José Vasconcelos
He was known as the “cultural caudillo” (great cultural leader) of the Mexican Revolution and the “Apostle of Education.” A lawyer, philosopher, educator, and politician, he was a charismatic visionary; and, as with most Mexican leaders, he was very controversial.
José Vasconcelos supported the liberals in the Mexican Revolution, lived in exile twice, and finally returned to serve as rector of the National University: “Ignorance and poverty are our worst enemies, and it is up to us to solve the problem of ignorance…. I have not come to govern the University, but to ask the University to work for the people.”
Later, after President Obregón chose him to be the nation’s first Secretary of Education, Vasconcelos really made his mark: “Culture breeds progress and, without it, no moral conduct can be demanded of the people.” And so, he built thousands of schools and libraries, especially in rural areas, and filled them with innumerable textbooks and texts. In addition, he funded the great Mexican muralists whose work, like the stained glass windows of medieval cathedrals, communicated a new Mexican historical narrative to the masses.
As a philosopher, José Vasconcelos, rejected the “positivism” currently in vogue, ascribing instead to “monism based on aesthetics,” which included the notion that humans can truly perceive reality only by means of rhythm. He explained it all in three tomes—Metaphysics, Ethics, and Aesthetics—all far too arcane for most people and this short article.
However, Vasconcelos’ proposal of a new “Cosmic Race” shook the world. The other races—African, Asian, Native and the European (the latter, he believed, then-ascendant, being shallow, imperialistic, and virtually soulless, especially as embodied by the United States)—would soon give way to the more spiritual Mestizo (miscegenistic) race: “What is going to emerge…is a definitive race, the synthetical race, the integral race, made up of the genius and the blood of all peoples and, for that reason, more capable of true brotherhood and of a truly universal vision… a fifth universal race, the fruit of all the previous ones and amelioration of everything past…The final race, the cosmic race.”
Fed up with Obregon’s successor, President Calles, Vasconcelos ran for president himself. But in an election fraught with violence and fraud, he learned the hard way that, henceforth, one political party, the PRI, would choose Mexico’s president.
Disillusioned, Vasconcelos left Mexico again, abandoned his philosophy, and embraced instead both conservative Catholicism and fascism—an astonishing reversal. When he came home, he directed the National Library of Mexico and eventually the Mexican Institute of Hispanic Culture.
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