characteristics of the nation, which criticizes
its components and the degree of national unity, and therefore proposes
alternative realities - in some cases quite radical - to forge a different
nation [9].
In
the following pages, I deal with the racial approaches that emerged in Mexico
in the early twentieth century and which became utopian projects that sought
racial unification to ensure a prosperous national future. At first, I dealt
with the thinking of Andrés Molina Enríquez, Manuel Gamio and José Vasconcelos, three
intellectuals who took up racial ideas about racial mixing, indigenism
and hispanidad, and with them they debated which of
these elements was, or should be, the essence of Mexican nationality and what
the future of Mexico would be if the racial reconfiguration they proposed were
achieved[10].
It is important to remember
that in the nationalist discourse historical knowledge is fundamental to making
the nation "visible", to demonstrate its existence and its supposed remote
and noble origins, so it is not surprising that national history is an
ontological necessity for the nation[11]. However, Molina Enríquez, Gamio or Vasconcelos did not limit themselves to talking about the
nation's past; on the contrary, the characteristic that brings them closer to
utopia, is that they debated the present and future of the nation.
The work of these three
characters was strongly influenced by the context that surrounded them. In the
case of Andrés Molina Enríquez, he spoke of racial
mixing a few years after the transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth
century, when the discourse of modernity and progress of the Porfiriato (1876-1910) was at its peak and
presented Mexico as a developed country with the potential to excel as a power.
On the other hand, both Manuel Gamio and José Vasconcelos, exposed their racial ideas in a period in
which the revolutionary war came to an end and the period of national
reconstruction began.
Subsequently, the article analyzes the racial and possibly utopian project developed
by the Mexican state after the Revolutionary War. The following guiding questions
will be taken into account in the study of the racially oriented projects of
national transformation: what were the utopian visions that were drawn around
the race-nation binomial in the twentieth century? If the supposed race
belonging to each nation included biological, moral, cultural and intellectual
elements, what role would these components play in the utopian vision of the
characters addressed? What changes (if any) occurred in the twentieth century
regarding the nineteenth-century notion of national race?
I agree with Alan Knight
about the infertility that results from an analysis of the thinking of racial
ideas and theories without linking it with the social influence they have had[12]. Therefore, after dealing
with these racial projects I present a general balance on the long-term impact
of these utopian visions on race and nation.
2. Race, nation and utopia in the thought of Molina Enríquez, Manuel Gamio and José Vasconcelos
At the end of the Porfiriato and in
the heat of the revolutionary movement, interesting proposals arose to
reconfigure the Mexican nation. Firstly, the role of Andrés Molina Enríquez[13] stands out, who suggested
that among the solutions to the problems of the country, a new and more
equitable redistribution of land ownership, as well as the creation of a
totally mestizo nation, should be considered. His accentuated mestizophilia had important antecedents worth mentioning,
because prominent intellectuals of the second half of the nineteenth century
had marked a tendency to identify the mestizo as the "true" Mexican
race. He highlights the case of Vicente Riva Palacio, who considered that the
vice regal era had favored a racial mixing that engendered
Mexican nationality; including in México
a través de los siglos
(Mexico over the centuries), the historiographical work that he coordinated and
that ended up being imposed as the "legitimate" Mexican historical
account, where the colonial era was framed as the genesis of modern Mexico.
Years later, Justo Sierra emphasized the task of strengthening the
"mestizo family," for in it were found the most patriotic and
democratic elements[14].
Returning
to Molina Enríquez, in 1908 he published Los grandes problemas nacionales (The
great national problems), a work that in "scientific" terms, was
influenced by the ideas of social Darwinism, in which he summarized his allegiance to and hope in a totally
mestizo Mexico. And although he criticized the agrarian structure imposed by
the government of Porfirio Diaz, on the other hand his racial ideal led him to
proclaim admiration for the dictator. He thought that the state could only be
in the hands of the mestizo race, as in it was the "strongest, most
numerous and most patriotic element." According to Enríquez,
the mestizos represented "the true homeland" and "to give the management
of the national destinies to any other elements of the population, is nothing
less than to betray the country. How well General Diaz understood this[15]! "
In Los grandes problemas
nacionales Molina Enríquez
pointed out that the Mexican nation could not exist as long as there was racial
diversity, emphasizing that neither the natives nor the creoles themselves
could make the country advance. He was convinced that each race that inhabited
the national territory had a positive component (the whites had a higher degree
of evolution than the natives, but that superiority was reversed when speaking
of resistance to the environment, a quality for which the natives were better) [16], but he believed that it
was absolutely necessary to transform this racial heterogeneity and opt for a racial
mixing that would unify the origin, customs, language, evolutionary state,
desires and aspirations of the population[17]. Only in this way, Molina Enríquez maintained, could Mexican nationality be
concretized and a " proper nation" be formed, which would be the "absolute
sovereign of its destinies, and the owner and mistress of its future[18].”
Such
was his faith in miscegenation that
he thought it would give Mexico a superiority over Anglo-Saxon America:
[…] the mestizos will achieve the absorption of the
natives and make the complete fusion of the creoles and the foreigners resident
here into their own race, (…) and as a consequence, the mestizo race will
develop with freedom. Once it is, it will not only withstand the inevitable clash
with the American race of the North, but in the clash, it will conquer
[…][19]
Molina Enríquez
was giving a "twist" to racial theories postulating that only the
pure breeds were superior, while the hybrids were on a lower scale. These
theories began to serve as a pillar for some Mexican nationalists to elevate
mestizos as a superior race (later Jose Vasconcelos
would do so with his idea of a "cosmic race"[20]). Molina Enríquez does not
break with the nineteenth-century conception that the blending of the whites
with the natives is beneficial, but in his thinking, this would not result in a
race that is moderately better, but rather superior.
A few years later, during the
revolutionary turmoil, Manuel Gamio appeared on the scene
with novel proposals on the nation and its social composition[21]. For him, the notion of race
included uniquely cultural characteristics and not biological ones, and
therefore rejected any theory that proposed that the indigenous population was
in a cultural backwardness derived from biological and natural questions. Instead
of these positions, he defended the idea that the misery of this and any other
social sector was due to socioeconomic conditions that could be studied,
understood and overcome[22]. He had an honest love for the
natives, he advocated "redeeming" them and making them true brothers.
In order to achieve this, he preached the need for anthropological, social and
statistical studies as a starting point for quantitative and qualitative knowledge
of the population and in this way the government could "work efficiently
and nationally[23].”
In 1916, Gamio
published Forjando
patria (Building
a homeland), a
book in which he addressed indigenous social problems and developed his thesis
on how to build a true nationality. His project of national reconfiguration was
ambitious and implied a radical transformation of the society from three
assimilation processes that would lead to an eminently mestizo society: a)
"fusion of races", b) "convergence and fusion of cultural
manifestations" and c) "linguistic unification and economic
equilibrium of the social elements". If these conditions were fulfilled, Gamio argued, a racial homogeneity would be achieved, which
would allow the country to become “a powerful country and a coherent and
efficient nationality” in the not too distant future[24].
Like
Molina Enríquez, Gamio
believed that the true nation was still to be built and would only be achieved
through a radical transformation that would lead to a society where miscegenation reigned. He thought that
something had to be done with the natives, who could not continue to exist in
misery. He did not see them as an obstacle, but as an important population sector
that had to be helped, and the way would have to be found how to unite them
with the nation, because only this would improve their conditions. Gamio did not see a way forward for the natives, other than
the mestizo racial unification. According to Agustín Basave, this anthropologist was inclined towards "the disappearance
of the natives, but he does so precisely because he feels that their fate as
such cannot be darker; in this sense, it can be said that, rather than their disappearance,
Gamio wants their reincarnation as mestizos[25].”
The ideas and works of Manuel Gamio had influence on the idea that, unlike what happened
in the Porfiriato,
not only the native of the past was considered as the only one who was
important; a vision that years before had justified the attempts of the state
to erase the living natives[26]. For Gamio
both were relevant: the pre-Hispanic native was proof of the high degree of
civilization achieved, while the living native could be integrated into the
Mexican nation through a gradual process of assimilation. As a result, the
governments coming out of the revolution reinforced the indigenist
view, paying as much attention to the study of contemporary indigenous groups
as they did to the recovery of the pre-Hispanic past. But before a new
encroachment of indigenism, José Vasconcelos
led a utopian project focused on forging a single race and a single nation in
which racial mixing and hispanidad were elements of unity and strength.
In 1920, the revolutionary
Álvaro Obregón held the presidency and with that he
initiated the period of power called the "Sonora Group", as well as the reconstruction
phase of the Mexican Revolution. In 1921 the new regime founded the Secretariat
of Public Education (SEP, by its acronym in Spanish), placing Jose Vasconcelos at its head[27]. The new secretary would soon
emerge from Obregon's work group, for he was not just a politician or
bureaucrat, but rather an intellectual, a man with plans to re-found the
Mexican nation and to look to a prosperous future.
In
José Vasconcelos's ideology was the creation of a
more advanced and superior society than any other: the "cosmic race."
He preached that in the world there were four races (white, red, yellow and
black) that in Spanish America they would merge:
[…] in the soil of America, the dispersion will be ended,
there unity will be consummated by the triumph of fruitful love and the
overcoming of all bloodlines. The new race will be the synthesis or integral
race, made with the genius and the blood of all peoples and, therefore, more
capable of true brotherhood and a truly universal vision […][28]
Vasconcelos argued that Spanish America contained
a racial mix that summed up the most positive of all the races, as well as
having the geographical components necessary for mestizos to reach their place
as a superior race. This racial superiority in a privileged territory was the
essence of Vasconcelos' projected utopia for Latin
America, but he thought that in order for it to be realized it was necessary to
add the missing component: the spiritual development of education, culture and
the arts; only in this way could the mestizos fulfill their calling to dominate
the world[29].
It is at this point that it is
understood, in part, the impetus that Vasconcelos put
on promoting education and the arts in Mexico. Under his institutional charge,
the most ambitious literacy and teaching campaign Mexico had ever known began; the
teachers were compared to evangelizing missionaries and they were entrusted
with bringing education to the most remote parts of the country.
Regarding the characteristics
to be taken by the Mexican race - as well as the rest of Hispano-America - Vasconcelos was inclined to recover the Hispanic heritage
and reject indigenism, since he believed that the
admiration for the indigenous past was part of a plan directed by the United
States to eliminate Hispanic culture from the American soil and "to reduce
the Mexican people to the level of Texan “pochos” stripped of any national
culture[30]." Here we face one of the most
interesting points of Mexican mestizophilia, because
one could think that miscegenation was conceived as an equal
composition of indigenous and Spanish elements. However, since the nineteenth
century it was thought that miscegenation was mostly defined by the indigenous race. Now, Vasconcelos gave a twist to this idea and posited that hispanidad was what should define Mexican and Latin American
miscegenation.
Throughout his intellectual
life the "creole Ulysses" professed a marked hispanophilia
and a conviction that the miscegenation that developed during the viceroyalty was the best
thing that had happened in the country. He affirmed that without the Spanish
legacy and without the Catholic religion brought from Spain, Mexico would only
be a group of uncivilized tribes, incapable of governance and whose only legacy
was savagery[31]. In his writings, the only
indigenous root that deserves admiration, was the figure of Nezahualcóyotl
and Quetzalcoatl, for being icons of education and spirituality.
This intellectual showed an
admiration for Catholic mysticism and the pragmatic idealism and the creative
force of the tireless conquistadors, he even vindicated the figure of Hernan
Cortes, whom he considered as a builder and father of Mexican nationality[32]. He believed that America's hispanidad was so genuine that only in
these lands did the Aragonese, Castilian, and Basque
disappear to form the Spanish, so that "the Hispanic, as a homogeneous and
organized nationality, only came to be produced in reality in the lands of the
New World[33]." He said that the American
must feel as Spanish as the son of Spain; an identity that did not prevent
there being differences, but always sharing a common mission, which was to
ensure that the Iberian culture flourished and to prevent the success of the Saxon
culture in America[34].
His ideology not only reduced
itself to the theme of Mexican national identity, but also inserted a current
of thought that from the first years of the conquest has wanted to see in
America the fertile soil to realize the most diverse utopias; from those who
have tried to form a community governed by the highest Christian values, to
those who have sought to realize the dream of a Latin American union[35]. Vasconcelos'
thinking was of a racial and national utopia that, like that of Molina Enríquez and Gamio, believed in
the fusion of races so as to transform society into a single mestizo body. The
utopian future of the "creole
Ulysses" went so far as to express that the mestizo race would be the
protagonist of a new era in which Latin America would become the guiding axis
of the world thanks to its racial and spiritual component.
Perhaps this is the most
ambitious Latin American utopian project that has existed, which is not so extravagant,
because we are in a context where the racial thinking spoke of superior and
inferior races. And once again, we are facing an elevation and not degradation
of racial hybrids.
Vasconcelos soon had the opportunity to
spread his ideas; in 1922, the Universal Exhibition of Rio de Janeiro was held,
in which he would head the Mexican delegation. The " creole Ulysses " he was displeased that to said event Mexico
would send a copy of the sculpture of the Cuauhtémoc located in Reforma avenue; a decision taken by the Obregonista government, in which
he could not intervene. However, for the Mexican pavilion that would display
the Mexican exhibitions, he decided that a building of colonial inspiration be
constructed, since he thought that, in style, this was a sample of the fusion
of the talented hands of the indigenous people with the Spanish technique and
intelligence[36].
Daniel Cosio
Villegas, his close collaborator, wrote that Vasconcelos
was the only one of the intellectuals in whom the regime trusted, "so much
that he was the only one given authority and the means to work[37]." This explains why, unlike
Molina Enríquez and Gamio, Vasconcelos had greater opportunities to undertake the
utopian work he envisioned for Mexico and Latin America. However, it must also
be recognized that despite the facilities to work, his ideal of a predominantly
Hispanic nationality had a fleeting echo in the country. Perhaps it was in the
beginnings of Mexican muralism – a movement that he inaugurated as a
representative of an official patronage, first being rector of the Universidad de México and later from his direction of
the SEP - where his ideas found concordance.
Vasconcelos was convinced that education,
culture and art were necessary for the hispanophile miscegenation to find its point of departure in
order to conform to the utopian "cosmic race." To achieve this goal,
in 1921 he commissioned the first series of murals to be created in the former
convent of San Pedro y San Pablo in Mexico City, recently restored and
converted into a reading and conference room for the Universidad Nacional. While it is true that art
also has a utopian function, since on many occasions it expresses the desires
for a promising future where the conflicts of the present are overcome[38], in the case of these murals, Vasconcelos did not mandate a vision for the future, but
rather an interpretation of the past and of civilization.
The next set of murals that he commissioned
took place in the old Colegio de San Ildefonso, which
then housed the National High School. There is a rumor that for these murals,
the one who hired and covered the salaries of the painters was the director of
the High School, the Marxist Vicente Lombardo Toledano,
nevertheless, in the theme of the works, the influence of Vasconcelos
stands out, who commissioned the painters who represented the cultural, racial
and historical origins of the nation. The murals returned to a tone of
universalist humanism and represented racial and cultural miscegenation. Between 1922 and 1923 Ramón Alva de la
Canal painted the mural El desembarco
de españoles y la cruz plantada en tierras nuevas (The
landing of the Spaniards and the cross planted in new lands), for which Vasconcelos asked that it reflect "the great homeland":
that is shared by Latinos and their older brothers of the Spanish empire, and
which fuses the bonds of blood and spirit that engendered miscegenation [39].
In 1924, Vasconcelos
resigned from his position in the SEP; his support for the Delahuertista rebellion had earned him the antipathy of the Sonora Group in
power. The influence of this intellectual came to an end. However, in 1929 the
"creole Ulysses" embarked on a political adventure that was difficult
to achieve: winning the national presidency as a candidate for the opposition
to the newly created National Revolutionary Party (PNR, by its acronym in
Spanish). He confronted the political organization that brought together the
country's largest armed forces; a superiority of force that manifested itself
in the dirty elections that ended in assassinations and the manipulation of the
results.
But what would have happened if
Jose Vasconcelos had won the presidency? Some people
may think that it may be futile to pause to make this kind of "fictional history"
-counterfactual-, but it would be worth noting that if this had happened, a hispanophile national vision would have been imposed, at
least for the duration of his term; a period in which the representations of
many cultural expressions and historical interpretations would have changed. It
may be that the murals of Diego Rivera did not show a cruel conquest and
bloodthirsty conquistadors, but rather apostolic evangelizers and colonizing
founders of a new nationality. Perhaps the Mexican identity would have changed
its interpretation inherited from the nineteenth century, and instead of basing
itself on the pride of the pre-Columbian past, it would have done so around the
Hispanic heritage and not in confrontation with it. But, in the end, this did
not happen, and his exaltation for the Hispanic and his utopia of building a
superior race in Spanish America did not thrive.
3. The imposition of idigenism on the official nationalism of post-revolutionary
Mexico[40]
The inclination of Molina Enríquez, as well as of Gamio and
Vasconcelos towards miscegenation, had some agreement
with an official mestizo discourse that, from the nineteenth century, became
hegemonic, because, among other reasons, it was a way to strengthen the idea
that nationalism establishes for every nation: of being a homogeneous
community. In this case, miscegenation became the main banner for claiming the
idea that Mexico had a particularity among other nations. It was also an escape
so as to ignore the regional and ethnic diversity existing in the territory; a
strategy with which the state could grant its benefits - education, health,
work, etc. - only to the population that adhered to its norms: speaking the
Spanish language, obeying a single legal framework and maintaining an exclusive
loyalty to the national state and not to a communal or any other type of organization.
But as was noted above,
although officially the idea was of Mexico as a mestizo nation, it
was not thought that this would imply the same degree of cultural and racial
heritage on the part of its indigenous and Hispanic components (at all times the
possibility of an Afro-descendant root was ignored). Thus, after the hispanophilic influence of Vasconcelos,
a glorification of the pre-Hispanic past was reborn as the only expression of
the Mexican race and the supposed predominant characteristic of mestizo Mexico.
This propaganda not only spread to the interior of the country, but again it
was taken abroad thanks to the participation of Mexico in the Universal
Exhibition of Seville in 1929. For the occasion, the government of Plutarco
Elías Calles did not send a colonial-style pavilion like the one that Vasconcelos had managed in the exhibition of 1922; in this
case an indigenous building with Toltec Mayan style was built, and although inside
it there were pieces that alluded to hispanidad,
perhaps this was not a new reconciliation with the Hispanic heritage, but
instead a way to make the pavilion more acceptable to Spain, the host country[41].
The symbolic revaluation of the
indigenous took on a special splendor in the muralist movement that, among
other objectives, was used to disseminate a visual story of the national
history. According to Itzel Rodríguez Mortellaro, the
pre-Hispanic element was present in different aspects of the mural movement:
"in the aesthetic discussion, in the discourse on national identity, in the
historical and anthropological recreations, in philosophical and existential reflection,
in the esoteric elaborations, in the explanations of culture in Mexico [...][42]."A clear example of this
is the mural Historia
del estado de Morelos, conquista
y revolución (History of the state of
Morelos, conquest and revolution), which Diego Rivera painted between 1929 and
1930, and that can well be interpreted as an iconic version of the so-called
"black legend of the Conquest." This work caused the discomfort of
Spanish diplomats in Mexico and hispanophile Mexican sectors,
but when Rivera was questioned about his hispanophobic
and indigenist vision, he used to respond "the gachupín appeared
already[43]! " Finally, the protests did not
have major repercussions on the mural, which was not modified[44].
It is paradoxical that in the
midst of this context, in 1928, October 12 (the commemoration of the arrival of
Columbus to lands that would later be called "America") was
officially declared the "Day of the Race" in Mexico. Even more
incongruously, it turned out that shortly after including this date in the
civic calendar, the construction of a monument dedicated to "the
race" in which the Hispanic race, or a synthesis of the native with the
Spanish, was not celebrated, but instead it was dedicated totally to glorifying
the pre-Hispanic past (the monument consists of a reconstruction of an indigenous
pyramid 50 meters high and topped by the Aztec eagle devouring a snake. Its
body is decorated with pre-Hispanic motifs and sculptures that recall the
foundation of Tenochtitlan and the Mexican resistance against the conquistadors).
There was a celebration which, every October 12, commemorated the race on a day
that recalled the contact between Spaniards and the native Americans, but for the
remaining 364 days there prevailed a clearly pro-pre-Hispanic monument. Once
again indigenism was imposed against hispanidad as a characteristic of the Mexican race[45].
By the 1930s, indigenism was already widely accepted as an element of
pride of the Mexican mestizo race. In this context, Hispanic visions had no
place in Mexican nationalism; in fact, in the midst of the nationalist
propaganda surrounding the 1938 oil expropriation, José Vasconcelos
became the target of attacks by those who repudiated his hispanophilia.
It is worth adding an extended quotation that shows how his ideas and all hispanophile narratives of nation came to be condemned.
[…] Here is a creole Ulysses, the Alamán of our days, contemporary prototype of the
conservatives of pedigree, involved in the Revolution to plant the seed of
disagreement and discontent. He aspired to the presidency following the
footprints that Felón
de Acatempan, Anastasio
Bustamante, Santa Anna, and others left […] who were military men at the
service of the oppressors, and to continue with their perverse and sophistic
work of Alamán, with regard to a
new nationality, condemn the men-symbols of the Mexican tradition and history; to
eulogize the winners and to defame remarkable personalities of the Motherland,
such as Cuauhtémoc […] As a sample, there is that vile writing which emerged
from the conservative crux, which is a monstrosity titled ‘Breve historia de
México’ (A Brief History of Mexico); their works vomit disdain for all that
is not of Spanish origin, of that Spanish people that in the name of the
throne, the aristocracy and the Clergy, from the 16th century,
drowned the Mexican people in the most vile misery subjugating them to serfdom
and peonage in their own Motherland; a Motherland that was taken from them
first and held back afterwards[…][46]
An
important point, and no less paradoxical of this indigenist
reassessment, is the fact that those indigenous individuals who were alive were
not seen as an active part of the Mexican nation, but only as the object of
analysis. This was reflected in the main museums founded years later in the
city of Mexico. The Museum of National History (1944) sheltered the past of a
Mexico where the mestizo represented the “us” and not the “other” represented
by indigenous individuals and hispanidad, whereas the
National Museum of Anthropology and History (1964) showed a pre-Hispanic past
and ethnicities turned into “living and atemporal
fossils,” and it was not clear what was the link with contemporary Mexico[47].
Because
of the above, it is possible to say that after Vasconcelos’
Hispanism, the reassessment of the racial mix from
the spheres of the post-revolutionary state lost a part of the utopic component
that Molina Enríquez, Gamio
and Vasconcelos himself had imprinted on it. From
that moment on, official miscegenation, instead of focusing on
seeking the rise of a superior race, concentrated their efforts on two
objectives: protecting, preserving and expanding the racial mix, and
reassessing the indigenous as an ancestral element of national pride. The indigenism that has just been explained is proof of this
and also the design of migratory policies of a selective nature that sought to
attract beneficial races into the country and forbid the entrance of races that
could degenerate the Mexican race and demand that migrants formed a mestizo
family[48].
4. Conclusions. Racial unification for the
nation, an unfulfilled utopia.
The radical projects studied
retook aspects of the concepts of race and nation existing in 19th
century Mexico in that they presented the national race as mestizo. Molina Enríquez affirmed that so many Indians as well as whites
had different biological and cultural aspects that should fuse in order to form
a solid and strong Mexican race that is totally homogeneous. Manuel Gamio thought that there only existed cultures that were
different in cultural development, but not in the biological aspect and the fusion
of the indigenous in the mestizo race was the solution to improve their
conditions and create a national unit exempt from the human nucleus with
socio-economic deficiencies. For his part, Vasconcelos
stated the formation of a new mestizo race formed from the best aspects of each
one of the races that, according to his ideas, populated the world. A mix to
which only universal education and a Hispanic identity had to be added, and
with that it would become the most advanced and strongest race that would
dominate the world. Finally, official nationalism attempted to form a mestizo
race, but without the objectives of forming a race superior to others, only
focusing on unity, the preservation of the racial mix, and the exaltation of indigenism as an element of pride and national definition.
From
these utopic projects, focused on the national race, we can affirm that none,
nor the official racial mix, managed to be imposed completely. The utopia of Vasconcelos could not flourish in its Hispanic aspect as an
element of national unification, given that since the 19th century
the nationalist discourse had created an account of nation in which Mexico was
the heir of the pre-Hispanic past, a time of supposed glory crushed by a cruel
conquest[49]; a discourse that, as it
was explained in the previous section, practically became hegemonic towards the
second half of the 1920s. In addition to this, it must be acknowledged that, to
a large extent, the national identity had been constructed on the bases of the
rejection to the “other,” in this case represented by the Spanish. In the
nationalist imaginary, between the indigenous and the Spanish there was a
dichotomy that was difficult to break in the short run, in which Vasconcelos had a certain control of the official media.
With
regard to his utopian project of starting an advanced Hispano-American race,
this simply did not have a great echo since, as was explained a few lines
before, Vasconcelos soon became an inconvenient
intellectual for the regime, and this without taking into consideration that the
international experience of the Nazi regime and the Second World War, as well
as the advancement in the sciences that went beyond Social Darwinism and
biological determinism, were sufficient motives to doom the whole idea
supported by racial differentiation and the search for a superior race.
On
the other hand, let us remember that Molina Enríquez,
Gamio, Vasconcelos as well
as the official post-revolutionary nationalism shared –in their own particular
way- their impetus for mestizophilia. With respect to this and, although said
idea of a mestizo nation still governs the official discourse, as a large part
of the population thinks that Mexico is a mestizo country –culturally and
racially- it is worth highlighting that said idea is confronted in the day to
day by the undeniable ethnical and linguistic diversity that exists in the
national territory. It is inevitable that the utopia of a homogeneous nation
under the seal of the racial mix has succumbed before social complexity. At the
same time, it should be considered that in the recent past (1994), the
indigenous uprising of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN, by its
acronym in Spanish) made it clear that there exist ethnic groups that do not
feel represented or included in the national state. Gamio’s
proposal of a gradual “absorption” of the indigenous people into a mestizo
nation was a project that failed. With such a context, can we really talk about
a unity of language, race, and traditions that was being fought for? Perhaps
the EZLN did not have the military impact that had been speculated, but its eruption
was a scream that made all eyes turn to this topic and consider seriously that
racial and national homogeneity do not exist.
In
addition, after the hispanophile assessment of Vasconcelos, the official discourse retook and strengthened
indigenism as a distinctive element of the Mexican
mestizo. However, this project of a mestizo nation, proud of its indigenous
component was not carried out either, and it even fell into great
contradictions. For instance, although nowadays there is still a nationalist
rhetoric that redeems the pre-Hispanic past, this sentiment of national pride
highly contrasts with a Mexico that flaunts racist criteria and stereotypes of
beauty that reject that what is the contemporary indigenous and that has led to
situations in which the use of the word “indigenous” is aimed at denigrating
and insulting. Beyond the cult for the pre-Columbian, there is not really a
society founded on values of respect and equality towards the indigenous
communities[50]. The strengthening of the
movements of indigenous redemption not only reveal the failure of racial mixing,
but also the little dialog and the lack of knowledge that prevails between the
indigenous peoples and the national state.
We
should reflect upon the fact that nationalisms are fake consciousnesses that
intend to reduce the plurality of a population to the existence of a sole
identity but, on the way, they tend to collide with a reluctant social
diversity. It is not that cultural homogeneity is something impossible to
achieve, but to that effect it is necessary to start a systematic and constant
use of instruments, such as education, the arts, myths and rituals of
socialization that cause what can be denominated as cultural genocide. However,
-and fortunately-, until now said elements have not managed to erase the prints
of social plurality.
We
have seen that at the beginning of the 20th century in Mexico nationalist utopias
emerged, which spoke of a prosperous future that the country could reach if it
achieved racial unification. However, it is worth asking ourselves if in the
present the nationalisms are still revolving in the orbit of the utopias of the
most varied types. The case of Catalan nationalism comes to mind, which has put
Spain in jeopardy –as a state and as a nation- and is foreseeing a prosperous
future for Catalunya, in case they reach their independence. This seems to be a
utopian imaginary that implies a radical break and refoundation
of a region and a society. A dangerous utopia that could turn into a dystopia,
since it is not taking into account-at least not seriously- the political and
economic repercussions that its breaking from Spain would bring about.
In
the face of these situations, I believe that social scientists have to be
critical of the future projects that each society and their governments
outline, for some may create feasible and necessary utopias, but others may be derived
from badly-planned and, for that matter, risky utopias – once again, a utopia
may turn into a dystopia. -
I
retake the phrase by Alan Knight, who points out that “utopian experiments
–micro as well as macro, a fortiori-
may be interesting to study, but they are very disagreeable to live in the
flesh[51].” I take these words
because precisely the racial utopias analyzed here had not been nice to live,
since they would have implied ending the rich ethnical and cultural diversity.
Finally, I would like to say
that arguing, as is done by the nationalist ideology, that the racial mix is
the essence of the Mexican, or discussing if this racial mix has greater
Hispanic or indigenous elements, is a debate that, although it is useful to
endow identity, it is a discussion that lacks scientific rigor which clouds the
understanding of our historical and contemporary reality.
Documental Sources
Archivo
del Centro de Estudios de la Revolución Mexicana “Lázaro Cárdenas” / Unidad
Académica de Estudios Regionales de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
(acermlc / uaer-unam),
Jiquilpan, Michoacán, México, Fondo Francisco
J. Múgica.
Bibliography
Azuela de
la Cueva, Alicia. Arte y Poder.
Renacimiento artístico y revolución social. México 1910-1945. México: Fondo
de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de Michoacán, 2005.
Basave
Benítez, Agustín F. México mestizo.
Análisis del nacionalismo mexicano en torno a la mestizofilia
de Andrés Molina Enríquez. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1992.
Brading, David.
“Darwinismo social e idealismo romántico. Andrés Molina Enríquez y José
Vasconcelos en la Revolución mexicana” (capítulo iv). En Mito y profecía
en la historia de México. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2010.
Cantú, Francesca. “América y
utopía en el siglo xvi”, Cuadernos de Historia moderna anejos, núm.
1 (2002): 45-64.
Florescano, Enrique. Etnia, Estado y nación. México: Taurus,
1996.
Florescano, Enrique. Historia de las historias de la nación
mexicana. México: Taurus, 2012.
Gálvez Mora, Isidro Manuel
Javier. “La función utópica en Ernst Bloch”. En Actas del ii Coloquio de
doctorandos del programa de Maestría y Doctorado en Filosofía de la Universidad
Nacional Autónoma de México. México: unam, 2008.
Gamio, Manuel. Forjando patria. México: Porrúa, 1960.
Guerra Vilaboy,
Sergio y Maldonado Gallardo, Alejo. Los laberintos
de la integración latinoamericana. Historia, mito y realidad. México: umsnh, 2002.
Knight, Alan. “Racismo, Revolución
e indigenismo: México: 1910-1940” (capítulo ii).
En Repensar la Revolución mexicana.
México: El Colegio de México, t. ii,
2013.
Knight, Alan. “El utopismo y la Revolución mexicana” (capítulo iii). En La revolución cósmica. Utopías, regiones y resultados, México 1910-1940.
México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2015.
Krauze, Enrique. Caudillos culturales en la Revolución mexicana.
México: Tusquets, 2007.
Levitas, Ruth. “La esperanza
utópica: Ernst Bloch y la reivindicación del futuro”, Mundo Siglo xxi, núm.
12, (2008): 15-29.
Matos Moctezuma, Eduardo.
“Usos y abusos de la arqueología”, Arqueología
Mexicana, núm. 46 (edición especial, septiembre 2012): 12-87
Molina Enríquez, Andrés. Los grandes problemas nacionales.
México: Centro de Estudios Históricos del Agrarismo en México, 1984.
Pérez Montfort, Ricardo.
“Las peripecias diplomáticas de un mural o Diego Rivera y la hispanofobia” (capítulo
xvii). En Imágenes e imaginarios sobre España en México, siglos xix y xx. México: Porrúa
/ iih-umsnh / CONACyT, 2007.
Pérez Vejo, Tomás. España en el debate público mexicano,
1836-1867. Aportaciones para una historia de la nación.
México: inah / enah / El
Colegio de México, 2008.
Pérez Vejo, Tomás. “Exclusión
étnica en los dispositivos de conformación nacional en América Latina”, Interdisciplina 2, núm. 4
(septiembre-diciembre 2014): 179-205.
Pérez Vejo, Tomás. “Extranjeros interiores y exteriores: la raza
en la construcción nacional mexicana”, (capítulo iv). En Inmigración y
racismo. Contribuciones a la historia de los extranjeros en México. México:
El Colegio de México, 2015.
Pérez Vejo, Tomás. “Historia, antropología y arte: tres sujetos,
dos pasados y una sola nación verdadera”, Revista
de Indias 42, núm. 254, (2012)
67-92.
Pérez Vejo, Tomás. Nación,
identidad nacional y otros mitos nacionalistas. Oviedo: Ediciones Nobel,
1999.
Rojas, Rafael. “Utopía y
desencanto en Hispanoamérica” (capítulo i).
En Independencias y revoluciones en el
Caribe: Prensa, vanguardia y nación en Puerto Rico y Cuba, siglos xix y xx.
Morelia: Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo / El Colegio de
Michoacán / Red de Estudios Comparados del Caribe y Mundo Atlántico, 2012.
Rodríguez Mortellaro, Itzel.
“Imagen prehispánica en el muralismo del siglo xx”, Arqueología Mexicana 17, núm. 100,
(noviembre-diciembre 2009): 62-69.
Tenorio
Trillo, Mauricio. Artilugio de la nación moderna. México en las
exposiciones universales, 1880-1930. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1998.
Vasconcelos, José. Breve historia de México. México: Continental, 1956.
Vasconcelos, José. “El pensamiento iberoamericano” (capítulo xii). En Ideas en torno de Latinoamérica, México: Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México / Unión de Universidades de América Latina, vol. I, 1986.
Vasconcelos, José. Hernán
Cortés. Creador de la nacionalidad. México: Ediciones Xóchitl, 1941.
Vasconcelos, José. La raza
cósmica. Misión de la raza iberoamericana. Argentina y Brasil. México: Espasa-Calpe
Mexicana S.A., 1985.
Villoro, Luis. Los grandes momentos del indigenismo en
México. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio Nacional, 2005.
Yankelevich, Pablo.
“Extranjería y antisemitismo en el México posrevolucionario” Interdisciplina 2, núm. 4
(septiembre-diciembre 2014): 179-205.
Yankelevich, Pablo. “Introducción”
(Capítulo i). En Inmigración y racismo. Contribuciones a la historia de los
extranjeros en México. México: El Colegio de México, 2015.
Yankelevich, Pablo. “Raza y
extranjería en México”, ponencia presentada en el Coloquio “Raza y política en
Iberoamérica”, México: El Colegio de México, 20 de octubre del 2015.
* A first version of
this study was presented in the International Conference called “Imaginarios utópicos: pasado, presente y futuro,” organized by the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, between
September and October 2015.
[1] Master’s degree in History, granted by the Institute
of Historical Research of the Universidad
Michoacana de San Nicolás
de Hidalgo and a Bachelor’s degree in History, from the same university.
Author of several academic articles and, among his latest publications, the
following can be found: “Historia, héroes y conmemoraciones como armas de lucha
política. El culto a Miguel Hidalgo en tiempos
de la intervención francesa en México,” in Anuario de historia regional y de
las fronteras, vol. XXI (2), 2016, pages 101-12q;
“Fiesta cívica y culto al ‘Padre de la patria’ en el Estado revolucionario
(1910-1940)”, Secuencia. Revista de historia y ciencias sociales, no. 93,
Sept.-Dec. 2015, pages
162-183. His research projects follow two thematic lines:
“Nationalism, nation and national identity” and “Political and cultural history
of contemporary Mexico.” Email address: omaruccio_fgs@hotmail.com
[2] For a theoretical
perspective of processes of national construction, see: Tomás
Pérez Vejo, Nación, identidad nacional y otros mitos nacionalistas
(Oviedo: Ediciones nobel,
1999).
[3] Pablo Yankelevich,
Introduction to Inmigración y racismo. Contribuciones a la
historia de los extranjeros en México (México: Colmex, 2015), 9-11; Tomás Pérez
Vejo, “Extranjeros interiores y exteriores: la raza en la construcción nacional
mexicana” in Inmigración y racismo…,
89-90, 102.
[4] For further information on 19th century discussions,
focused on elucidating which was the Mexican race, see: Tomás
Pérez Vejo, España en el debate público mexicano, 1836-1867. Aportaciones para una historia de la nación (México: inah/enha/colmex, 2008), 153-212.
[5] Tomás Pérez
Vejo, “Exclusión étnica en los dispositivos de conformación nacional en América
Latina”, Interdisciplina, 2: No. 4 (September-December 2014): 179-205.
[6] Ruth Levitas, “La esperanza utópica: Ernst Boch y la reivindicación del
futuro” Mundo siglo xxi: No.12 (2008); Isidro Manuel
Javier Gálvez Mora, “La función utópica en Ernst Bloch”,
Minutes of the ii
Coloquio de doctorandos del programa de
Maestría y Doctorado en Filosofía de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
(Colloquium on philosophy) (México: unam, 2008): 51-52.
[7] Adrián Calentano, “Utopía, Historia, concepto y política”, Utopía y
praxis latinoamericana, x, no. 31, (2005): 97-98; Isidro Manuel Javier Gálvez
Mora, “La función utópica en Ernst Bloch…”, 53-54; Levitas Ruth, “La esperanza
utópica…” 18-23.
[8] Levitas
Ruth, “La esperanza utópica…”
23.
[9] I would like to highlight
with regard to the term “race,” that I use it not as a category of analysis, as
its content has been exceeded and its falsehood has been proven. I use it in
the sense that it was used in the period of study, when it had the validity of
representing an alleged reality. With regard to the concept of “utopia,” this
one is employed as a category of analysis -to understand the future views
proposed or started during the period in question- and not as a historical
concept. That is, neither the characters mentioned, self-denominated as
utopians, nor the nationalist projects put into practice, were presented as
part of the utopia. This, to a certain extent, was due to the fact that in
general, onto this concept has weighed a negative idea in the sense that the
expression “utopic” was used -and still is- to disqualify and present a project
as not feasible. In addition, utopians such as Hitler or Stalin, would have
rejected being labelled in this way for how devaluated the concept is. On the ambivalence
of the meanings of this category and its possible use as a tool of analysis,
see: Alan Knight, “El utopismo y la Revolución mexicana”, in Alan
Knight, in La revolución
cósmica. Utopías, regiones y resultados, México 1910-1940 (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2015), 85-86, 90-91.
[10] The historian Alan Knight is somewhat skeptical with regard to
considering utopic projects in the period studied, for instead of utopia, says
Knight, there existed a marked pragmatism. According to him, only
anticlericalism and the clerical reaction could be considered utopic projects
of the revolutionary period. Cfr. Alan Knight, “El utopismo
y la Revolución… 85-115.
[11] Tomás Pérez Vejo, Nación, identidad nacional… 117 and 124.
[12] Alan Knight, “Racismo, revolución e
indigenismo: México, 1910-1940”, in Repensar
la Revolución mexicana (México: El Colegio de México, 2013), t. ii, 49-50.
[13] Molina Enríquez was born in 1868. He was a
lawyer and a notary, who lived from the rise until the fall of the porfirista regime. His constant concern for
strengthening Mexico led him to put forward radical and agrarian ideas, the
latter being the most highlighted in the official discourse, since they were
the ones that distinguished him when he became one of the main ideologists of
the legal reforms applied to agrarian property.
[14] Agustín F. Basave Benítez, México
mestizo. Análisis del nacionalismo mexicano en torno a la mestizofilia
de Andrés Molina Enríquez (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1992),
29-36; Enrique Florescano, Historia de las historias de la nación mexicana (México: Taurus,
2012), 344-372.
[15] Andrés Molina Enríquez, Los
grandes problemas nacionales (México: Centro de Estudios Históricos del
Agrarismo en México, 1984), 299.
[16] With regard to afro-descendent sectors, Molina Enríquez did not take them into consideration.
[17] Andrés Molina Enríquez, Los
grandes problemas nacionales…. 255, 300-326.
[18] Andrés Molina Enríquez, Los
grandes problemas nacionales…, 347.
[19] Andrés Molina Enríquez, Los grandes
problemas nacionales…, 260-261.
[20] Alan Knight has called it reversed racism in “Racismo,
revolución e indigenismo…”,
77, 82.
[21] Manuel Gamio was a professional anthropologist
and archeologist who led collective projects in the Valle de Teotihuacán. He
stood out for his studies about Franz Boas, which considered that anthropology
could help to understand the problems of a society. In 1925, he was
sub-secretary of education and years later he became the first director of the Instituto Indigenista Interamericano (Interamerican Indigenist Institute).
[22] Pablo Yankelevich, “Extranjería y antisemitismo en el México
posrevolucionario”, Interdisciplina,
2: No. 4 (2014): 154.
[23] Manuel Gamio, Forjando patria
(México: Porrúa, 1960), 15-31.
[24] Manuel Gamio, Forjando patria…,
183.
[25] Agustín F. Basave Benítez, México
mestizo…, 126. Pablo
Yankelevich points out that in the ideas of Gamio, white people as well as indigenous people had the
same anatomical and physiological characteristics, but that was not the case
for culture, an aspect in which the whites were more advanced. For this matter,
it was the indigenous who were supposed to be absorbed and not the other way
around. Pablo
Yankelevich, “Raza y extranjería en México”, a presentation carried out in the Colloquium
“Raza y política en Iberoamérica”, Mexico, El Colegio de
México, 20 October, 2015.
[26] For a closer look at the relation between the 19th century
state of Mexico and the indigenous groups, see: Enrique Florescano,
Etnia, Estado y nación
(México: Taurus, 1996).
[27] A philosopher who belonged to the generation of
the Athenaeum of the Youth formed by artists and intellectuals. From the beginning
of the 20th century, he was involved in cultural and academic life.
He was the rector of the Universidad
Nacional right before being appointed to the Secretariat of Education.
[28] José Vasconcelos, La raza
cósmica. Misión de la raza iberoamericana. Argentina y Brasil (Mexico: Espasa-Calpe Mexicana, 1985), 27 and 30.
[29] José Vasconcelos, La raza
cósmica…, 51.
[30] David Brading “Darwinismo social e idealismo
romántico. Andrés Molina Enríquez y José Vasconcelos en la Revolución
mexicana”, in Mito y profecía en la
historia de México (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura
Económica, 2010), 202.
[31] Agustín F. Basave Benítez, México
mestizo…, 133; José Vasconcelos, La
raza cósmica…, 12.
[32] José Vasconcelos, Hernán Cortés.
Creador de la nacionalidad (México: Ediciones Xóchitl, 1941); José
Vasconcelos, “El pensamiento iberoamericano”, in Ideas en torno a Latinoamérica (México: unam / Unión de Universidades de
América Latina, 1986), 328-335.
[33] José Vasconcelos, Breve historia
de México (Mexico: Continental, 1956), 533.
[34] José Vasconcelos, La raza cósmica…,19.
[35] Francesca Cantú, “América y utopía en el siglo xvi” Cuadernos de
Historia moderna anejos, No. 1 (2002): 45-64; Sergio Guerra Vilaboy and Alejo Maldonado Gallardo, Los laberintos de la integración latinoamericana. Historia, mito y
realidad (México: umsnh,
2002); Rafael Rojas, “Utopía y desencanto en Hispanoamérica”, in Independencias y revoluciones en el Caribe.
Prensa, vanguardia y nación en Puerto Rico y Cuba, siglos xix y xx
(Morelia: umsnh
/ Red de Estudios Comparados del Caribe y el Mundo Atlántico, 2012), 27-38.
[36] Mauricio Tenorio Trillo, Artilugio de la nación moderna. México en las exposiciones universales,
1880-1930 (México: fce, 1998), 267-293. In 1936, Vasconcelos published his Breve historia de México
(Brief history of Mexico), one of his most hispanic
works. In it, there is a historical reflection that picks up the conservative
description of the nation in the 19th century. For him, the
pre-Hispanic past was full of barbarism, while the Conquest meant the surrender
of decadent indigenous cultures and the foundation of a new nation. The
independent period appeared as a manipulation of Mexicans in the hands of
British and Americans. Only Lucas Alamán, the most well-know hispanophile
of the 19th century, deserves a positive valuation.
[37] Cited in Enrique Krauze,
Caudillos culturales en la Revolución
(México: Tusquets, 2007), 119.
[38] Isidro Manuel Javier Gálvez Mora, “La función utópica en Ernst Bloch…”,
54. In the Mexican case, the murals of Diego Rivera
are an excellent example of how an artist participated in the national utopias.
For Rivera, the future of Mexico was supposed to be founded on Marxist-Leninist
ideas, a country reconstructed by laborers and peasants where there was no
class difference.
[39] With regard to
the influence of Vasconcelos in Mexican muralism,
see: Alicia Azuela de la Cueva, Arte y poder. Renacimiento artístico y revolución social, México
1910-1945 (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de Michoacán,
2005), 97-98, 133-148.
[40] As regards this point, it is important to define that indigenism is a concept that encompasses theoretical and consciousness
conceptions that are elaborated about the indigenous world from the
non-indigenous. In this article, I use this concept to refer to how the
pre-Hispanic past was imagined, the place that the indigenous were given in the
contemporary society, as well as the role that the indigenous component was
assigned within the idea of a national race. I take this definition from: Luis Villoro, Los grandes momentos del indigenismo en México (México: Fondo de
Cultura Económica / El Colegio Nacional, 2005), 14.
[41] Mauricio Tenorio Trillo, Artilugio
de la nación moderna…, 294-320.
[42] Itzel Rodríguez Mortellaro, “Imagen
prehispánica en el muralismo del siglo xx”,
Arqueología Mexicana 17: No. 100
(2009): 63.
[43] “Gachupín” is a word with a pejorative meaning used in Mexico
to refer to Spaniards or that which is Spanish.
[44] Ricardo Pérez Montfort, “Las peripecias diplomáticas de un mural o Diego
Rivera y la hispanofobia”, in Imágenes e
imaginarios sobre España en México, siglos xix
y xx (México, Editorial
Porrúa / Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo / Conacyt), 465-490.
[45] For a sample of the wide iconographic repertoire of pre-hispanic filiation that has circulated in the Mexican
imaginary during the 20th century, see: Eduardo Matos Moctezuma,
“Usos y abusos de la arqueología”, Arqueología Mexicana,
No. 46 (special edition, September 2012): 12-87.
[46] Newspaper article: ‘Hacia la
independencia positiva” (México, d.f, April 1938), in Archive
of the Centro
de Estudios de la Revolución Mexicana “Lázaro Cárdenas” / Unidad Académica de Estudios Regionales de
la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (acermlc / uaer-unam), Fondo Francisco J.
Múgica, vol. 185, doc. 70.
[47] Tomás Pérez Vejo, “Historia, antropología y arte: tres sujetos, dos
pasados y una sola nación verdadera”, Revista
de Indias 42: No. 254, (2012): 67-92.
[48] See the studies of Pablo Yankelevich:
“Raza y extranjería…” and “Extranjería y antisemitismo…”
[49] In the Mexico of the first part of the 19th century,
two descriptions of nation prevailed: a liberal one that sustained that Mexico
was a nation which originated in its pre-Hispanic past, dead with the Conquest
and revived with the Independence. The second narration stated that Mexico was
born with the conquest, that revalued the Spanish past, and that it conceived
the Independence as part of a natural growth of a nation that was breaking away
from the Motherland, Spain. Finally, the political vicissitudes imposed the liberal
account of the nation as that with which faithfully represented Mexico. With respect to this
topic, see: Tomás Pérez
Vejo, España en el debate público
mexicano...
[50] Luis Villoro
refers to this phenomenon as a “paradox of indigenism”
reflected in how the indigenous can be considered one’s own, but at the same
time, what is alien to us. Luis Villoro, Los grandes momentos… pp. 229-238.
[51] Alan Knight,
“El utopismo y la Revolución …,” 115.