In The Cosmic Race, Jose Vasconcelos claims that racial diversity and interbreeding will result in creation of a superior race. His argument in The Cosmic Race is rather simplified; he states that due to interbreeding of different races - Blacks, Indians, Mongols, and Whites - a fifth race will eventually emerge having the traits of each of the four races.
This will result in creation of a new form of civilization known as the Universopolis (Vasconcelos 129). According to Vasconcelos, the fifth race will symbolize racial diversity. He pointed out that Latin America would be unique globally as the place where racial diversity and interbreeding would occur. Furthermore, he stated that the blood of all the races was already present in mixed-race people in this part of the world.
In addition, he argued that this would set Latin America apart and make Spanish Americans the vanguard of the new race. Thus, his prediction of the coming of the new race also referred to the aesthetic age in which joy, love, creativity, as well as fantasy would prevail over the rationalism that dominates at presently. According to his views, the new generation will be devoid of marriage dictated by the necessity or convenience, but guided by love and beauty of ethnic diversity (Vasconcelos 129). He argues that these are already under the process of breaking down, particularly in Latin America, and will result in appearance of purely mixed-race considered as the cosmic race. Thus, this race will have all the qualities present in all races and be persistent in the process of natural selection. The mural paintings influenced American Art in a combination of economical crisis and made artists to follow the Mexican art and social art.
The murals of Diego Rivera were executed in Mexico at the Institute of Cardiology. The mural called the History of Cardiology was completed on April 18, 1944, in the period the National Institute was inaugurated. The mural of Rivera is one of the three great murals . I can correlate the Rivera murals to Jose Vasconcelos’ ideas as expressed in The Cosmic Race, because according to Rivera, the murals emphasized a theme of struggle between adversaries as well as the ascending trend of knowledge and the pace and the difficulties in advancements. In addition, the choice to arrange the murals in the manner of two upright panels provided a historical development of cardiology as presented in the outcome of a complex interaction of factors that can be achieved in a single vertical time line (Lomas 1).
According to his views, Rivera stated that if a way could be found, then it would be necessary to paint the men to represent the movement. Thus, the public perception of the mural paintings has been condemned as unfashionable and liable to be dismissed as a possible propaganda, since it was belied by the painter’s negotiations with matters of indigenism as well as the modernity of technology (Lomas 1).
