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Mexicans (Spanish: Mexicanos) are the citizens and nationals of the United Mexican States.The most spoken language by Mexicans is Spanish, but many also speak languages from 68 different Indigenous linguistic groups and other languages brought to Mexico by recent immigration or learned by Mexican expatriates residing in other countries. In 2015, 21.5% of Mexico's population self-identified as having indigenous ancestry, however this also included partially indigenous Mexicans.[47][48][49] In 2020, the number was estimated at 11.8 million[50] There are currently about 12 million Mexican nationals residing outside Mexico, with about 11.7 million[51] living in the United States. The larger Mexican diaspora can also include individuals that trace ancestry to Mexico and self-identify as Mexican but are not necessarily Mexican by citizenship. The United States has the largest Mexican population in the world after Mexico at 37,186,361 in 2019.[52]
The modern nation of Mexico achieved independence from the Spanish Empire in 1821, after a decade-long war for independence starting in 1810; this began the process of forging a national identity that fused the cultural traits of Indigenous pre-Columbian origin with those of Spanish ancestry. This led to what has been termed "a peculiar form of multi-ethnic nationalism".[53]
History
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The Mexican people have varied origins and an identity that has evolved with the succession of conquests among Amerindian groups and later 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 BC to 700 AD) and the much debated Toltec people who flourished around the 10th and 12th centuries AD, and ending with the last great indigenous civilization before the Spanish Conquest, the Aztecs (13 March 1325 to 13 August 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.[54]
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. The Spaniards enslaved millions of Africans in South America. Slavery in Mexico did not end until 1829. Cultural diffusion and intermixing among the Amerindian populations with African and the Europeans created the modern Mexican identity which is a mixture of regional indigenous, European, and African cultures that evolved into a national culture during the Spanish 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.[55][56]
Definitions
Mexicano (Mexican) is derived from the word Mexico itself.[57] In the principal model to create demonyms in Spanish, the suffix -ano is added to the name of the place of origin. However, in Nahuatl language, the original demonym becomes Mexica.
It has been suggested that the name of the country is derived from Mextli or Mēxihtli, a secret name for the god of war and patron of the Mexicas, Huitzilopochtli, in which case Mēxihco means "Place where Huitzilopochtli lives".[58] Another hypothesis[59] suggests that Mēxihco derives from the Nahuatl words for "Moon" (Mētztli) and navel (xīctli). This meaning ("Place at the Center of the Moon") might then refer to Tenochtitlan's position in the middle of Lake Texcoco. The system of interconnected lakes, of which Texcoco formed the center, had the form of a rabbit, which the Mesoamericans pareidolically associated with the Moon. Still another hypothesis suggests that it is derived from Mēctli, the goddess of maguey.[59]
Ethnic groups
Mestizo Mexicans
The majority of Mexicans have varying degrees of Spanish and Mesoamerican ancestry and have been classified as "Mestizos". In the modern meaning of the term this means that they identify fully neither with any indigenous culture nor with a Spanish cultural heritage, but rather identify with the uniquely Mexican identity which incorporates elements from both Spanish and indigenous 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 [mestiˈsaxe]. Mexican politicians and reformers such as José Vasconcelos and Manuel Gamio were instrumental in building a Mexican national identity on the concept of mestizaje.[60][61]
Since the Mestizo identity promoted by the government is more of a cultural self-identity, it has achieved a strong influence in the country, with many people who may be considered "White" identifying with it. This has caused many people who may not qualify as "Mestizos" in its original sense to be counted as such in Mexico's demographic investigations and censuses.[62]
A similar situation occurs regarding the distinctions between Indigenous peoples and Mestizos: while the term Mestizo is sometimes used in English 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 pure Indigenous genetic heritage would be considered Mestizo either by rejecting his indigenous culture or by not speaking an indigenous language,[63] and a person with none or 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.[64][65][66]
In the Yucatán peninsula the word Mestizo has a different meaning, with it being to refer to the Maya-speaking populations living in traditional communities, because during the caste war of the late 19th century those Maya who did not join the rebellion were classified as Mestizos.[63] In Chiapas the word "Ladino" is used instead of "mestizo".[67]
Cultural policies in early post-revolutionary Mexico were paternalistic towards the indigenous people, with efforts designed to "help" indigenous peoples achieve the same level of progress as the rest of society, eventually assimilating indigenous peoples completely to Mestizo Mexican culture, working toward the goal of eventually solving the "Amerindian problem" by transforming indigenous communities into Mestizo communities.[68]
Given that the word Mestizo has different implications in certain areas in Mexico, estimates of the Mexican Mestizo population vary widely. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, which uses a biology-based approach, between one half and two thirds of the Mexican population is Mestizo.[69] A culture-based estimate gives the percentage of Mestizos as high as 90%.[70] Paradoxically, the word "Mestizo" has long been dropped from popular Mexican vocabulary, with the word even having pejorative connotations further complicating attempts to quantify Mestizos via self-identification.[63] Recent research based on self-identification indeed, observing that many Mexicans do not actually identify as mestizos and would not agree to be labeled as such,[71] with "static" racial labels such as White, Indian, Black etc. being more commonly used.[72]
While for most of its history the concept of Mestizo and mestizaje has been lauded by Mexico's intellectual circles, in recent times the concept has been target of criticism, with its detractors claiming that it delegitimizes the importance of race in Mexico under the idea of racism "not existing here in Mexico, as everybody is Mestizo".[73] In general, the authors conclude that Mexico introducing a real racial classification and accepting itself as a multicultural country opposed to a monolithic Mestizo country would bring benefits to the Mexican society as a whole.[74]
White Mexicansedit
White Mexicans are Mexican citizens who trace all or most of their ancestry to Europe.[75][76][77][78][79][80][81] Europeans began arriving in Mexico during the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire; and while during the colonial period most European immigration was Spanish, in the 19th and 20th centuries European and European-derived populations from North and South America did immigrate to the country. According to 20th- and 21st-century academics, large scale intermixing between the European immigrants and the native indigenous peoples would produce a Mestizo group which would become the overwhelming majority of Mexico's population by the time of independence.[82] However, according to church registers from the colonial times, the majority of Spanish men married with Spanish women. Said registers also put in question other narratives held by contemporary academics, such as European immigrants who arrived to Mexico being almost exclusively men or that "pure Spanish" people were all part of a small powerful elite, as Spaniards were often the most numerous ethnic group in the colonial cities[83][84] and there were menial workers and people in poverty who were of complete Spanish origin.[85]
Estimates of Mexico's white population differ greatly in both methodology and percentages given. Extra-official sources such as the CIA World Factbook and Encyclopædia Britannica, which use the 1921 census results as the base of their estimations calculate Mexico's white population as 9%[87] or 20-30%.[88] (the results of the 1921 census, however, have been contested by various historians and deemed inaccurate).[89] Surveys that account for phenotypical traits and have performed actual field research suggest rather higher percentages: using the presence of blond hair as reference to classify a Mexican as white, the Metropolitan Autonomous University of Mexico calculated the percentage of said ethnic group at 23%.[90] With a similar methodology, the American Sociological Association obtained a percentage of 18.8% having its higher frequency on the North region (22.3%–23.9%) followed by the Center region (18.4%–21.3%) and the South region (11.9%).[91] Another study made by the University College London in collaboration with Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History found that the frequencies of blond hair and light eyes in Mexicans are 18% and 28% respectively;[92] surveys that use as reference skin color such as those made by Mexico's National Council to Prevent Discrimination and Mexico's National Institute of Statistics and Geography reported percentages of 47% in 2010[93][94][95] and 49% in 2017[81][96] respectively. Another survey published in 2018 reported a percentage significantly lower at 29%;[97] this time, however, the surveying of Mexicans from "vulnerable groups" was prioritized, which among other measures meant that states known to have high numbers of people from said groups surveyed more people.[98] The use of skin color palettes as the primary criteria to estimate the ethnoracial groups that inhabit a given country has its origin in the investigations produced by Princeton and Vanderbilt Universities, which found it to be more accurate than self-identification particularly in Latin America, where the different discourses that exist in regards to national identity have rendered previous attempts to estimate ethnic groups unreliable.[99]
Mexico's northern and western regions have the highest percentages of European population, with the majority of the people not having native admixture or being of predominantly European ancestry, resembling in aspect that of northern Spaniards.[100] In the north and west of Mexico, the indigenous tribes were substantially smaller than those found in central and southern Mexico, and also much less organized, thus they remained isolated from the rest of the population or even in some cases were hostile towards Mexican colonists. The northeast region, in which the indigenous population was eliminated by early European settlers, became the region with the highest proportion of whites during the Spanish colonial period. However, recent immigrants from southern Mexico have been changing, to some degree, its demographic trends.[101]
Indigenous Mexicansedit
The 2003 General Law of Linguistic Rights of the Indigenous Peoples recognizes 62 indigenous languages as "national languages" which have the same validity as Spanish in all territories in which they are spoken.[102] The recognition of indigenous languages and the protection of indigenous cultures is granted not only to the ethnic groups indigenous to modern-day Mexican territory, but also to other North American indigenous groups that migrated to Mexico from the United States, such as the Kikapú[103] in the 19th century and those who immigrated from Guatemala in the 1980s.[104]
The category of indigena (indigenous) in Mexico has been defined based on different criteria through history; this means that the percentage of the Mexican population defined as "indigenous" varies according to the definition applied. It can be defined narrowly according to linguistic criteria including only persons that speak an indigenous language. Based on this criterion, approximately 5.4% of the population is Indigenous.[105] Nonetheless, activists for the rights of indigenous peoples have referred to the usage of this criterion for census purposes as "statistical genocide".[106][107]
Other surveys made by the Mexican government do count as Indigenous all persons who speak an indigenous language and people who do not speak indigenous languages nor live in indigenous communities but self-identifies as Indigenous. According to this criterion, the National Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples (Comisión Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas, or CDI in Spanish) and the INEGI (Mexico's National Institute of Statistics and Geography), stated that there are 15.7 million indigenous people in Mexico of many different ethnic groups,[108] which constitute 14.9% of the population in the country.[a]
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According to the latest intercensal survey carried out by the Mexican government in 2015, Indigenous people make up 21.5% of Mexico's population. In this occasion, people who self-identified as "Indigenous" and people who self-identified as "partially Indigenous" were classified in the "Indigenous" category altogether.[47] However, in the 2020 Mexican census, Indigenous peoples made up 9.36% of the population, being defined as Mexicans who live in Indigenous households.[111]
The absolute indigenous population is growing, but at a slower rate than the rest of the population so that the percentage of indigenous peoples is nonetheless falling.[105][112][113] The majority of the indigenous population is concentrated in the central-southern and south-eastern states, with the majority of the indigenous population living in rural areas. Some indigenous communities have a degree of autonomy under the legislation of "usos y costumbres" (usages and customs), which allows them to regulate some internal issues under customary law.
According to the CDI, the states with the greatest percentage of indigenous population are[114] Yucatán, with 62.7%, Quintana Roo with 33.8% and Campeche with 32% of the population being indigenous, most of them Maya; Oaxaca with 58% of the population, the most numerous groups being the Mixtec and Zapotec peoples; Chiapas has 32.7%, the majority being Tzeltal and Tzotzil Maya; Hidalgo with 30.1%, the majority being Otomi; Puebla with 25.2%, and Guerrero with 22.6%, mostly Nahua people and the states of San Luis Potosí and Veracruz both home to a population of 19% indigenous people, mostly from the Totonac, Nahua and Teenek (Huastec) groups.[115]
Afro-Mexicansedit
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Afro-Mexicans were brought to Mexico during the slave trade. Afro-Mexicans are an ethnic group that predominate in certain areas of Mexico. Such as the Costa Chica of Oaxaca and the Costa Chica of Guerrero, Veracruz (e.g. Yanga) and in some towns in northern Mexico, mainly in Múzquiz Municipality, Coahuila. The existence of blacks in Mexico is difficult to assess for a number of reasons: their small numbers, heavy intermarriage with other ethnic groups, and Mexico's tradition of defining itself as a Mestizo or mixing of European and indigenous. Mexico did have an active slave trade since the early Spanish period but from the beginning, intermarriage and mixed-race offspring created an elaborate caste system.[116]
The majority of Mexico's Afro-descendants are Afromestizos, i.e. "mixed-race". The majority being recent black immigrants from Africa, the Caribbean and elsewhere in the Americas. According to the 2020 census survey carried out by the Mexican government, Afro-Mexicans make up 2.04% of Mexico's population, the Afro-Mexican category in the Intercensal survey includes people who self-identified solely as African and people who self-identified as partially African. The survey also states that 64.9% (896,829) of Afro-Mexicans also identified as indigenous, with 9.3% being speakers of indigenous languages.[47]
Other ethno-cultural communitiesedit
Jewish Mexicansedit
A Jewish, specifically Sephardic, population has existed in Mexico since the start of the Spanish invasion and occupation of Mexico. The current Jewish population in Mexico mostly consists of those who have descended from immigrants from the 19th and early 20th centuries with nationwide totals estimated between 80,000 and 90,000, about 75% of whom are in Mexico City.[117][118] The exact numbers are not known. One main source for figures is the Comité Central Israelita in Mexico City but its contact is limited to Orthodox and Conservative congregations with no contact with Jews that may be affiliated with the Reform movement or those who consider themselves secular. The Mexican government census lists religion but its categories are confusing, confusing those of some Protestant sects which practice Judaic rituals with Jewish groups. There is also controversy as to whether to count those crypto-Jews who have converted (back) to Judaism.[118] Sixty-two percent of the population over fifteen is married, three percent divorced and four percent widowed. However, younger Jewish women are more likely to be employed outside the home (only 18% of women are housewives) and fertility rates are dropping from 3.5 children of women over 65 to 2.7 for the overall population now. There is a low level of intermarriage with the general Mexican population, with only 3.1% of marriages being mixed.[117] Although the Jewish community is less than one percent of Mexico's total population, Mexico is one of the few countries whose Jewish population is expected to grow.[119][120]
German Mexicansedit
German Mexicans (German: Deutschmexikaner[121] or Deutsch-Mexikanisch, Spanish: germano-mexicano or alemán-mexicano) are Mexicans of German descent or origin.
Most ethnic Germans arrived in Mexico during the mid-to-late 19th century, spurred by government policies of Porfirio Díaz. Although a good number of them took advantage of the liberal policies then valid in Mexico and went into merchant, industrial and educational ventures, others arrived with no or limited capital, as employees or farmers.[122] Most settled in Mexico City, Veracruz, Yucatán, and Puebla. Significant numbers of German immigrants also arrived during and after the First and Second World Wars. The Plautdietsch language is also spoken by the Mexican Mennonites, descendants of German and Dutch immigrants in the states of Chihuahua, Durango, Zacatecas and Aguascalientes. Other German towns lie in the states of Nuevo León, Jalisco, Sinaloa, Yucatán, Chiapas, Quintana Roo, and other parts of Puebla, where the German culture and language have been preserved to different extents.
The German Mexican community has largely integrated into Mexican society as a whole whilst retaining some cultural traits and in turn exerted cultural and industrial influences on Mexican society. Especially after the First World War intense processes of transculturation can be observed, particularly in Mexico City, Jalisco, Nuevo León, Puebla and, notably, with the Maya in Chiapas. These include social, cultural and identity aspects.[122]
Arab Mexicansedit
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An Arab Mexican is a Mexican citizen of Arab origin who can be of various ancestral origins. The vast majority of 450,000 Mexicans who have at least partial Arab descent trace their ancestry to what is now Lebanon and Syria.[123]
Arab immigration to Mexico started in the 19th and early 20th centuries.[124] Roughly 100,000 Arabs settled in Mexico during this time period. They came mostly from Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and Iraq and settled in significant numbers in Nayarit, Puebla, Mexico City, and the Northern part of the country, mainly in the states of Baja California, Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, Sinaloa, Chihuahua, Coahuila, and Durango, as well as the city of Tampico and Guadalajara.
During the Israel–Lebanon war in 1948 and during the Six-Day War, thousands of Lebanese left Lebanon and went to Mexico. They first arrived in Veracruz. Although Arabs made up less than 5% of the total immigrant population in Mexico during the 1930s, they constituted half of the immigrant economic activity.[123]
Immigration of Arabs in Mexico has influenced Mexican culture, in particular food, where they have introduced kibbeh, tabbouleh, and even created recipes such as tacos árabes. By 1765, dates, which originated from the Middle East, were introduced into Mexico by the Spaniards. The fusion between Arab and Mexican food has highly influenced the Yucatecan cuisine.[125]
The majority of Arab-Mexicans are Christians who belong to the Maronite, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Eastern Rite Catholic Churches.[126] A scant number are Muslims as well as indigenous Muslims which are most common in southern states like Chiapas or Oaxaca. And Jews of Middle Eastern origins.
Romani Mexicansedit
The first wave of Roma arrived in Mexico in the 1890s, when they came to the Americas from Hungary, Poland and Russia and mainly settled in the United States and Brazil, but also in Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Uruguay and Venezuela. There are Romani communities in the cities of Mexico City, Veracruz, Puebla, Guadalajara and Monterrey. There is also a large Romani community in San Luís Potosí.[127]
Asian Mexicansedit
Asian immigration began with the forced arrival of people from the jurisdictions of the Spanish East Indies during Mexico's viceregal period. For two and a half centuries, between 1565 and 1815, the Philippines, Guam, and Marianas islands, etc., were ruled from Mexico City for the Spanish crown. During this period, the Manila-Acapulco Galleon assisting Spain in its trade between Asia and the Americas was formed. Thousands of Filipinos were brought on these voyages to Mexico as slaves and were called Chino,[128] which meant Chinese. Some were also ship crew members and prisoners. In with the groups of Filipinos, there were, in reality, many diverse Asians, including Malays, Javanese, Cambodians, Timorese, and people from Makassar, Tidore, Terenate, and China. All of these were referred to as chino.[129][130][131] A notable example is the story of Catarina de San Juan (Mirra), an Indian girl captured by the Portuguese and sold into slavery in Manila. She arrived in New Spain and eventually she gave rise to the China Poblana.
The reverse was also true, thousands of Mexicans of varying races also ended up as immigrants to the Philippines[132] back when there was a Philippine population of only 1.5 Million Filipinos.[133]
Later groups of Asians, predominantly Chinese, became Mexico's fastest-growing immigrant group from the 1880s to the 1920s, exploding from about 1,500 in 1895 to more than 20,000 in 1910,[134] but also met with strong anti-Chinese sentiment, especially in Sonora and Sinaloa, which led to deportations and illegal expulsions of many of them and their descendants.
Todayedit
Ethnic relations in modern Mexico have grown out of the historical context of the arrival of Europeans, the subsequent Spanish 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".[53]
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 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 African heritage further complicates the situation.[135] 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.[63][136]
Official censusesedit
Historically, population studies and censuses have never been up to the standards that a population as diverse and numerous such as Mexico's require. The first racial census was made in 1793, being also Mexico's (then known as New Spain) first ever nationwide population census. Of it, only part of the original datasets survive. Thus most of what is known of it comes from essays made by researchers who used the census' findings as reference for their own works. More than a century would pass until the Mexican government conducted a new racial census in 1921 (some sources assert that the census of 1895 included a comprehensive racial classification,[82] however according to the historic archives of Mexico's National Institute of Statistics that was not the case).[137] While the 1921 census was the last time the Mexican government conducted a census that included a comprehensive racial classification, in recent time it has conducted nationwide surveys to quantify most of the ethnic groups who inhabit the country as well as the social dynamics and inequalities between them.
1793 censusedit
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Also known as the "Revillagigedo census" due to its creation being ordered by the Count of the same name, this census was Mexico's (then known as the Viceroyalty of New Spain) first ever nationwide population census. Most of its original datasets have reportedly been lost, thus most of what is now known about it comes from essays and field investigations made by academics who had access to the census data and used it as reference for their works such as Prussian geographer Alexander von Humboldt. Each author gives different estimations for each racial group in the country although they do not vary much, with Europeans ranging from 18% to 22% of New Spain's population, Mestizos ranging from 21% to 25%, Amerindians ranging from 51% to 61% and Africans being between 6,000 and 10,000, The estimations given for the total population range from 3,799,561 to 6,122,354. It is concluded then, that across nearly three centuries of colonization, the population growth trends of Europeans and Mestizos were even, while the total percentage of the Indigenous population decreased at a rate of 13%–17% per century. The authors assert that rather than Europeans and mestizos having higher birthrates, the reason for the Indigenous population's numbers decreasing lies on them suffering of higher mortality rates, due living in remote locations rather than on cities and towns founded by the Spanish colonists or being at war with them. It is also for these reasons that the number of Indigenous Mexicans presents the greater variation range between publications, as in cases their numbers in a given location were estimated rather than counted, leading to possible overestimations in some provinces and possible underestimations in others.[138]
| Intendecy/territory | European population (%) | Indigenous population (%) | Mestizo population (%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| México (only the State of Mexico and Mexico City) | 16.9% | 66.1% | 16.7% |
| Puebla | 10.1% | 74.3% | 15.3% |
| Oaxaca | 06.3% | 88.2% | 05.2% |
| Guanajuato | 25.8% | 44.0% | 29.9% |
| San Luis Potosí | 13.0% | 51.2% | 35.7% |
| Zacatecas | 15.8% | 29.0% | 55.1% |
| Durango | 20.2% | 36.0% | 43.5% |
| Sonora | 28.5% | 44.9% | 26.4% |
| Yucatán | 14.8% | 72.6% | 12.3% |
| Guadalajara | 31.7% | 33.3% | 34.7% |
| Veracruz | 10.4% | 74.0% | 15.2% |
| Valladolid | 27.6% | 42.5% | 29.6% |
| Nuevo México | ~ | 30.8% | 69.0% |
| Vieja California | ~ | 51.7% | 47.9% |
| Nueva California | ~ | 89.9% | 09.8% |
| Coahuila | 30.9% | 28.9% | 40.0% |
| Nuevo León | 62.6% | 05.5% | 31.6% |
| Nuevo Santander | 25.8% | 23.3% | 50.8% |
| Texas | 39.7% | 27.3% | 32.4% |
| Tlaxcala | 13.6% | 72.4% | 13.8% |
~Europeans are included within the Mestizo category.
Regardless of the possible imprecisions related to the counting of Indigenous peoples living outside the colonized areas, the effort that New Spain's authorities put on considering them as subjects is worth mentioning, as censuses made by other colonial or post-colonial countries did not consider Amerindians to be citizens/subjects, as example the censuses made by the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata would only count the inhabitants of the colonized settlements.[139] Other example would be the censuses made by the United States, that did not include Indigenous peoples living among the general population until 1860, and indigenous peoples as a whole until 1900.[140]
1921 censusedit
Made right after the consummation of the Mexican revolution, the social context on which this census was made makes it particularly unique, as the government of the time was in the process of rebuilding the country and was looking forward to unite all Mexicans under a single national identity. The 1921 census' final results in regards to race, which assert that 59.3% of the Mexican population self-identified as Mestizo, 29.1% as Indigenous and only 9.8% as White were then essential to cement the "mestizaje" ideology (that asserts that the Mexican population as a whole is product of the admixture of all races) which shaped Mexican identity and culture through the 20th century and remain prominent nowadays, with extraofficial international publications such as The World Factbook and Encyclopædia Britannica using them as a reference to estimate Mexico's racial composition up to this day.[141]
Nonetheless in recent times the census' results have been subjected to scrutiny by historians, academics and social activists alike, who assert that such drastic alterations on demographic trends with respect to the 1793 census are not possible and cite, among other statistics, the relatively low frequency of marriages between people of different continental ancestries in colonial and early independent Mexico.[142] It is claimed that the "mestizaje" process sponsored by the state was more "cultural than biological" which resulted on the numbers of the Mestizo Mexican group being inflated at the expense of the identity of other races.[143] Controversies aside, this census constituted the last time the Mexican Government conducted a comprehensive racial census with the breakdown by states being the following (foreigners and people who answered "other" not included):[144]
| Federative units | Mestizo (%) | Amerindian (%) | White (%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aguascalientes | 66.12% | 16.70% | 16.77% |
| Baja California (Distrito Norte) |
72.50% | 07.72% | 00.35% |
| Baja California (Distrito Sur) |
59.61% | 06.06% | 33.40% |
| Campeche | 41.45% | 43.41% | 14.17% |
| Coahuila | 77.88% | 11.38% | 10.13% |
| Colima | 68.54% | 26.00% | 04.50% |
| Chiapas | 36.27% | 47.64% | 11.82% |
| Chihuahua | 50.09% | 12.76% | 36.33% |
| Durango | 89.85% | 09.99% | 00.01% |
| Guanajuato | 96.33% | 02.96% | 00.54% |
| Guerrero | 54.05% | 43.84% | 02.07% |
| Hidalgo | 51.47% | 39.49% | 08.83% |
| Jalisco | 75.83% | 16.76% | 07.31% |
| Mexico City | 54.78% | 18.75% | 22.79% |
| State of Mexico | 47.71% | 42.13% | 10.02% |
| Michoacan | 70.95% | 21.04% | 06.94% |