José Vasconcelos Calderón (28 February 1882 – 30 June 1959), called the "culturalcaudillo" of theMexican Revolution,^[5] was an importantMexican writer, philosopher, and politician.^[6] He is one of the most influential and controversial personalities in the development of modern Mexico. His philosophy of the "cosmic race" affected all aspects of Mexican sociocultural, political, and economic policies.

José Vasconcelos
Vasconcelos c.1920s
1stSecretary of Public Education
In office 28 September 1921[1] – 27 July 1924
President	Álvaro Obregón
Succeeded by	Bernardo J. Gastélum
6th Rector of theNational Autonomous University of Mexico
In office 9 June 1920 – 12 October 1921
Preceded by	Balbino Dávalos
Succeeded by	Mariano Silva y Aceves [es]
Secretary of Public Instruction
In office 6 November 1914 – 16 January 1915
President	Eulalio Gutiérrez
Preceded by	Rubén Valenti
Succeeded by	Félix Fulgencio Palavicini [es]
Personal details
Born	José Vasconcelos Calderón (1882-02-28)28 February 1882[2] Oaxaca, Mexico
Died	30 June 1959(1959-06-30) (aged 77) Mexico City, Mexico
Resting place	Mexico City Cathedral
Political party	National Anti-Reelectionist Party
Spouses	Serafina Miranda ​ ​ (m. 1906; died 1942)​ [3] Esperanza Cruz ​ (m. 1942)​ [4]
Children	José Ignacio, Carmen and[2]Héctor[4]
Education	National School of Jurisprudence [es] (LLB)
Occupation	Writer, philosopher and politician

Vasconcelos was born inOaxaca, Oaxaca, on February 28, 1882,^{[citation needed]} the son of a customs official.^[7] José's mother, a pious Catholic, died when José was 16. The family moved to the border town ofPiedras Negras, Coahuila, where he grew up attending school inEagle Pass, Texas.^[8] He became bilingual in English and Spanish,^[9] which opened doors to the English-speaking world. The family also lived inCampeche while the northern border area was unstable. His time living on the Texas border likely contributed to fostering his idea of the Mexican "cosmic race" and rejection of Anglo culture.^[10]

At 24, he married Serafina Miranda ofTlaxiaco,Oaxaca, in 1906. Their children were José Ignacio and Carmen. He also had a long-term relationship withElena Arizmendi Mejia and throughout his life many other shorter liaisons, including one withBerta Singerman.^[11] His troubled relationship withAntonieta Rivas Mercado led to her suicide inside Paris'sNotre Dame Cathedral in 1931. When his wife of forty years died in 1942, their daughter Carmen is reported to have said, "When the coffin was lowered into the ground, Vasconcelos sobbed bitterly. At that moment he must have known and felt who he really had as a wife; perhaps they were tears of belated repentance."^[12] He remarried the pianistEsperanza Cruz and they had a child, Héctor.^[13]

Although Vasconcelos was interested in studying philosophy, the Porfiriato's universities focused on the sciences, influenced by Frenchpositivism. Vasconcelos attended theNational Preparatory School, an elite high school inMexico City, and he went on to Escuela de Jurisprudencia in Mexico City (1905). In law school, he became involved with a group of radical students organized as the Ateneo de la Juventud (Youth Atheneum).^[14] The Ateneo de Juventud was led by a Dominican citizen,Pedro Henríquez Ureña, who had read Uruguayan essayistJosé Enrique Rodó'sAriel, an influential work published in 1900 that was opposed to Anglo cultural influence but also emphasized the redemptive power of education.^[15] The Ateneo de la Juventud had a diverse membership, composed of university professors, artists, other professionals, and students. Some other members includedIsidro Fabela andDiego Rivera.^[16] Opposed to the Díaz regime, it formulated arguments against it and its emphasis on positivism by employing French spiritualism, which articulated "a new vision of the relationship between individual and society."^[14]

After graduating from law school, he joined the law firm of Warner, John, and Galston inWashington, D.C. Vasconcelos joined the local Anti-Re-election Club in Washington, D.C.^[14] It supported the democratic movement to oust the longtimePresident of MexicoPorfirio Díaz in 1910 and was headed byFrancisco I. Madero, the presidential candidate of the Anti-Re-election Party. Vasconcelos returned to Mexico City to participate more directly in the anti-re-election movement, became one of the party's secretaries, and edited its newspaper,El Antireelectionista.^[14]

After Díaz was ousted by revolutionary violence that was followed by the election of Madero to the presidency, Vasconcelos led a structural change at theNational Preparatory School. He changed the academic programs and broke with the pastpositivistic influence.

After Madero's assassination in February 1913, Vasconcelos joined the broad movement to defeat the military regime ofVictoriano Huerta. Soon, Vasconcelos was forced into exile in Paris, where he metJulio Torri,Doctor Atl,Gabriele D'Annunzio, and other contemporary intellectuals and artists. After Huerta was ousted in July 1914, Vasconcelos returned to Mexico.

TheConvention of Aguascalientes in 1914, the failed attempt of the anti-Huerta regime to find a political solution, split the factions. The leader of the Constitutionalists,Venustiano Carranza, and GeneralÁlvaro Obregón split with more radical revolutionaries, especiallyPancho Villa andEmiliano Zapata. Vasconcelos chose the side of the Convention and served as Minister of Education during the brief presidential period ofEulalio Gutiérrez. Villa was defeated by the Constitutionalist Army under Obregón in theBattle of Celaya in 1915, and Vasconcelos went into exile again.Venustiano Carranza became President (1915–1920), but was ousted and killed by the Sonoran generals who had helped put him in power.

Vasconcelos returned to Mexico during the interim presidency of SonoranAdolfo de la Huerta and was named rector of theNational Autonomous University of Mexico (1920)^[17][18] As rector, he had a great deal of power, but he accrued even more by ignoring the standard structures, such as the University Council, to govern the institution.^[19] Rather, he exercised personal power and began implementing his vision of the function of the university. He redesigned the logo of the university to show a map ofLatin America, with the phrase "Por mi raza hablará el espíritu" (The spirit will speak for my race), an influence of Rodó'sarielismo.^[20] It also had an eagle and a condor and a background of the volcanic mountains incentral Mexico. Vasconcelos is said to have declared, "I have not come to govern the University but to ask the University to work for the people."^[21]

When Obregón became President in 1920, he created theSecretariat of Public Education (SEP) in 1921 and named Vasconcelos as its head.^[22] Under Obregón, the national budget had two key expenditures; the military was one, but the other was education.^[23] Creating the Secretariat entailed changing theConstitution of 1917, and so Obregón's government had to muster support from lawmakers. Vasconcelos traveled throughout Mexico while he was rector of the university to seek that support. His effort succeeded, and Vasconcelos was named head of the new cabinet-level secretariat in July 1921.^[24]

His tenure at the Secretariat gave him a powerful position to implement his vision of Mexico's history, especially the Mexican Revolution.

Vasconcelos printed huge numbers of texts for the expanded public school system, but in the 1920s, there was no agreement about how the Mexican Revolution should be portrayed and so earlier history texts byJusto Sierra, the head of the ministry of public education during the Díaz regime, continued to be used.^[25]

Although Vasconcelos was no advocate of Mexican Indigenous culture, as Secretary of Education he sent a statue of the last Aztec emperor,Cuauhtemoc, to Brazil for its centennial celebrations of independence in 1923, to the amazement of the South American recipients.^[26]

He resigned in 1924 because of his opposition to PresidentPlutarco Elías Calles. He worked for the education of the masses and sought to make the nation's education on secular, civic, and Pan-American (americanista) lines. He ran for the presidency in 1929 but lost toPascual Ortiz Rubio in a controversial election, and again left the country.

He later directed theNational Library of Mexico (1940) and presided over the Mexican Institute of Hispanic Culture (1948).

José Vasconcelos died on June 30, 1959, in the Tacubaya neighborhood of Mexico City. His body was found reclining on the desk, in which he was working on one of his last literary works:Letanías del atardecer (‘Litanies of the evening’), published posthumously unfinished. Because of his qualities as a pedagogue and his strong support for Latin American culture, he was named “Teacher of the Youth of America”^[27][28] a title that is often abbreviated as "Teacher of America".

Vasconcelos' first writings on philosophy are passionate reactions against the formal,positivistic education at the National Preparatory School, formerly under the influence ofPorfirian thinkers likeJusto Sierra andGabino Barreda.

A second period of productivity was fed by a first disappointment in the political field, after Madero's murder. In 1919, he wrote a long essay onPythagoreanism, as a dissertation on the links betweenharmony andrhythm and its eventual explanation into a frame ofaestheticmonism. As he argued that only by the means of rhythm can humans able to know the world without any intermediation, he proposed that the minimal aspects of cognition are conditioned by a degree of sympathy with the natural "vibration" of things. In that manner, he thought that the auditive categories of knowledge were much higher than the visual ones.

Later, Vasconcelos developed an argument for the mixing of races, as a natural and desirable direction for humankind. That work, known asLa raza cósmica ('The Cosmic Race'), would eventually contribute to further studies on ethnic values as anethic and for the consideration of ethnic variety as an aesthetic source. Finally, between 1931 and 1940, he tried to consolidate his proposals by publishing his main topics organized in three main works:Metafísica ('Metaphysics'),Ética ('Ethics'), andEstética ('Aesthetics').

In the final part of his life, he gradually fell into a deeply Catholic political conservatism. Before the Second World War, he had begun writing sympathetically aboutFrancisco Franco, and he retracted some of his earlier liberal positions. One of his last published works,Letanías del atardecer (1957) is a pessimistic tract that hinted that the use ofnuclear weapons might be necessary because of the postwar order.

Vasconcelos is often referred to as the father of theindigenismo philosophy. In recent times it has come under criticism from Native Americans, because of its negative implications concerning indigenous peoples. To an extent his philosophy argued for a new, "modern"mestizo people, at the cost of cultural assimilation for all ethnic groups. His research on the nature of Mexican modern identity had a direct influence on the young writers, poets, anthropologists, and philosophers who wrote on this subject. He also influenced the point of view ofCarlos Pellicer with respect to several aesthetic assumptions reflected in his books. Together, Pellicer and Vasconcelos made a trip through theMiddle East (1928–1929) and were looking for the "spiritual basis" ofByzantine architecture.

Other works, particularlyLa raza cósmica andMetafísica, had a decisive influence inOctavio Paz'sEl laberinto de la soledad ('The Labyrinth of Solitude'), withanthropological and aesthetic implications. Paz wrote that Vasconcelos was "the teacher" who had educated hundreds of youngLatin American intellectuals during his many trips toCentral andSouth America. Vasconcelos was a guest lecturer atColumbia University andPrinceton University, but his influence on new generations in the United States gradually decreased. Nevertheless, his workLa raza cósmica has been used byChicano andMexican-American movements since the 1970s, which assert thereconquista ('retaking' or literally 'reconquest') of theAmerican Southwest, based on their Mexican ancestry.

Vasconcelos caused the National Symphonic Orchestra (1920) and the Symphonic Orchestra of Mexico (1928) to be officially endorsed. Under his secretaryship, artistsDiego Rivera,José Clemente Orozco, andDavid Alfaro Siqueiros were permitted to paint the inner walls of the most important public buildings in Mexico (such as theNational Palace in Mexico City), creating theMexican muralist movement.

"[T]he leaders of Latin American independence ... strove to free the slaves, declared the equality of all men by natural law; the social and civic equality of whites, blacks and Indians. In an instant of historical crisis, they formulated the transcendental mission assigned to that region of the Globe: the mission of fusing the peoples ethnically and spiritually." (La raza cósmica, 1948)

"Each of the great nations of History has believed itself to be the final and chosen one. ... The Hebrews founded the belief in their superiority on oracles and divine promises. The English found theirs on observations relative to domestic animals. From the observation of cross-breeding and hereditary varieties in such animals, Darwinism emerged. First, as a modest zoological theory, then as social biology that confers definitive preponderance to the English above all races. Every imperialism needs a justifying philosophy". (La raza cósmica, 1948)

"Hitler, although he disposes of absolute power, finds himself a thousand leagues from Caesarism. Power does not come to Hitler from the military base, but from the book that inspires the troops from the top. Hitler's power is not owed to the troops, nor the battalions, but to his own discussions... Hitler represents, ultimately, an idea, the German idea, so often humiliated previously by French militarism and English perfidy. Truthfully, we find civilian governed 'democracies' fighting against Hitler. But they are democracies in name only". ("La Inteligencia se impone",Timon 16; June 8, 1940)

Vasconcelos was a prolific author, writing in a variety of genres, especially philosophy, but also autobiography.

• José Vasconcelos Library
• José Vasconcelos World Award of Education^[31]
• Moises Saenz

• Encyclopedia – Britannica Online Encyclopedia at www.britannica.com
• José Vasconcelos An Inventory to His Manuscripts at the Benson Latin American Collection at www.lib.utexas.edu