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'''Mexican people''' ([[Spanish language|Spanish]]: ''Pueblo mexicano'' <small>(collective)</small>, ''Mexicanos'' <small>(individuals)</small>) refers to all persons from [[Mexico]], a multiethnic country in [[North America]], and/or who identify with the Mexican [[Cultural identity|cultural]] and/or [[Nationality|national identity]]. |
'''Mexican people''' ([[Spanish language|Spanish]]: ''Pueblo mexicano'' <small>(collective)</small>, ''Mexicanos'' <small>(individuals)</small>) refers to all persons from [[Mexico]], a multiethnic country in [[North America]], and/or who identify with the Mexican [[Cultural identity|cultural]] and/or [[Nationality|national identity]]. |
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Mexico became a nation in 1821 when Mexico achieved independence from the [[Spanish Empire]]; this began the process of forging a Mexican national identity that fused the cultural traits of indigenous pre-Columbian origin with those |
Mexico became a nation in 1821 when Mexico achieved independence from the [[Spanish Empire]]; this began the process of forging a Mexican national identity that fused the cultural traits of indigenous pre-Columbian origin with those of European, particularly Iberian, ancestry. This led to what has been termed "a peculiar form of multi-ethnic nationalism"<ref name="autogenerated115">Wimmer, Andreas, 2002. Nationalist exclusion and ethnic conflict: shadows of modernity, Cambridge University Press page 115</ref> |
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The most spoken language by Mexicans is [[Mexican Spanish]], but many also speak languages from 62 different indigenous linguistic groups and other languages brought to Mexico by recent immigration or learned by Mexican immigrants residing in other nations. The majority of Mexicans live in Mexico but there is a sizable [[diaspora]], especially in the [[United States]] and [[Canada]]. |
The most spoken language by Mexicans is [[Mexican Spanish]], but many also speak languages from 62 different indigenous linguistic groups and other languages brought to Mexico by recent immigration or learned by Mexican immigrants residing in other nations. The majority of Mexicans live in Mexico but there is a sizable [[diaspora]], especially in the [[United States]] and [[Canada]]. |
Revision as of 08:41, 23 February 2011
Mexican people (Spanish: Pueblo mexicano (collective), Mexicanos (individuals)) refers to all persons from Mexico, a multiethnic country in North America, and/or who identify with the Mexican cultural and/or national identity.
Mexico became a nation in 1821 when Mexico achieved independence from the Spanish Empire; this began the process of forging a Mexican national identity that fused the cultural traits of indigenous pre-Columbian origin with those of European, particularly Iberian, ancestry. This led to what has been termed "a peculiar form of multi-ethnic nationalism"[16]
The most spoken language by Mexicans is Mexican Spanish, but many also speak languages from 62 different indigenous linguistic groups and other languages brought to Mexico by recent immigration or learned by Mexican immigrants residing in other nations. The majority of Mexicans live in Mexico but there is a sizable diaspora, especially in the United States and Canada.
History
![]() | This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (January 2010) |
The Mexican people have varied origins and an identity that has evolved with the succession of conquests among Amerindian groups and by Europeans. The area that is now modern-day Mexico has cradled many predecessor civilizations, going back as far as the Olmec which influenced the latter civilizations of Teotihuacan (200 B.C. to 700 A.D.) and the much debated Toltec people who flourished around the 10th and 12th centuries A.D., and ending with the last great indigenous civilization before the Spanish Conquest, the Aztecs (March 13, 1325 to August 13, 1521). The Nahuatl language was a common tongue in the region of modern Central Mexico during the Aztec Empire, but after the arrival of Europeans the common language of the region became Spanish.
After the conquest of the Aztec empire, the Spanish re-administered the land and expanded their own empire beyond the former boundaries of the Aztec, adding more territory to the Mexican sphere of influence which remained under the Spanish Crown for 300 years. Cultural diffusion and intermixing among the Amerindian populations with the European created the modern Mexican identity which is a mixture of regional indigenous and European cultures that evolved into a national culture during the Spanish Colonial period. This new identity was defined as "Mexican" shortly after the Mexican War of Independence and was more invigorated and developed after the Mexican Revolution when the Constitution of 1917 officially established Mexico as an indivisible pluricultural nation founded on its indigenous roots.
Definitions
![]() | This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (January 2010) |
Mexicano (Mexican) is derived from the word Mexico itself. In the principal model to create demonyms in Spanish, the suffix -ano is added to the name of the place of origin. The term Mexicano as a word to describe the different peoples of the region of Mexico as a single group emerged in the 16th century. In that time the term did not apply to a nationality nor to the geographical limits of the modern Mexican Republic. The term was used for the first time in the first document printed in Barcelona in 1566 which documented the expedition which launched from the port in Acapulco to find the best route which would favor a return journey from the Spanish East Indies to New Spain. The document stated: "el venturoso descubrimiento que los Mexicanos han hecho" (the venturous discovery that the Mexicans have made). That discovery led to the Manila galleon trade route and those "Mexicans" referred to Criollos, Mestizos and Amerindians alluding to a plurality of persons who participated for a common end: the conquest of the Philippines in 1565. (Gómez M., et al. 56)
Ethnicity
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1921 Census
The Mexican Government asked Mexicans about their perception of their own racial heritage. In the 1921 census, residents of the Mexican Republic were asked if they fell into one of the following categories:[17]
- "Indígena pura" (of pure indigenous heritage)
- "Indígena mezclada con blanca" (of mixed indigenous and white heritage)
- "Blanca" (of White or Spanish heritage)
- "Extranjeros sin distinción de razas" (Foreigners without racial distinction)
- "Cualquiera otra o que se ignora la raza" (Either other or chose to ignore the race)
- Pure indigenous heritage: 4,179,449 {29%}
- Mixed indigenous and white: 8,504,561 {59%}
- White or Spanish heritage: 1,404,718 (10%)
- Total population: 14,334,780
- The Most Indigenous State was Oaxaca with 675,119 persons out of 976,005 inhabitants were classified as indígena. This meant that 69.17% of Oaxaca's population had a pure indigenous identity.[18]
- The states With the Largest "Indígena Mezclada {Mestizo} Con Blanca" Population and in terms of percentages were:
- Jalisco - 903,830 (75.83%)
- Guanajuato - 828,724 (96.33%)
- Michoacán - 663,391 (70.59%)
- Veracruz - 556,472 (47.97%)
- Distrito Federal - 496,359 (54.78%)
- México - 422,001 (47.71%)
- Puebla - 403,221 (39.34%)
- Sinaloa - 335,474 (98.30%)
- Zacatecas - 326,615 (86.10%)
- Hidalgo - 320,250 (51.47%)
- The states with the largest populations of "Blanca" or White persons were:
- In terms of percentage, the "blanca" classification was most prominent in these states:
- Sonora (41.85%)
- Chihuahua (36.33%)
- Baja California Sur (33.40%)
- Tabasco (27.56%)
- Distrito Federal (22.79%)
This was the last Mexican Census which asked people to self-identify themselves with a racial group.
Today
Ethnic relations in modern Mexico have grown out of the historical context of the arrival of Europeans, the subsequent colonial period of cultural and genetic miscegenation within the frame work of the castas system, the revolutionary periods focus on incorporating all ethnic and racial group into a common Mexican national identity and the indigenous revival of the late 20th century. The resulting picture has been called ""a peculiar form of multi-ethnic nationalism".[16]
Very generally speaking ethnic relations can be arranged on an axis between the two extremes of European and Amerindian cultural heritage, this is a remnant of the colonial Spanish caste system which categorized individuals according to their perceived level of biological mixture between the two groups. Additionally the presence of considerable portions of the population with partly African and Asian heritage further complicates the situation. Even though it still arranges persons along the line between indigenous and European, in practice the classificatory system is no longer biologically based, but rather mixes socio-cultural traits with phenotypical traits, and classification is largely fluid, allowing individuals to move between categories and define their ethnic and racial identities situationally.[19][20]
The large majority of Mexicans can be considered as "Mestizos", meaning that they neither identify fully with any indigenous culture or with a particular non-Mexican heritage, but rather identify as having cultural traits and heritage that is mixed by elements from indigenous and European traditions. By the deliberate efforts of post-revolutionary governments the "Mestizo identity" was constructed as the base of the modern Mexican national identity, through a process of cultural synthesis referred to as mestizaje. Mexican politicians and reformers such as Jose Vasconcelos and Manuel Gamio were instrumental in building a Mexican national identity on the concept of mestizaje.[21][22]
The category of "indigena" (indigenous) can be defined narrowly according to linguistic criteria including only persons that speak one of Mexico's 62 indigenous languages, this is the categorization used by the National Mexican Institute of Statistics. It can also be defined broadly to include all persons who selfidentify as having an indigenous cultural background, whether or not they speak the language of the indigenous group they identify with. This means that the percentage of the Mexican population defined as "indigenous" varies according to the definition applied, cultural activists have referred to the usage of the narrow definition of the term for census purposes as "statistical genocide".[23][24]
The term "Mestizo" is not in wide use in Mexican society today and has been dropped as a category in population censuses, it is however still used in social and culural studies when referring to the non-indigenous part of the Mexican population. The word has somewhat pejorative connotations and most of the Mexican citizens who would be defined as mestizos in the sociological literature would probably self-identify primarily as Mexicans. In the Yucatán peninsula the word Mestizo is even used about Maya speaking populations living in traditional communities, because during the caste war of the lat 19th century those Maya who did not join the rebellion were classified as mestizos.[25] In Chiapas the word "Ladino" is used instead of mestizo.[26]
Sometimes, particularly outside of Mexico, the word "mestizo" is used with the meaning of a person with mixed Indigenous and European blood. This usage does not conform to the Mexican social reality where a person of mostly indigenous genetic heritage would be considered Mestizo either by rejecting his indigenous culture or by not speaking an indigenous language,[25] and a person with a very low percentage of indigenous genetic heritage would be considered fully indigenous either by speaking an indigenous language or by identifying with a particular indigenous cultural heritage.[27]
Languages
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Mexicans are linguistically diverse, with many speaking European languages as well as various Indigenous Mexican Languages. Spanish is spoken by approximately 92.17% of Mexicans as their first language making them the largest Spanish speaking group in the world[28] followed by Colombia (45,273,925), Spain (41,063,259)[29] and Argentina (40,134,425).[citation needed] Although the great majority speak Spanish de facto the second most populous language among Mexicans is English due to the regional proximity of the United States which calls for a bilingual relationship in order to conduct business and trade as well as the migration of Mexicans into that country who adopt it as a second language.
Mexican Spanish is distinct in dialect, tone and syntax to the Peninsular Spanish spoken in Spain. It contains a large amount of loan words from indigenous languages, mostly from the Nahuatl language such as: "chocolate," "tomate," "mezquite," "chile," and "coyote".[30]
Mexico has no official de jure language,[31] but as of 2003 it recognizes 62 indigenous Amerindian languages as "national languages" along with Spanish which are protected under Mexican National law giving indigenous peoples the entitlement to request public services and documents in their native languages.[32] The law also includes other Amerindian languages regardless of origin, that is, it includes the Amerindian languages of other ethnic groups that are non-native to the Mexican national territory. As such, Mexico's National Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples recognizes the language of the Kickapoo who immigrated from the United States,[33] and recognizes the languages of Guatemalan Amerindian refugees.[34] The most numerous indigenous language spoken by Mexicans is Nahuatl which is spoken by 1.7% of the population in Mexico over the age of 5. Approximately 6,044,547 Mexicans (5.4%) speak an indigenous language according to the 2000 Census in Mexico.[35] There are also Mexicans living abroad which speak indigenous languages mostly in the United States but their number is unknown.[36]
See also
- List of Mexicans
- Culture of Mexico
- History of Mexico
- Mexican literature
- Indigenous Mexican
- Mestizo
- Criollo
- Arab Mexican
- Afro-Mexican
- Mexican American
- Mexicans in the United Kingdom
- Mexican nobility
- Anti-Mexican sentiment
Works cited
- Gómez M., et al. Historia de México: Texto de Consulta Para Educación Media Superior. Mexico: Limusa, 2006.
- Moot Rodriguez, Modern History of Mexico, Universidad de Chan, Mexico, 2002.
- Knight, Alan. 1990. "Racism, Revolution and indigenismo: Mexico 1910-1940". Chapter 4 in The Idea of Race in Latin America, 1870 - 1940. Richard Graham (ed.) pp. 71–113.
- Wade, Peter. 1997. Race and Ethnicity in Latin America. Pluto Press.
- Bartolomé, Miguel Alberto. (1996) "Pluralismo cultural y redefinicion del estado en México". in Coloquio sobre derechos indígenas, Oaxaca, IOC.[37]
- Friedlander, Judith. 1975. Being Indian in Hueyapan: A Study of Forced Identity in Contemporary Mexico. New York: Saint Martin's Press.
References
- ^ "B03001. HISPANIC OR LATINO ORIGIN BY SPECIFIC ORIGIN". Factfinder.census.gov. Retrieved 2010-10-28.
- ^ "statcan.ca; Mexicanos en Canadá Censo de 2001". 2.statcan.ca. Retrieved 2010-10-28.
- ^ "Mexicanos en España INE 2007". Ine.es. 2001-05-28. Retrieved 2010-10-28.
- ^ "Investigación de la Migración Internacional en Latinoamérica (IMILA)". Eclac.cl. Retrieved 2010-10-28.
{{cite web}}
: Text "M%C9XICO" ignored (help); Text "N" ignored (help) - ^ Bolivia - Censo de Población y Vivienda 2001
- ^ "Statische Bundesamt Deutschland". Retrieved 2010-10-28.
- ^ "Argentina - Población extrenjera residente en Argentina de 2000-2008". Pagina12.com.ar. Retrieved 2010-10-28.
- ^ "ime.gob.mx; Mexicanos en Reino Unido". Ime.gob.mx. Retrieved 2010-10-28.
- ^ "INED France- INED". Retrieved 2010-10-28.
- ^ "PERIOD OF IMMIGRATION, COUNTRY OF BIRTH AND LAST COUNTRY OF RESIDENCE IN ISRAEL 2008" (PDF). .cbs.gov.il. Retrieved 2010-10-28.
- ^ "Istat". Demo.istat.it. Retrieved 2010-10-28.
- ^ "INE". INE. Retrieved 2010-10-28.
- ^ "2000 Housing and Population Census". Celade.cepal.org. Retrieved 2010-10-28.
- ^ "Colombia - Sistema de Consulta Información Censal (Censo 2005)". 190.25.231.242. Retrieved 2010-10-28.
- ^ Servicios de Impacto USA (2010-04-22). "DEMOGRAFIA: Los hispanos de origen Mexicano por todo el mundo". Impactousa.com. Retrieved 2010-10-28.
- ^ a b Wimmer, Andreas, 2002. Nationalist exclusion and ethnic conflict: shadows of modernity, Cambridge University Press page 115
- ^ RACIAL CLASSIFICATIONS IN JALISCO AND THE MEXICAN REPUBLIC – 1921 CENSUS
- ^ Mexico's 1921 Census
- ^ Bartolomé (1996:2)"En primer lugar cabe destacar que en México la pertenencia racial no es un indicador relevante ni suficiente para denotar una adscripción étnica específica. El proceso de mestizaje no ha sido sólo biológico sino básicamente social y cultural, por ello personas racialmente indígenas pueden asumirse y definirse culturalmente como mestizas. De esta manera ser o no ser indígena representa un acto de afirmación o de negación lingüística y cultural, que excluye la pertenencia a un fenotipo racial particular. Por lo tanto es relativamente factible realizar el llamado tránsito étnico, es decir que un indígena puede llegar a incorporarse al sector mestizo a través de la renuncia a su cultura tradicional y si sus condiciones materiales se lo permiten. Este acto supone tanto la aceptación de un estilo de vida alterno como la negación del propio, incluyendo la no enseñanza de la lengua a sus hijos. Pero muy difícilmente ocurre lo contrario; esto es que individuos fenotípicamente "blancos", pretendan reivindicar una adscripción indígena. Sin embargo, y con gran frecuencia, esas mismas personas considerarán a los indígenas como sus antepasados, fundadores de una "nación mexicana" que ahora les pertenece en calidad de herederos."
- ^ Knight (1990:74)
- ^ Wade (1981:32)
- ^ Knight (1990:78-85)
- ^ Knight (1990:73-74)
- ^ Bartolomé (1996:3-4)
- ^ a b Bartolomé (1996:2)
- ^ Wade (1997:44-47)
- ^ Knight (1990:73)
- ^ Encyclopædia Britannica. "Spanish language - Britannica Online Encyclopedia". Britannica.com. Retrieved 2010-07-26.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ "www.ine.es Spanish population 2009" (PDF). Retrieved 2010-10-28.
- ^ "Spanish Language History and Main Spanish-Speaking Countries". Todaytranslations.com. Retrieved 2010-07-26.
- ^ "Constitución Política De Los Estados Unidos Mexicanos" (PDF). Retrieved 2010-07-26.
- ^ "Microsoft Word - 257" (PDF). Retrieved 2010-07-26.
- ^ "Kikapúes — Kikaapoa". CDI México. Retrieved 2007-10-02.
- ^ "Aguacatecos, cakchiqueles, ixiles, kekchíes, tecos y quichés". CDI México. Retrieved 2007-10-02.
- ^ "Perfil sociodemográfico de la población hablante de náhuatl" (PDF). Retrieved 2010-07-26.
- ^ "Can a Mother Lose Her Child Because She Doesn't Speak English?". Time. August 27, 2009. Retrieved May 12, 2010.
- ^ http://courses.cit.cornell.edu/iard4010/documents/Pluralismo_cultural_y_redefinicion_del_estado_en_Mexico.pdf