Ethnos needs Logos, especially if it aspires, as every ethnic group does, to become a nation. Logos, not race, allowed the warring tribes of Europe who plundered the last structures of the Roman Empire to coalesce into the nations that constituted Christian Europe. The necessary preparation for German unity was spiritual, and it took a millennium. In Mexico, unity happened by miracle overnight. Juan Diego's tilma, with its depiction of the Virgin Mary, is the symbol of Mexico, the basis for a Mexican culture that has survived the predations of the richer and more powerful neighbor to the north. Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared as a mestiza, a mixture of European and Native American races. She was the cosmic symbol of the race mixing the English feared since the moment they set foot on the soil of the New World. She was the symbol of Mexican identity. She was the symbol of Catholic race-mixing and the antithesis of England's and later America's and still later Germany's ideology of racial superiority. Indeed, when it comes to what the KKK would call "race mixing," Mexico is the rule and not the exception. Even the "racially pure" Germans who attended the Nuremberg rallies were a mixture of the Grauthungi and the Suevi and all of the other now forgotten ethnic groups that overran the Roman Empire and disappeared into each other through intermarriage. For the German nation to come into existence, each of those ethnic groups had to undergo what Hegel would have called "Aufhebung," a dialectical process which simultaneously exalted and maintained their identity. In order to remain the same, you have to change.
Description:
Ethnos needs Logos, especially if it aspires, as every ethnic group does, to become a nation. Logos, not race, allowed the warring tribes of Europe who plundered the last structures of the Roman Empire to coalesce into the nations that constituted Christian Europe. The necessary preparation for German unity was spiritual, and it took a millennium. In Mexico, unity happened by miracle overnight. Juan Diego's tilma, with its depiction of the Virgin Mary, is the symbol of Mexico, the basis for a Mexican culture that has survived the predations of the richer and more powerful neighbor to the north. Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared as a mestiza, a mixture of European and Native American races. She was the cosmic symbol of the race mixing the English feared since the moment they set foot on the soil of the New World. She was the symbol of Mexican identity. She was the symbol of Catholic race-mixing and the antithesis of England's and later America's and still later Germany's ideology of racial superiority. Indeed, when it comes to what the KKK would call "race mixing," Mexico is the rule and not the exception. Even the "racially pure" Germans who attended the Nuremberg rallies were a mixture of the Grauthungi and the Suevi and all of the other now forgotten ethnic groups that overran the Roman Empire and disappeared into each other through intermarriage. For the German nation to come into existence, each of those ethnic groups had to undergo what Hegel would have called "Aufhebung," a dialectical process which simultaneously exalted and maintained their identity. In order to remain the same, you have to change.