13. It would go beyond the scope of this article to analyze whether Vasconcelos interpreted Nietzsche in an adequate form. It should be said, however, that the strong focus on how Nazism appropriated Nietzsche’s ideas on race obscured other interpretations. Based on Schank (2000), one could claim that Nietzsche’s work does allow a positive interpretation of miscegenation (pp. 434-7). In Morgenröte (Daybreak, 1881), Nietzsche described multiracial people by repeating the stereotypes one could find in the racial theories of his time – ‘Crossed races always mean at the same time crossed cultures, crossed moralities; they are usually more evil, crueler, more restless’ – yet he argued that, out of this disharmonious mixture, a new ‘purified’ race can develop, which ends up being superior: ‘In the end, however, if the process of purification is successful, all that energy formerly expended in the struggle of the dissonant qualities with one another will stand at the command of the total organism: which is why races that have become pure have always also become stronger and more beautiful’ (p. 274). Nietzsche’s reference to purity should, thus, not be misunderstood as a desire to prevent (racial) mixture. Rather, he warns that the positive effects of racial mixture are not automatically present. Mixtures first cause disharmony, which needs to be overcome by ‘countless adaptations, absorptions and secretions’ (p. 274). Only after a long process of successful re-harmonization, which he calls ‘purification’, can a superior race or culture originate from mixture. See G. Schank, Rasse und Züchtigung bei Nietzsche (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2000), F. Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in German Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) and F. Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).