I.3.8 DIGITAL ARCHIVE 1053099
In this letter addressed to the Colombian educator and historian Germán Arciniegas, José Vasconcelos (1882–1959) outlines his vision for a spiritually and ethnically unified America. The Mexican educator and philosopher was a key figure in the cultural renaissance brought about by the Mexican Revolution, and he was revered in post-revolutionary Mexico. Conceivably, he could have learned of Arciniegas’s early work (as a student leader and an editor of several short-lived avant-garde journals in Colombia) from Mexican poet Carlos Pellicer, who spent fourteen months in Bogota, beginning in December 1918. Dated May 28, 1923, Vasconcelos’s letter is anthologized in Discursos 1920–1950 [José Vasconcelos (Mexico City: Ediciones Botas, 1950), 57–64], on which this translation is based.
I received your letter of last April in which you informed me of the forthcoming Congress of the youth of Colombia, and you asked me for some words for this occasion. Your letter has moved me not only because you have remembered me, but also because the children of these embattled times often feel the need to transfer their longing to those whom they will replace tomorrow. Seeing how little we can achieve today, it is comforting to look at those who can push the Ideal forward, once we lie defeated. Nobody can explain what the millions of beings who are born daily only to suffer and die without leaving a trace have come to do on this cursed earth. . . .
We all see, some of us with blurred vision, others with clairvoyance, that we are dragged along by a somber current that at times lights up brightly, as with divine intuition. To achieve those instants of illumination, during which we devise a way to escape the absurd cycle, is the highest potentiality of our nature and the supreme objective of life. But if we are going to exercise our conscience, be it for this objective or any other, it is necessary to overcome the laziness of the body and the stupidity of the environment. For the body not to interfere, we feed it; for the work not to rob us of all our energy, we improve our control over nature, compelling it to yield results with little effort; and for our social life to cooperate with our spirit, it has to be reformed on the basis of honesty and justice. Honesty that uncovers the most hidden reality and justice derived not from the laws which the mind argues but from the superior laws of the heart. Thus, producing wealth with work and sharing it fairly, where everybody will be able to feed the body, without having to sell the soul’s greatest treasure, which is time. The curse of collective life derives from the contrast between the laziness of those who do not work and the slavery of those who work so hard that the physical work consumes their capacity for meditation and joy. This is the barbarian condition in which the world has lived to this date, but our era is precisely characterized by a longing for universal redemption and happiness for everybody, without hypocrisies and without simulations. Since Tolstoi ended the myth of the genius as a leader, the people no longer search for idols to praise, but for injustice to correct. Quixote triumphs in the world, but he has learned a lot during these centuries about failure, and he is no longer the madman who invites laughter, but the gentleman with strength, at the service of generosity and intelligence. For us the genius is not the one who grabs glory or power for himself, but the one who shares knowledge or energy. And our times want everything that was exclusive to become universal: happiness, knowledge, power. In addition we also want the sublime to be achieved not only up there, but also down here, and we call impostor anyone who powerlessly raises his hands to the heavens, instead of using his fists to correct injustice. But where is the center of this forthcoming human as well as divine palingenesis going to be…?
Europeans, with the pretext of nationalist ambitions—I really complain because they have reproduced in excess—will continue destroying themselves until the killings and emigration relieve the population congestion in land that has yielded more mouths than bread. Victims of a failed organization, they will not be able to teach us; they will be limited to invading us, providing us with the sap of a new humanity. The free mixing of races and cultures will reproduce in higher numbers and better elements, the universalistic experiment that failed in North America.
There it failed because it became “North Americanism”; here it may be saved if the Iberian flexibility and strength establish the basis for a truly universal type. The conscience of this mission beats in the heart of all Latin American nations and provides an impulse toward contemporary “Latin Americanism,” a modern Latin Americanism different from that of [Simón] Bolívar, because his was a political dream, whereas the present one is ethnic. Bolívar [SEE DOCUMENT I.3.2] wanted a League of American Nations that would not exclude the United States of North America. We want the union of the Iberian people, without excluding Spain, and specifically including Brazil. And we have to exclude the United States, not because of hatred, but because it represents another expression of human history. Bolívar, by widely interpreting the ideas of his time, wanted a League of American Nations able to guarantee universal freedom.
This same idea was again expressed with less grandeur a hundred years later, by the mediocre doctrinarian principles of Woodrow Wilson, when he incited American nations to participate in the European war in order to guarantee “democracy in the world.” Bolívar was not heard because his time had not yet come; but his ideal is reborn with more precision and strength. Wilson was not heard because the Iberian countries know what democracy is in the land of the dollar. They have their own ideal, which is not merely political but rather mystical: to allow free expression to each race in accordance with its mission and temperament. Within the most generous internationalism and honestly recognizing the universal capacity of mankind we want, however, for people not to be stripped of their own spiritual traits, because each is like a distinct path toward the revelation of the divine, and nobody has the right to suppress even one of those paths. We believe it is more important for a race to keep its idiosyncrasy than its territory, and for that reason we require spiritual above political emancipation. . . .
As a result of our independence we acquired tutors, and the mental pressure of France, as always in history, led to weakening Latin people and securing the triumph of English people. French nationalism, clumsily imitated, led us to constitute other people’s homelands, [and], without realizing it, we replaced everything that is strongest in a people—its noble tradition, its race relationships, its historic unity—with the vain meaningless talk imported with foreign labels. We thus split apart—hypnotized by the first foolishness arrived from Paris—and all of that we did while the Saxon race, led by a wise instinct, got organized to constitute the contemporary “English Speaking World” which dominates the planet. The conquest attempt by the English in Argentina, and the seizing of territory in Venezuela, in Mexico, etc., taught us to recognize the danger. The five or six thousand English people totally annihilated in Buenos Aires, made us see that the homeland is not only territory and political freedom, but also mainly stock, the type of culture to which every people belongs. Mere nationality is built on paper; whereas stock results from life. The creation of Latin American nationalities was the result of politics. The creation of Latin American nationalities was a case of collective suicide. Bolívar understood this, and in order to avoid it he used all the resources of is huge ingenuity; however, selfishness, natural barriers, and the interest of foreign powers were stronger. England’s interest preferred twenty clients over one. The vanity of France could not bear to see a great nation in front of which it would resemble a somewhat ridiculous teacher. It consented to show a certain disdainfully condescending manner toward the twenty disciples, as we ended up calling ourselves. Everything strange reached us: the English got hold of our markets, making us the gift of theories based on which they are the superior race and we are a bunch of Mestizos, maybe capable of learning through obedience and imitation. The French filled us with pretty things and arrived in Argentina to say that it was the best country in America because it was culturally closer to France. They immediately allowed the Peruvians to become Frenchified as a favorite disciple, and then, just like that, they prided themselves on the fact that Brazil was more French; and we all agreed that. . . the brain of the world was in Paris. The French, on the other hand, were all of the opinion that Latin Americans were wretched, and they were right. We handed over the wealth and handed over our soul. And as true pariahs we kept insulting Spain, turned arrogant by our new bosses, because that is what they were through the protection and tolerance they showed toward the despots who knew how to favor their interests. Look at today’s Venezuela, the feudal enclave of the last and most monstrous tyrant, protected by foreign companies that exploit the country and mirroring what at different times were Argentina, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Mexico. Our independence was on paper, and our decorum in the mud. Tragic operetta countries; bastard races, we have been the monkeys of the world after having renounced everything we owned, we set ourselves to imitate without the faith and the hope to create. The relentless war fought by [Benito] Juárez against the French starts the confusion in Mexico. Other more fortunate countries have gradually regenerated through the orderly effort of their own development, and we have finally arrived at the decisive period we live in to hear that the Bolivarian concept is brought to life anew, but that it is now much deeper because it no longer aims for a political league with abstract ends, but for the integration of a race which arrives at the moment of its universal mission. Lucky are the Latin American youth who live at a time when the bases for a new period of world history are established!
. . .
If the youth do not muster the heroism that these times require, the newly arrived will deprive us of our role as directors and create a hybrid culture. If we do not do it, they will; but they will spend years adapting to the new environment and in the meantime the civilization will languish or be destroyed. However, if the young people of today take the manly mission upon themselves, then the human victory will be swift and glorious. Foreigners will come and perhaps not with the purpose of conquest; we will treat them well, because they are made of noble human substance and because abuse and disloyalty only lead to dissolution and failure. As brothers we will improve what was done before, and the world will benefit from our triumph, and we will be the first universal race.
I trust you fully because in Colombia there is a distinguished ancestry which will produce miracles. The devotion with which you have kept the purity of the language is a guarantee that you own the pride that distinguishes only creative races. Any foreign assimilation is fruitful if it is purified and organized within the native mold, as is the case of English as well as Spanish when it was strong. On the other hand, there is nothing more pitiful than our Spanish America dedicated, for a century, to be Frenchified and Anglicized, as if our own blood was not enough to enable redemption and splendor. . . . Let our youth reflect upon the fact that to reform the world is not only a matter of speeches, but it means to be prepared to carry out in practice all of the ideas we believe are good, even if the rest of society rejects them. The society in which we live generally represents what has already passed; the spirit, instead, lives forever in the future. Its general intention makes us ancient men and modern men, rejuvenating the present and being visionary of the future. Only by breaking openly with the contemporary environment, can we achieve progress.
. . . Progress requires us to draw the sword of Christ against the enemies of the general human welfare, and young people have the duty to proclaim their alliance with Christ. Those young people who do not feel the impulse toward generous and immediate vindication do not create a fatherland nor conquer glory. . . .
I greet you my dearest friend and remain yours truly,
JOSÉ VASCONCELOS