April 05, 2010 Memo From Middle America (Formerly Known As Memo From Mexico), By Allan WallYes, La Raza Really Does Mean "The Race"—And The Idea Was Invented By a Nazi Sympathizer
The National
Council of La Raza (NCLR)
calls itself "The
largest Latino civil rights and advocacy organization…"
It agitates against controlling immigration and in favor
of amnesty for illegal aliens.
This
NCLR supports driver’s licenses and in-state tuition
for illegal aliens and opposes a border fence, secure
voter ID and state laws that fight illegal immigration
and bilingual education. And its
"We
Can Stop the Hate" campaign seeks to shut down
your right to oppose illegal immigration. It worked on
Lou Dobbs!
In short, NCLR is
a radical anti-American organization. Its
funding, by the way, mostly comes from corporations,
with some from the federal government.
Many immigration
patriots have taken to calling the NCLR the
"National Council of the Race". A white organization would never be
allowed to use
"the race" in its title, now would it?
In this day and
age, to be called
"racist"
(as defined by the multicultural left) is the biggest
sin in American politics and can destroy your career.
But does
la raza really
mean "the race"?
The NCLR says it
doesn’t.
Here’s the organization’s official explanation
“THE TRANSLATION OF OUR NAME:
NATIONAL COUNCIL OF LA RAZA: Many people incorrectly
translate our name, ‘La Raza,’ as ‘the race.’ While it
is true that one meaning of raza’ in Spanish is
indeed ‘race,’ in Spanish, as in English and any other
language, words can and do have multiple meanings. As
noted in several online dictionaries, ‘La Raza’ means
‘the people’ or ‘the community.’ Translating our name as
‘the race’ is not only inaccurate, it is factually
incorrect. ‘Hispanic’ is an ethnicity, not a race. As
anyone who has ever met a Dominican American, Mexican
American, or Spanish American can attest, Hispanics can
be and are members of any and all races."
Let’s assume for a
moment that this explanation is correct. Let’s assume
that la raza can be translated as
"the people" or
"the community".
From the point of
view of patriotic immigration reform and the defense of
the historic American nation, is that any better?
If La Raza calls
itself "the
people" or
"the community", it is certainly NOT referring to
the historical American
“people” or “community”.
Rather, it is setting itself and its clients up as a
“people” and a “community”
whose interests conflict with those of the American
people.
Otherwise, why
would they need a separate organization to support
themselves?
So, back to the
word "raza".
What does it really mean?
I consulted the
Real Academia
Española. That’s the
"Royal Academy of
the Spanish Language",
founded in 1713 in Madrid, Spain. The Royal Academy
is the highest authority of the Spanish language. What
does the Academy
say about the term
raza?
The first
definition given by the Royal Academy: Sounds like a race.
That’s race too.
According to the
Academy, the term
la raza can refer to the
"human race",
or to a breed of animals (such as fox terriers or
Holsteins).
The term has other
meanings
unrelated to our discussion:
"a crack",
"a ray of light
that penetrates an opening",
"a crack that
forms in a cavalry helmet",
"a part of a
fabric", and a general term meaning a
"quality of certain things, in relation to certain characteristics that
define it". These are unconnected meanings, like
"horse
race" or
"mill
race" in English.
None of the Academy-approved definitions would be translated into English as
"people" or
"community".
Besides, there are
other, perfectly good Spanish words that could mean
"people" or "community"—such
as
pueblo,
gente
or
communidad.
Granted, no
dictionary can completely cover all the nuances of a
language. And meanings of words can vary according to
context and usage.
But that brings us
back to square one. If
la raza really
means "people"
or "community",
why then does the NCLR persist in using the word
raza?
Americans, after
all, get
hysterical about the term
"race". So
why does the NCLR insist upon using the Spanish equivalent?
Why don’t they
call their group
"The National Council of the Community" or
"The National
Council of the People"?
No, they insist
upon using the term
la raza.
Indeed, the group’s title is actually a peculiar
linguistic hybrid, combining English (The
National Council of…) and Spanish (…la
raza).
I ask again—why do
they insist upon using the term
la raza?
Well, my friends,
there is a reason. And the NCLR tells us in the second
paragraph of the aforementioned document
THE TRANSLATION
OF OUR NAME:
“The term ‘La Raza’ has its
origins in early 20th century Latin American literature
and translates into English most closely as ‘the people’
or, according to some scholars, as ‘the Hispanic people
of the New World.’ The term was coined by Mexican
scholar
José Vasconcelos to reflect the fact that the people
of Latin America are a mixture of many of the world’s
races, cultures, and religions. Mistranslating ‘La Raza’
to mean ‘the race’ implies that it is a term meant to
exclude others. In fact, the full term coined by
Vasconcelos, ‘La Raza Cósmica,’ meaning the
‘cosmic people,’ was developed to reflect not purity but
the mixture inherent in the Hispanic people. This is an
inclusive concept, meaning that Hispanics share with all
other peoples of the world a common heritage and
destiny.
Aha ! Now we have
something much more concrete!
By NCLR’s own
admission, if we want to know what it means by
la raza, we
can see what Jose Vasconcelos meant by
la raza.
(In a similar
fashion, those who wish to know Barack Obama’s racial
ideology can read Obama’s own writing, or read Steve
Sailer’s book
America’s Half-Blood Prince since Steve read and
analyzed Obama’s autobiography.)
Jose Vasconcelos was a Mexican intellectual who
lived from 1882 to 1959. He was, at various times,
Mexico’s secretary of education, the president of
Mexico’s national educational institution the
UNAM
(National Autonomous University of Mexico), and an
unsuccessful candidate for president. See photos
here and
here.
In the 1920s
Vasconcelos penned his seminal essay
La Raza Cósmica (The Cosmic Race) which NCLR
cites. The la raza
doctrine was influential not only in Mexico—Vasconcelos
traveled throughout Latin America sharing it. Several
decades later, in 1948, he revised his essay and
re-published it.
I read the essay
(in Spanish of course). I found it quite interesting.
Some of it was brilliant, some was absurd, some
incoherent. Vasconcelos was interested in establishing a
Latin American identity. He wasn’t just interested in
Mexico, but in a civilizational vision for all of Latin
America. Vasconcelos saw conflict between Latin America and the U.S. as a continuation of the centuries´ long struggle between Spain and England, going all the way back to the Spanish Armada days. Throughout his essay, he uses the terms sajones, inglesas and yanquis interchangeably. Vasconcelos describes the struggle thusly,
"Pugna de
latinidad contra sajonismo ha llegado a ser, sigue
siendo nuestra época; pugna de instituciones, de
propósitos y de ideales."
(The struggle of Latinity against Saxonism has come to be, and continues
being in our era, a struggle of institutions, of
purposes and of ideals).
I think
Vasconcelos was right about this. There is a
centuries-long rivalry between the Latin and Anglo-Saxon
cultures which from time to time has erupted in all-out
war. With good leadership, open conflict could be
avoided and our interests protected. But today’s U.S.
leaders are in open surrender mode.
What Vasconcelos
says is not that different from what
Samuel Huntington described as the
“Clash of
Civilizations”. Ironically, Huntington was lambasted
as a “racist”
by some of the same people who admire Vasconcelos.
In 1588, the
Spanish Armada attempted to conquer England but
failed. Vasconcelos called the
defeat of the Armada a
"disaster".
Note that the Armada’s defeat
paved for the way for
English
settlement of the
13 Colonies (beginning with
Jamestown) which were the foundation of the U.S.A.
I guess if you
wish the U.S. had never been founded you’d retroactively
root for the Armada.
Vasconcelos also
regretted the fact that the
British won at
Trafalgar, defeating a combined French/Spanish
fleet. That too was another defeat for the Latins.
Although
Vasconcelos wished Napoleon had won in Europe, he
criticized him for selling the Louisiana Territory to
the U.S.—which extended the domain of the Anglo-Saxons
and
set up the easy
conquests of Texas and California
Vasconcelos writes
about "the
Saxon—our rival for possession of the continent",
and of "the old conflict of Latins and Saxons". The Anglo-Saxons are called
"our enemies".
Remember that the
NCLR claims to derive its understanding of the term
la raza from Vasconcelos. That must mean they too see themselves as
Hispanic warriors infiltrating the Anglosphere.
Carlos Fuentes, Mexico’s premier living man of
letters, has spoken of the Spanish language and its
"silent
reconquista of the United States" (not just the
Southwest !) and compared it to the conquest of Mexico
five centuries ago.[El
español, "esperanto" de las comunidades indígenas de
América, señala Carlos Fuentes, By Armando G.
Tejeda, La
Jornada, October 20th, 2001] (See my 2002 article
Spanish and the
New Conquistadors.)
Mexico’s previous
president,
Vicente Fox, has boasted that Mexicans who speak
Spanish in the U.S. are doing their patriotic duty (to
Mexico, of course) and
complained about Anglo-Saxons not getting with the
globalization program fast enough.
And how about the
NCLR, self-confessed followers of Jose Vasconcelos? Well, in the 1990s, the organization's longtime president Raul Yzaguirre declared that "US English [the organization] is to Hispanics as the Ku Klux Klan is to blacks."
US English, by the
way, is an organization whose
only goal is
to promote
English as our official language. What’s wrong with
that? Well, if you’re part of the centuries' long
struggle between the Latins and the Anglo-Saxons, and
you’re on the Latin side, it makes perfect sense to
oppose it.
Now let´s look at
the "race"
thing. NCLR says that Spanish-speakers are of mixed
origins, therefore
"la raza" can’t mean race when it refers to them.
But that assertion
contradicts Vasconcelos’ doctrine.
Vasconcelos
divided humanity into five races (razas).
The four
traditional races are (1) the
Negro, (2) the
rojo or
indio (meaning American Indian), (3) the
amarillo (yellow) or mogol
(mongol), and (4) the
blanco
(white).
Then there is the
fifth raza—la raza cósmica, the cosmic race. This race, says Vasconcelos, is
still being formed. It is
"una estirpe
[stock, lineage]
en formación". It is being formed in Latin America,
by the mixture of the four traditional races. In the
words of the essay, this new race will be
"the union of all
men in a fifth universal race, fruit of the previous
[races] and an improvement [superación] over all the
past [races]."
It’s obvious that
Vasconcelos saw this new fifth race as a superior form
of humanity. And the genesis of the new race, this new
humanity, would be accompanied by a new, Aquarian-like
age of free will, beauty, jubilation and love. Mates
would be chosen on the basis of emotion, beauty and joy,
to bring about a superior eugenics, in which physical
ugliness would be bred out of the human species.
Vasconcelos went
on for several paragraphs about the ugliness thing. He
complained about the current state in which
" it is repugnant
to see these married couples who come out daily from the
courts and churches [where they were married]
with 90% of those contracting marriage, more or less,
being ugly."
Vasconcelos was
presumably referring to his fellow Mexicans—saying 90%
of them were ugly!
But in the new age
of the Fifth Race, for some unexplained reason, the ugly
people will not procreate, says Vasconcelos. Dominant
genes will triumph over recessive genes, monstrosities
will disappear, and the offspring will be beautiful
children, leading to an
"infinitely
superior type to all that have existed ".
Vasconcelos
predicted that the U.S. would be the last white empire.
But he still thought that whites had an important
historical role in bringing about the genesis of the
cosmic race. After all, the age of exploration of whites
had set up the racial mixture in Latin America.
And despite the
fact that Vasconcelos predicted this utopian world of
love and harmony, the contributions of the four
traditional races to the fifth race would not be equal.
In fact, Vasconcelos said the white character would
probably predominate.
Vasconcelos
thought the Indians needed to modernize. He didn’t talk
much about the Orientals, although there has been some
East Asian immigration to Latin America. However, even
Vasconcelos defended Latin American restrictions on
Chinese immigration. It’s not that Latins were being
discriminatory like the Saxons up north. It’s just that
they had to restrict Asian immigration sometimes
because, he wrote,
"it’s not fair
that peoples like the Chinese…multiply like mice…"
(Long before the
"One Child" policy of course).
As for blacks,
Vasconcelos thought that some of their characteristics
would have to be eliminated, bred out in the great race
mixture taking place. Comparing
the situation of American blacks and
Latin American blacks, he wrote that
"In the Iberoamerican world…we
have few Negroes and most of them have been
transforming into mulattos."
Vasconcelos even
wrote that "The low types of the species will be absorbed by the superior type. In this way the Negro, for example, can be redeemed and, little by little, through voluntary extinction, the ugliest stocks will be less prolific, and the better specimens will yield to the more beautiful. The inferior races, when educated, will be less prolific, and the better specimens will ascend in a scale of ethnic improvement. Their type will not exactly be the white, but this new raza, to which the white himself will have to aspire with the object of conquering the synthesis. The Indian, by means of the injection of a similar race, will make the jump of myriad years … and in a few decades of aesthetic eugenics the Negro can disappear together with the types which the free instinct of beauty will designate as fundamentally recessive and unworthy…of perpetuation."
Not exactly
politically correct, is it? If a contemporary American
wrote this, what would the NCLR and the
NAACP say about it?
Vasconcelos also
wrote in his essay that the ancient Egyptians were more
intelligent than contemporary Anglo-Saxons. And he wrote
that "any
professor can prove that the groups of children and
youth descended from
Scandinavians,
Dutch
and English of the American universities are much more
slow, almost clumsy, compared with the children and
mestizo youth
of the south."
Vasconcelos
predicted that Latin American civilization would
contribute to world technology in a great way. That’s
because much of the region lies in the tropics and they
would thus be forced to invent
new
technologies to deal with the heat. And he said that
the Amazon and Orinoco basins would become centers of
great advances.
It
hasn’t exactly happened yet. Nor has racial mixture
produced an explosion of love, harmony and brotherhood
in Latin America. You certainly don’t see it in Mexico,
where
drug cartels are
butchering each other.
Vasconcelos wasn’t
too clear on the fate of the four traditional races, but
it seems he was predicting that they would eventually be
absorbed into the fifth race and cease to exist as
separate races. Presumably everybody would then speak
Spanish and Portuguese.
So do we have any
choice in the matter? What if we don’t want our culture
absorbed into the
"Cosmic Race"?
And here’s another
thing you’re not likely to see on the NCLR website:
In 1940, while World War II was already raging in Europe, on this side
of the pond, in Mexico, Jose Vasconcelos was a Nazi
sympathizer.
Yes, that’s right.
Vasconcelos was the editor of
Timón, a
magazine sponsored by the German embassy in Mexico. Some
of the articles in that
publication, written by Vasconcelos and others, were
cheering on the Axis powers, attacking the Jews and
quoting the Protocols of the
Elders of Zion.
This went on until
it was shut down by the Mexican government.
Today the NCLR,
the Southern Poverty Law Center ($PLC)
and their ilk
publicize all sorts of
supposed connections, tenuous though they may be,
between immigration patriots and extremists, in order to
discredit us and shut us down.
But here is the
National Council of
La Raza basing
its doctrine on the writings of a man who was, for a
time, an open Nazi sympathizer!
Is that blatant
hypocrisy, or what?
American citizen Allan Wall (email
him) recently moved back to the |
