National Myths of Mestiçagem and Mestizaje: A Comparative Study on the Genesis of Early 20th Century Brazilian and Mexican Anti-Racist Miscegenation Discourse Öffentlichkeit

Abstract

At the beginning of the 20th century, two of Latin America’s most influential intellectuals—Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre (1900-1987) and Mexican philosopher José Vasconcelos (1882-1959)—published their seminal works on the mixed-race character of their home countries. Casa-grande e senzala (1933) and La raza cósmica (1925) respectively reflect the particularities of Brazilian and Mexican society and history. The convergence of these two texts around the common goal of renegotiating Latin America’s place on the periphery of global history through a reimagining of the role of the mestiz(ç)o only eight years apart from each other reflects the shared historical past and present between Brazil and Mexico. While intellectual circles in both countries continue to study and critique the works of these two authors, the shared contradictions of Casa-grande e senzala and La raza cósmica are rarely studied in conversation with each other. While the inconsistencies between each work’s exceptionalist reading of Brazilian and Mexican history with the realities of centuries of colonial racial violence are the subject of decades of analysis, the shared discursive utility of both authors’ works indicate a series of parallel developments in each country in the early 20th century that make it necessary to ostensibly include the non-white elements of society into a unitary national body. This paper explores those shared historical trends that make the works of Freyre and Vasconcelos highly relevant at their moment of publication and how their ideas are used to justify real racial discrimination and violence while cloaked in a language of progress. In addition, I analyze both authors’ texts to show how Casa-grande and La raza cósmica rely on a shared Eurocentric epistemology that obscures the reality of centuries of colonial violence to make their case that Brazil and Mexico are at the forefront of human civilization.

Table of Contents

I. Introduction to My Journey into Mestiçagem and Mestizaje 1

II. Necessity for a Mestizo Nation 5

A. On the Merits of Comparison 5

B. Brazil and Mexico at the Turn of the 20th Century 7

Brazil 8

Mexico 12

C. Postcolonial Malaise 16

III. Construction of a Mestizo Nation 22

A. Framing Casa-grande e senzala and La raza cósmica 22

B. Miscegenation and Atraso 25

C. The New Cultural-Racial Paradigm 32

D. Redemption of the Mestizo 35

IV. Conclusion 43

Works Cited 45

About this Honors Thesis

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School	Emory College
Department	Spanish and Portuguese
Degree	B.A.
Submission	Honors Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Latin American Studies History, Latin American Literature, Latin American
Stichwort	Racial democracy Decolonization Race and racism
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Dr. Marília Ribeiro, Emory University
Committee Members	Dr. Hernán Feldman, Emory University Dr. Yanna Yannakakis, Emory University

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