Long live ’viva la raza!'

Dear Mexican:

I'm curious about the meaning of the term “viva la raza” that I have often heard expressed by my friends and family. I know what it translates to, but I don't know why we say it. I happen to be what some call a “half-breed,” and therein lies my dilemma. “Viva la raza” implies that the person who says this saying or their audience is of a certain “race.” My mother's family is from the state of Georgia and of French, Scottish and English decent, whereas my father's family hails from New Mexico and has been in the northern part of that great state since 1627; if you count my indio ancestors (that are undoubtedly in my lineage 'cause my grandmother is short and brown), my family has been in the Santa Fe area prior to European settlement in the Americas. This makes me and my father's people mestizos. In addition, my family may also be Jewish. It has come to light that many of the old Hispanic families of Northern New Mexico are descendants of the “hidden” Sephardim Jews that pretended to be Catholic and moved to the New World in order to escape the Spanish Inquisition. In addition, aren't most Hispanos (that hail from north of the border) and Mexicans (from south of the border) mestizos, and didn't most of the Indians get killed by the Spaniards and Anglos? If so, “raza” or “race” seems to be artificial and really doesn't mean anything. Furthermore, I think this is true the world over with all of the so-called “races.” It seems to me that we are all half-breeds, mestizo, metis, mulattos or whatever you want to call us. It is my understanding that the human race is the only race, and that we all came “out of Africa.”

With this in mind, shouldn't we do away with “viva la raza” and come up with something new. Perhaps “Viva la herencia!” Or “Viva la gente!”

—NuMexiHillbilly

Dear Wab:

So many questions, so little time! I'll just concentrate on the viva part, since the rest of your pregunta rumbles along like a Big Jim chile in a gabacho's panza.

No one is going to rally under slogans that translate as “Long live the heritage” or “Up with people”—they're too fresa. And while I'm with you on the whole chinga tu madre toward racial classifications, “Viva la raza” will never be dropped, nor should it. It ties anyone who says it back to the Chicano movement, from where the term originated (the earliest citation I can find was in a 1966 Los Angeles Times article that quoted legendary activist Bert Corona as exclaiming during a fundraising dinner in L.A. “Viva la causa, viva la raza, y viva la unidad”—“Long live the cause, long live la raza, and long live unity”). The raza part connects the slogan to the idea of la raza cósmica—the Cosmic Race, the idea put forth by Jos” Vasconcelos of a day where humanity trumps the antiquated razas of the enlightenment. The viva part is a direct descendent of the Grito de Dolores, the proclamation issued by Miguel Hidalgo ushering in Mexico's War of Independence.

It might seem strange to have non-Mexis shout “Viva la raza!” in this egalitarian society, but Mexicans don't find it racist or exclusionary, because it isn't—after all, we all have enough female cousins who have married gabachos and bedded enough gabachitas to make us like y'all enough.

A quick note on Mexicans being the fattest people in the world: Some of ustedes have sent me reports stating that Americans are no longer the fattest people in the world; Mexicans are. My reaction: Who says Mexicans don't assimilate?