Counter-Currents
A Mexican Lesson for Americans:
An Excerpt from José Vasconcelos, A Brief History of Mexico
José Vasconcelos
Father Miguel Hidalgo leading the multi-racial Mexican populace in rebellion against Spain (Mural by Juan O'Gorman)
946 words
Translated by César Tort
Translator’s Note:
The following excerpt is taken from the chapter on “Independence” in A Brief History of Mexico (Breve historia de México, [México, D.F.: Ediciones Botas, 1944, first edition 1937], pp. 255–60). The author, José Vasconcelos, one of the most celebrated Mexican intellectuals of the 20th century, wrote: “El desprecio de la propia casta es el peor de los vicios del carácter” (Contempt for one’s race is the worst of character flaws).
Americans who have visited their southern neighbor or observed Mexican immigrants in California and Texas and observed their overwhelmingly Indian phenotype might find difficult to imagine that in the early 19th century — just before the War of Independence in New Spain, the country that would retake its ancient Aztec name, “Mexico” — whites constituted one-sixth of the population. In modern Mexico, because of low white and high non-white birthrates, pure whites are almost on the brink of extinction. Thus the history of this nation should serve as a warning to the Americans against open borders, miscegenation, and affirmative action.
The independence of the Latin American nations is the result of the disintegration of the Spanish empire. None of the nations of Latin America had, by a process of natural growth, reached the maturity required for emancipation. . . . . In the colonies, the men of clearer vision and greater patriotism, for example, the bishop Abad y Queipo, gave Mexico up for lost, and rightly so, after he saw that the independence was inevitable. . . .
Mexican whites: An endangered species
From the beginning, the war was supposed to destroy the Spaniards, who represented the force and culture of the country, in the same way that later a fight against the criollo was developed, and today against the mestizo—all under the pretext of freeing the Indian—in order to uproot Spanish culture and replace it with American.
The two lands most imbued with Spanish influence, Mexico and Peru, resisted independence, which happened through foreign intervention. Peru was freed by Colombians and Argentines. . . .
In the United States, the independence movement was not a race war. For Morelos, for example, to be comparable to Washington, it must be assumed that Washington had decided to recruit blacks and mulattoes to kill the English. Instead, Washington disdained blacks and mulattoes and recruited the English of America, who did not commit the folly of killing their own brothers, uncles, and relatives, only because they were born in England. Quite the contrary, each participant of the American Revolution felt pride for his British ancestry and hoped for the betterment of the English. This should have been the sense of our own emancipation, to transform New Spain into an improved Spain, better than that of the peninsula but with its blood, our blood. The whole later disaster of Mexico is explained by the blind, criminal decision that emerged from the womb of Hidalgo’s mobs and is expressed in the suicidal cry: “Death to the Spaniards!”
The absurd idea never crossed the mind of Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, or any of the fathers of the Yankee Independence that a redskin should be the President or that blacks should occupy positions held by the English. What we should have done is to declare that all the Spanish residents in Mexico were to be treated like Mexicans.
The idea that independence would tend to devolve power to the Indian was not an Indian idea. The emancipation, as already said over and over again, was neither devised nor consummated by the Indians. The idea of stirring up the Indians appears in the leaders of the emancipation who had not found positive reception for their plans from the educated classes. They resorted to the dangerous decision of starting a caste war because they were unable to carry out a war of emancipation. Not even Bolívar escapes this charge, since in Colombia he stirred up blacks against the whites in order to recruit his armies. For the people of the North, such procedures would have seemed insane, as they were.
It was therefore a crime: stirring up the underdogs against the top brass without any social improvement, merely to have soldiers. In fact, the idea of putting the Indian in front of the insurrection was an English idea. One of the first people to speak of confederating the Hispanic continent under the rule of a descendant of the Incas was Miranda. This idea was given to Miranda by the two biggest enemies of the Spanish in America, namely the French and the English.
If, during the US War of Independence, an agitator had said that the country should be ruled again by the redskins, surely he would have been shot by patriots as a traitor. But among us, talk of returning the country to the Indians is greeted with smiles. The English originators of this propaganda knew well that the Indians would not even her it, but they counted upon the unseriousness, the vanity, and the folly of the criollos and mestizos, both of whom took sides against the Spanish. Once the Spanish were destroyed, these countries could be easily divided and thus fall prey to a new form of domination. Undoubtedly, a Mexico ruled by Indians and becoming Aztec again would be as easy prey as it was for Cortés.
Even if the Indians deserved this restoration, which is absurd to imagine, it is obvious that people do not go back three hundred years—much less in the case of Mexico, where the race itself, apart from the customs and ideas, had been transformed. Contempt for one’s race is the worst of character flaws.
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12 comments
It’s truly disturbing what’s happening in Latin America now. I know a Mexican man who travels to Mexico regularly to help his mother but he is as critical of mestizos as any “white racist.” One day while driving around he pointed out a nearby neighborhood and mentioned that it used to be nice and peaceful – but then the Mexicans moved in.
Remember what General Santa Anna said:
“……it is very true that I threw up my cap for liberty with great ardor, and perfect sincerity, but very soon found the folly of it. A hundred years to come my people will not be fit for liberty. They do not know what it is, unenlightened as they are, and under the influence of a Catholic clergy, a despotism is the proper government for them, but there is no reason why it should not be a wise and virtuous one.”—Santa Anna in reply to former American envoy to Mexico Joel Poinsett after his capture by Texians 1836
A very interesting article, Cesar, thank you. Vasconcelos was obviously a very learned and perceptive intellectual for his time. Probably an ethnic Spanish Creole, and a member of that dwindling ruling ethnic caste. He would probably be crucified today by the Chicano/la Raza crowd. What happened in Mexico genetically is exactly what Elmer Pendell described in his great book ‘Why Civilizations Self-Destruct’. In a nutshell, it was dysgenics, or breeding down, to use the vernacular. As it came to pass, Simon Bolivar finally realized the futility of what he had stirred up in South America when he lamented on his death bed that “I have plowed the sea”. Furthermore, Alexander von Humboldt’s reading of the racial tea leaves in the early 19th Century was also most prescient when he stated that “America will absorb Mexico and crumble to pieces”. Most Anglos worldwide are oblivious to such information, and scoff at it condescendingly when presented with it. They are in for a very rude awakening in the next several decades.
Thank for the Humboldt quotation. Hegel said that the only thing that history teaches us is that men learn nothing from history.
Now that I am reading Mexican history for the first time from a racialist viewpoint, it is thrilling to see that the deranged altruism did not start in the Anglo American world but in Hispanic America–sanz Jews!
“If, during the US War of Independence, an agitator had said that the country should be ruled again by the redskins, surely he would have been shot by patriots as a traitor. But among us, talk of returning the country to the Indians is greeted with smiles.”
But now many WASP Americans smile before their black commander in chief! The same suicidal ethos that is currently wreaking havoc above the Río Grande happened here, long before.
But no: Vasconcelos is not hated here. There’s even a statue honoring him in my town. In the photos I’ve seen of him he looks like a casitzo. You won’t believe how many race classifications there were in the caste systems of New Spain (see e.g., here).
Vasconcelos’ stance about race was complex and often contradictory. Twelve years before writing A Brief Story of Mexico Vasconcelos published La raza cósmica where he idealizes Latin American miscegenation: an essay that only some Mexican nationalists take seriously. But unlike the mainstream historians of Mexico Vasconcelos at least places the subject of race on the foreground. His Brief Story for example has many other passages like the one cited above. It is a pity that it was never translated to English.
The attitude of the Mexicans toward race is often bizarre and surrealistic. Those interested could take a look at this entry of my old blog and look for the phrase “Years ago a Newsweek article asked humorously, “Is Mexico blond?…”
It’s interesting to see the parallels. Competition between different factions of the white population leading the minority party to recruit among outsiders against their own people.
” just before the War of Independence in New Spain, the country that would retake its ancient Aztec name, “Mexico” — whites constituted one-sixth of the population”
I think this is really the key difference. Spain didn’t have the population to fill up the south and so compromised on race earlier. It’s basically the same story as the Tocharians, Aryans in India and Iran and those blond-haired mummies in Egypt. It’s partly a side-effect of our ancestor’s success in being able to take over countries despite being very few in number relative to the existing population and partly the effect of the weighting between ethno-centricity and ideal-centricity being different among Whites so it’s easier to go against their own people over some ideal or other.
In the North the land was filled faster than the Amerinidian population could recover from the imported diseases. Someone like Father Hidalgo could only write books. For the same process to occur in the north as had happened in the south the gates first had to be opened by a Trojan horse and an alien population imported before the minority party of the host population could choose to recruit from them.
In a nutshell if white people are going to take terriotory or even just defend what is already theirs they need to be able to turn it and keep it 98% white.
As per Wandrin’s statement:
‘I think this is really the key difference. Spain didn’t have the population to fill up the south and so compromised on race earlier. It’s basically the same story as the Tocharians, Aryans in India and Iran and those blond-haired mummies in Egypt. It’s partly a side-effect of our ancestor’s success in being able to take over countries despite being very few in number relative to the existing population and partly the effect of the weighting between ethno-centricity and ideal-centricity being different among Whites so it’s easier to go against their own people over some ideal or other’. (end quote)
Unfortunately, our white ideals have tended to be both friend and foe. When as a friend, we’ve created and expressed the most beautiful and sacred of art, architecture, and inquiry for ourselves. When as a foe, we’ve gradually (and willingly) shared such expressions (i.e. power) with non-whites. These ‘European techniques’, or ‘derivative, post-colonial techniques’ have been re-directed against us for quite some time.
Such was our greatest ‘white mistake’ (i.e. the universal ideal for all). Hence, the rise of China’s westernised, martial knowledge-base.
The transmission of our white, cultural power was used as an obvious ‘conquer-and-divide’ strategy. As a result, the non-white world is now armed with our ‘techniques of the Enlightenment’ to be used against our pan-European world.
Hence, an excerpt from Dr. Michael O’Meara’s book (2010) ‘Toward the White Republic’ (page 96):
‘Since its advent, with the liberal-democratic revolutions of the late 18th century, the Modern West, unlike its Medieval and Ancient counterparts, has shed all sense of tradition, transcendence, and fidelity; it violates the natural order of things; it pursues a purely practical, economic course geared to the lowest order of existence; it can’t see the higher points of reference; and it replaces the ‘rights’ of blood and heritage with false creeds and material acquisitions’. (end quote)
Despite the enormity of monetary, Jewish culture having wrecked our spiritual sense of being: our white race has historically suffered from a porous defence of the mind. That is to say: we have been so riddled with guilt for the betterment of ‘others’ as a kind of greed factor against us.
Ergo, modernity is miscegenation; Mexico, Brazil, and Puerto Rico are just a few examples of an ‘older modernity’ of race-mixing in continuation. The above quote from Dr. O’Meara is worth re-reading at least a hundred times if not more. Finis.
I agree with you about O’Meara. His pamphlet explains in plain English what only dedicated intellectuals can decipher in the brilliant albeit more opaque prose of the likes of Francis Parker Yockey, and yes: is worth rereading a dozen times.
WN historians ought to take heed of what happened here down the South. Through three hundred years the whites of New Spain did a very good job with the Inquisition, producing the first Judenfrei state in the American continent. At least in this side of the American continent we cannot blame the Jews for how the suicidal ideas of the French Revolution infected the minds of the criollos.
I still believe that the analogy of secular liberalism as “everybody, atheists included, wants to be like Jesus” (universalism, deranged altruism) is accurate. That’s why I am interested in the most horrific cases in which whites were martyred (Holodomor, Hellstorm) as the perfect vaccination against a whole frame of the mind.
Edgardus de la Vega: Ergo, modernity is miscegenation; Mexico, Brazil, and Puerto Rico are just a few examples of an ‘older modernity’ of race-mixing in continuation.
The historical tendency of White men to engage in acts of sex with non-White women is another reason racial separation is necessary. It took quite a bit of voluntary miscegenation between White men and the indigenous females to create modern Brazil.
Lew:
All the more reason to apply Dr. O’Meara’s cited quotation to an earlier period.
Elsewhere in the blogosphere I have just been told:
An example of this is precisely the book of Vasconcelos, written in the 1930s and with a prologue of the 40’s.
This week I opened a new blog, this one for Spaniards, which first article was the original excerpts in Spanish of the above piece. What I find most disturbing is that in both the Mexican independence movement that the pure Spanish blood, Hidalgo, started in 1810, and the American Civil War fifty years later were both traitorous civil wars led by whites against whites… on behalf of non-whites! Since in both civil wars whites had not been brainwashed by the Jews as they were by the time of WWII, this can only mean that MacDonald’s model is incomplete. Something deeper, what I have called a “monster from the Id” in reference to the 1956 film Forbidden Planet, must have messed with the whites’ psyches both in North and South America. But what…?
Is there an intellectual who has approached this suicidal trait in whites that precedes the takeover of the Jews? In medical science hypotheses are not considered seriously if the basic etiology of a specific disease has not been established. I would say the same of the diseases of the western mind.
I suspect that there have been astute White intellectuals who have analyzed the European psyche in the time frame that you are referring to Chechar. Those of us who are perplexed by the lack of an explicit racial identity by the early ‘idealistic’ liberal intellectual classes, will eventually find a scholar who has written about it. It was probably covered by a German scholar like Wilhelm Erbt (Weltgeschichte Auf Rassischer Grundlage), or another writer for one of the Third Reich’s prolific historical institutes. Or, it may have been covered by an Anglo scholar that we have overlooked. Christian universalism and rationalized morality no doubt played a decisive part in the genesis of that destructive thinking.
The riddle of these race denying, suicidal tendencies will eventually be unmasked. As Edgardus mentions, O’Meara has a lot to say about the issue. As some wise sage once said, “liberalism is a collective racial death wish”. By the way, the writings of Eric Thomson contain a lot of insight into the foibles of the White mindset, if you haven’t read them. I would love to see Kevin MacDonald, who has already written a superficial article about it, investigate the racial pathology of the White psyche in depth. Especially those factors that make Western Whites so credulous and susceptible to altruistic flim flam. The inability of a huge percentage of Whites to inoculate themselves mentally against alien influence and mind alteration, is another psychological enigma that needs explanation. The lack of a strong sense of racial identity, as opposed to national identity and pecuniary interests also needs investigated. As you know, there was already a lot of discussion about this topic on the recent White Identity thread on this site.
Thanks Junghans. I’ll have to review that literature. O’Meara and others explain beautifully how Sauron (the Jew) offered rings of power to the white kings (e.g., the US) at the cost of betraying their race and culture. But what troubles me is this Hidalgo and American Civil War out-group altruism, which preceded the fully-developed corporate capitalism (Sauron). It reminds me Revilo P. Oliver’s statement that in his research for the etiology of Western malaise he found that each revelation was just the tip of a much larger iceberg (my metaphors).
And yes: Prof. MacDonald’s findings must be expanded either by him or by his disciples. Since he has granted me permission to translate his trilogy (which at the speed of half a page per day it will take me a long time!) I guess after I finish I will have a good grasp of his abstract theory. But I don’t know how much evolutionary psychology will answer my questions: I also fear a “monster from the Id” is involved.
Dealing with multiple etiological factors for the same phenomenon is so disconcerting and confusing. Could Oswald Spengler or Julius Evola help me to crack the annoying cipher…?
Cesar, you are indeed a ‘geologist of the psyche’. Revilo Oliver had much to say about the riddle of the White mindset, as well as the Jews, and he was rather blunt about it at times.
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