Juan Comas

Juan Comas Camps was a Spanish-Mexican anthropologist, notable for his critical work on race, and his participation in drafting the UNESCO statement on race. He fled Spain during the regime of Franco, and spent the rest of his life in Mexico. He was a professor of physical anthropology at the National Institute of Anthropology and History in Mexico between 1940 and 1943, and at the National Autonomous University of Mexico from 1955 until his death.

Early life

Comas was born in the small town of Alayor, Spain, located in the center of the Menorca Island in the Mediterranean Sea, 150 miles southeast of Barcelona.
During this time, Spain was facing social and political changes that would shape his later work. His father was a teacher in Menorca, and Juan Comas followed in his steps. At the age of seventeen, he received degrees in Arts and Sciences and title of elementary teacher. Four years later, Comas received one of the highest degrees for instructors in the Escuela Superior del Magisterio de Madrid. With his academic achievements, Juan Comas taught throughout Spain, before receiving several pedagogical degrees from prestigious universities in the country.
The academic achievements by Comas were not overlooked by the Spanish state. The Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas of Spain sent him to Geneva to study at the Institute J.J. Rousseau of Geneva, and perform psycho-pedagogical studies. During his time in Geneva, Comas absorbed the teaching of styles from the rest of Europe, and would later bring back with him to Spain.
It was at this institute that Juan Comas began his studies in anthropology. After publishing several articles, and working for the Republicans in Spain, Juan Comas completed his dissertation and defended in 1939. In 1942, under the guidance of Eugène Pittard, Juan Comas received his Doctoral degree in the Anthropological Sciences. Working under Pittard, Comas received much of his indoctrination into the discipline of anthropology, and more specifically, the subfield of physical anthropology. Pittard was a Swiss anthropologist who had performed numerous investigations and published work in topics covering the evolution and origin of humans, as well as the races of people. In an act of great affection to his mentor, Juan Comas translated Pittard's book, The Races and History, close to thirty years after being published. In 1899 Pittard received his Doctoral of Sciences, by presenting his dissertation titled "Recherche d’anatomie comparative sur diverses séries de crânes anciens de la vallée du Rhône ". As Comas was in his later life, Pittard was very involved in political activism. He published articles on the malnutrition of Albanians and the maltreatment of Gypsy populations throughout Europe. It was these times under Pittard that Comas began to develop his ideas that, along with the social atmosphere of the time, would later help him form his personal indigenismo.
After the Spanish Civil War, Comas was exiled from Spain, when the government came under the Franco regime. Throughout the 1930s, Comas helped the Republicans fight against the Nationals, but the conservatives took had won the war. Numerous scientists were forced to leave the country under the rule of Franco. He implemented in his students, for however brief, a new way of observing the world through science. To those he taught Comas became a great symbol: what the modern, Spanish professor was supposed to be. In contrast to the professor at the beginning of the century, exemplified by his father, one who never delved into national politics, Comas embodied the individual as professor who was supposed to change the course of the nation for the better through political intervention in his teachings.

Historical and physical anthropology’s disciplinary atmosphere: 1900–1950

From his birth up until he left Spain, the country experienced several social and political changes that shaped Juan Comas one way or another. The anarchist movement that began in the latter half of the 19th century saw Spain's workers perform massive strikes against the institutional monarchy, whose power was decreasing after the defeat in the Spanish–American and Cuban wars of 1898. During this period, up until 1931, Spain attempted to create an imagined Nationalist identity of its citizens. According to Vincent, the Spanish state exercised jingoism, extreme patriotism through foreign policy. These endeavors were seen in universal manhood suffrage, the dedication of bullfights for a patriotic cause, and the repatriation of resources from its colonies. These actions of nationalism opened Comas’ eyes to how injustices, prejudices, and racial inequality could be constructed. These actions helped him form his beliefs later in life.
These social events, occurring early in the 20th century in Spain up until the end of World War I, allowed Comas to found his later beliefs, demonstrating the manner in which individual race and ethnicity were constructed in face of large-social structures such as nations. Comas was uneasy during this time period. While working in Geneva, the government assigned him as the delegate confronting the issues of children who became orphaned during the war, 1936–1939. His last position in Spain was as the director of elementary teachings for orphaned children. Not able to cope with the atrocities, Comas—as the story is told —packed his belongings into a backpack and crossed the Spanish–French border, where he made his way to Mexico. The carnage-filled sights that he experienced in Spain allowed him to foster his legacy beyond his academics. He was known for his compassion and the way in which he fought for social justice, criticizing the government and attempting to ameliorate injustices by declaring equality among all human beings and debunking institutionalized prejudices and racism.
During this period Comas published several articles. Much of the literature he published correlated to his earlier work in pedagogy. With it he was able to bring back to Spain different styles that were current in Europe, and which helped him be placed in the position of director of elementary teaching. Furthermore, once he left Spain and the Franco Regime, this period allowed Comas to establish his criticism of the government. He often criticized the Franco Regime for the lack of true freedom in scientific inquiry. One of Comas’ harshest critiques to the Franco Regime was the way in which the state abused the discipline of anthropology to espouse state-sponsored propaganda. Comas argued that the Franco Regime was attempting to get rid of evolutionary teachings and the understandings of the origin of men. This censure would allow the state to promote its pro-religious agenda. The fact that the Spanish state under Franco attempted to get rid of teaching of evolution did not sit well with Comas. Comas used such oppression to fuel his work.
In addition, the field of anthropology, specifically the discipline of physical anthropology, was changing during the same time period. The colonial enterprise was coming to a close, and new developments in paleontology, geology, and anthropology began to have effects on the science of anthropology. Such new outlooks into scientific research allowed a sea change in the discipline that moved away from the old racial classifications that had been established in the 19th century. According to Spencer the advances in science allowed the ideas of race and inferiority to diminish within the discipline. This happened in two ways. The first was the creation of the synthetic theory by geneticists after World War II. The second way was the manner in which physical anthropology applied the new synthesis to study the concepts of population and adaptational thinking, rather than the old concepts of race. These changes occurring in the first half of the 20th century, greatly formed the work of Comas, who himself was an ardent fighter against racism.
Comas’ work attempted to destroy the concepts of race and the foundations of racism in physical anthropology. Comas argued that the concept of race had no scientific merit or backing. Comas even went as far as to categorize work that others deemed scientific as "super-racist" when old concepts of racial categorization were utilized. Such work provided no "scientific" proof for arguing one human group superior to another. He attacked such work as amoral, because it misled non-informed readers to believe concepts that were untrue, as well as allowed the continuation of prejudice in that these scientists believed in. Comas believed that the work, and obligation, of scientists was to demonstrate the truth, an argument expanded below.

Juan Comas in Mexico

Juan Comas arrived in Mexico in 1940 with well established credentials. He began teaching at the Escuela Normal de Maestros in Pachuca, Mexico. In 1938, a couple of years before arriving in Mexico, the Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia opened. Within a couple of years after arriving in the country, the ENAH invited him to be part of its faculty. This school has been one of the leading researching institutions in all of the Americas, and Comas took advantage of the already well-known collections that the school—which shared the building with the National Museum of Anthropology, before the museum itself moved to its current location—had. He was able to carry out his first works thanks in large part to these collections. These two institutions—the ENAH and the National Museum—shared the same building until 1964 when the new National Museum opened.
One example of Comas' work in Mexico is in regards to Amerindians and how racial ideology attempted to make this population—from Canada to Argentina—not only homogeneous, but as well as primitive in regards to other populations around the world. Comas presents numerous studies which show how diverse the indigenous population of the American continent truly is, and should not be lumped together as earlier studies had done. Because it was believed that blood type was similar between the Amerindian populations, many authors argued that this was due to racial inferiority. In this article, Comas shows the different percentages of blood types in the population, and how an argument on blood truly does not carry weight in defining a population primitive. Blood and blood types were not basis for defining any group inferior.