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7 - Utopian Latin Americanism: Arielism and Mestizofilia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 October 2020

Susana Nuccetelli
Affiliation:
St Cloud State University, Minnesota
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Summary

Chapter 7 considers José Enrique Rodó’s (Uruguayan, 1872-1917) and José Vasconcelos’s (Mexican, 1882-1959) models of Latin America’s identity, each of which rejects positivism and US values. In his Ariel, Rodó declared US values pernicious for the youth of Latin America, while in his Cosmic Race Vasconcelos advanced a utopian vision of a Latin American race that would develop superior values to those of the other races of the world. On the analysis offered here, Rodó’s reaction is a form of elitism based on ethnocentric bias as well as misinformation and fallacy. After all, Arielism traces the roots of Latin American identity to the values of Christianity, colonial Spain, and ancient Greece and Rome. As a result, Rodó’s Arielism offers a view of Latin American identity that disvalues the contributions of peoples of non-European descent such as Amerindians and Afro-Latin Americans. Furthermore, it charges without evidence that utilitarianism is the value theory prevailing in the United States. By contrast, Vasconcelos’s pseudoscientific version of the mestizaje model provided a theoretical framework that was instrumental in recognizing the contribution of traditionally marginalized peoples to the identity of the region. This chapter argues that his model is thus more defensible than Rodó’s.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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References

7.4 Suggested Readings

Bar-Lewaw, M. Itzhak, ed. 1971. La revista “Timón” y José Vasconcelos. Mexico: Casa Edimex.Google Scholar
De Beer, Gabriella. 1966. José Vasconcelos and His World. New York: Las Americas.Google Scholar
Devés Valdés, Eduardo. 2000. Del Ariel de Rodó a la CEPAL (1900–1950). Buenos Aires: Editorial Biblos.Google Scholar
Fuentes, Carlos. 1988. “Prologue” pp. 1328 in Rodó (1988/1900).Google Scholar
Hooker, Juliet. 2017. Theorizing Race in the Americas: Douglass, Sarmiento, Du Bois, and Vasconcelos. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Jaksić, Iván. 1996. “The Machine and the Spirit: Anti-Technological Humanism in Twentieth-Century Latin America,” Revista de Estudios Hispánicos 30: 179201.Google Scholar
Mariátegui, José Carlos. 1922. “‘Indologia’ por José Vasconcelos,” Variedades, Lima, October 22.Google Scholar
Miller, Nicola. 1999. In the Shadow of the State: Intellectuals and the Quest for National Identity in Twentieth-Century Spanish America. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Paz Salinas, Maria Emilia. 1997. Strategy, Security, and Spies: Mexico and the US as Allies in World War II. University Park, PA: Penn State Press.Google Scholar
Rodó, José Enrique, Ariel. 1988/1900. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Salles, Arleen. 2011. “Rodó, Race, and Morality,” pp. 181202 in Gracia (2011).Google Scholar
Vasconcelos, José. 1997/1925. The Cosmic Race: A Bilingual Edition. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Vasconcelos, José 2011/1925. “Mestizaje,” pp. 4590 in Stavans (2011) (references to reprint pp. 740 in Vasconcelos (1997/1925)).Google Scholar
von Vacano, Diego A. 2011. “Zarathustra Criollo: Vasconcelos on Race,” pp. 203226 in Gracia (2011).Google Scholar
von Vacano, Diego A. 2012. The Color of Citizenship: Race, Modernity and Latin American/Hispanic Political Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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