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Anonymous asked:

If you would like, could you please explain what's bad about using "the raza?" Someone I know said "viva la raza" or something and I didn't think it was right to do so, but I also didn't know enough to say what was wrong with it

cacafueg0-deactivated20210316 answered:

@dumbassrights if you or anyone wants to give input.

Part of it is trying to enforce ethnic nationalism in the US, popularized in the 60’s after a boom of Chicano literature and race theory. (This is mean but I blame Gloria Anzaldua forever for this shit)

But the issue is that it was heavily inspired from José Vasconcelos essay ‘La Raza Cósmica x’. La Raza Cósmica was a concept created to racially homogenize Mexico and (eventually) all Latin America with the ideology that there will be no race to worry about because everyone will be mestize— but there’s a catch. Every mestize should aspire to be westernized: light complexions, with Eurocentric education and Christian. To marry beneath that is to regress ‘la Raza’. And I’m SURE if you’re latine you’ve heard those phrases: ‘tenemos que avanzar/mejorar la Raza’. Part of that mentality comes directly from the concepts of that essay.

It purposefully excludes black and indigenous people. Black/Indigenous people don’t fit in the utopia that is la Raza Cósmica, but Europeans do, because they’re the most ‘advanced race’.

You might ask ‘but that’s not how it’s used in the US! It’s to make one proud of their latine heritage!’ And that’s the issue. You need to get rid of that mentality because to ignore how that phrase comes from such antiblack and anti-indigenous garbage is disgusting. This is how Latines in the US get shocked when they realize that black Latines exist or that indigenous people still fucking exist in Latin America. Using that phrase ‘que viva la Raza’ is just promoting the mentality that you only view legitimate Latines as being brown and racially ambiguous but still somehow ‘indigenous’ without even knowing where your ancestors comes from or EVEN if your non-white ancestry comes from indigenous people lol.

Yes. Its an easy way to ignore white privilage and it terrifies me to think of this concept so spread here (in latam) as it is in US. Its fucking dangerous. We already had that mentality when our countries were born-it was used to kill & torture indigenous and black people. Because we are all the same, remember? There’s not a racist motive! I’ve seen latines (even white latines) trying to use that logic here and its so FUCKING uncomfortable. Its a easy way to gain the “person of color” card without touching things like colorism, white privilage, being white passing, and actual especific issues in each country.

I can not think of anything good coming from “La Raza”, more than a safe term that makes latines of the diaspora feel included, because is very close to them. Or even give a place to some latines in latam that they dont own. But when that term has an anti-indigenous origin, affects black people in the community, allows white people to speak over latines of color and spreads ignorance about “latinidad”…i’m sorry guys, but i dont care anymore about your identity crisis or what you feel comfort in. Be part of the community HELPING others and erasing ideas like this, not only to feel good about yourself.

In case you all needed more incentives to remove this MEChistA term from your vernacular, maybe you’d like to know that Vaconcelos was an open fascist who admired and supported Franco, Mussolini and Hitler. Mestizaje as an ideology everyone should be wary of, and hopefully with this context ‘viva la raza’ should sound less like ‘pride’ and more as the genocidal postcolonial nation building process that it was born out of.

For ppl who read Spanish and want receipts on the nazi shithead:

En los textos que Vasconcelos escribió para la revista Timón campea el espíritu abiertamente nazi de un intelectual que se tragó completos los mitos de la Atlántida y de la conspiración mundial de los “judeomasones”, y al que su visceral anticomunismo llevó a prologar el célebre libelo Derrota mundial, de Salvador Borrego, y a cantar la excelencia de Los protocolos de los sabios de Sión. Vasconcelos, cuyo nombre adorna la biblioteca pública más grande y desairada del país, es también autor del desfasado lema de la UNAM: “Por mi raza hablará el espíritu”, el cual compuso al ser nombrado rector de esa casa de estudios en 1920.

(https://www.milenio.com/opinion/rogelio-villarreal/columna-rogelio-villareal/el-nazi-vasconcelos)

Translated:

Within the works Vasconcelos wrote for the the periodical Timón he openly championed the spirit of an intellectual Nazi drunk off Atlantean myths and world conspiracy theories about “jew masons”, whose viceral anticommunism lead him to write the forward to the libelous Derrota Mundial [World Defeat] by Salvador Borrego [Mexican Nazi-sympathizer and Holocaust denier], and proclaim the excellence of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion [antisemitic texts]. Vasconcelos, whose name adorns the largest and most prestigious public library in the country, is also the author of the dated maxim of the UNAM [Mexico’s most prestigious public university]: “For My People, The Spirit Will Speak”, which he composed when made rector in 1920.

2goldensnitches

People should also be aware of similar Mexican fascists/racists like Dr. Atl (a painter famous for his landscapes) and Andrés Henestrosa (a poet). Latinidad/“pocness” doesn’t impeded people from being nazi pieces of shit and I really wish that “pocness” would stop being seen as some moral highground or automatic disposition towards goodness because then oh boy what happens when you learn your fave latinx was a nazi?

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