Hello everyone! just a Mexican here who would like to speak his mind about the TRUE ethnography of Mexico. To begin with, I was one day searching the web, and I went to this web site called "CIA World Fact Book" and this other one called "Encyclopedia Britanica", and I noticed that in the Mexico ethnography part it said 75% Mestizo (mixed european and Amerindian), 9% White, 12% Amerindian, and 3%-4% other, and after seeing this I though "where the hell do these people come up with all these unverefiable statistics" I mean seriously they are a bunch of people running this little web site who are not even Mexican and they don't even have anything to prove how they came up with those percentages
which are not reliable because they do not have proof of where the hell they came up with that crapp. Everyone thinks the Mexican census does not count ethnic groups, that is not true! the Mexican census does take count of racial groups and I know this becasue I have an aunt who works for the INEGI (Instituto Nacional de Estadisticas Geograficas e Informaticas) which is the Mexican census institution, and they do ask your race when they send people to your house to ask for general info but they do not publicate them because it is not an official part of the census, the only official racial info is of the indigenous peoples and that is the only racial info that is publicated of Mexico's ethnography. One of the main reasons the government of Mexico does not publicate the racial data is to prevent racism and to maintain the idea on the Mexican people that the government strongly promotes which is "todos los Mexicanos somos Mestizos"
(all of us Mexicans are Mestizos) which is done to prevent racism, which racism already exists here in Mexico but has never been out of hand because of this ideal, unlike in America. According to what my aunt told me on the ethnographic results of the 2005 Mexican census(by the way she was not suppose to tell me cuz it's confidential), about 45%-48% of Mexicans are Mestizo (which are the majority), about 40% are of either pure or predominant European descent (mostly of Spanish origin), 10%-12% Amerindian (6% of them speak a dialect as a mother tongue), and around 3% other. Here in Monterrey in northern Mexico where I live, at least half to as much as the majority of the population in all of the northern Mexican states are of pure or predominant European descent (even my name and last name are French just to give you an example) in the central states Mestizos are the majority except in the major cities where people of European descent always make up just a little bit more than half of the population, and the Amerindians usually make up the majority of the population in the southern states. In Mexico, before the 19th century and even through the begining of the 20th century, people of pure to predominant European descent were the majority of the population, there was even a caste system comparable to the one in India but didn't have to do anything with religion that's the only diference, well any way very few people at the time were Mestizos because mixing with Amerindians was socially not acceptable in society, the few mestizos there was were usually children of European descent men who had affairs with the domestic Amerindian female who was like the maid of the house. But after the fall of the old Mexico after the end of the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz "Porfiriato era" society slowly started to change and under the new republic the constitution said that all of us were CULTURALY Mestizos, but this soon changed to ALL MEXICANS ARE MESTIZOS ideal of the government to try to end the caste system, then racism eventually went away but not completely, but it sure went away enough to end the caste system, and then you had your new generation of Mexicans who started to mix with Amerindians, oh some of the early spanish settlers did secretly mix, but the majority of them did not becasue they saw the Amerindians as savages and not human and they were untouchable and if you were caught having an affair with them it was a big big shame on you, you were practicaly kicked out of society, and this ideal continued until the early 20th century until the Porfiriato era ended. Any way so most of Mexico's population (about 45%-48%) actually can trace back their Mestizo heritage to as little as 100 years which is not that long for a country that is like almost 600 years old, and the the people of pure to predominant European descent are still a considerable minority of about 38%-40%, it might not be the majority any more but it is not an almost nonexistant 9% like the CIA World Factbook says which is not a reliable source because they dont have any information to prove their claims and statistics in ethnography of Mexico. About racism in Mexico, it certainly still exists, but as I mentioned before it has never been as extreme during this past 100 years, unlike America that it is an everyday thing in some parts of that country like the deep south and you have your KKK and Neo Nazis etc... We don't have extreme racism like in the U.S.A., but the way racism is present here in Mexico is like for example if you were to be an Amerindian in Mexico, you are not likely to get a good education/job beacuse you look too dark and short and since most of them live in rural zones, the only way they find hope is migrating to the U.S.A., even most people here when they are looking for someone to "date" with they go for the more European looking people and people who look more Amerindian are seen as rather ugly and unatractive, and if you are a Mestizo you are most likely to probably just be like working class to lower middle class the rest of your life (THAT IS WHY ALMOST HALF OF MEXICO'S POPULATION IS IN POVERTY, WHY DID YOU THINK THE OTHER HALF ISN'T, WELL THE TRUTH IT'S BECAUSE MOST OF THEM ARE OF EUROPEAN DESCENT PURE OR PREDOMINANT!!! MAKES A-LOT OF SENSE RIGHT), then you have the other half of Mexico's population which is mostly of pure to Predominant European descent and they are the ones who are usually middle middle class, to upper middle class, to rich, but not all of us European descent Mexicans are rich like most people think, I am of direct French and Spanish heritage but my family is just a regular middle middle class. All of this dates back to the caste system days here in Mexico about a century ago, the caste system did disappear, but it's legacy is very precent. Have you noticed how usually the Amerindians in Mexico are at the bottom in extreme poverty, then you have the Mestizos being mostly more better off being working class to lower middle class, and the you have the remaining half of Mexico which are the Mexicans of pure to predominant European descent being middle middle class to upper middle class and rich, this dates back to the caste system of colonial, 19th and early 20th century Mexico when the Mexicans of pure to predominant European descent were at the top, then you had the Mestizo minority in the middle, then the Amerindians way at the bottom. in everyday life here in Mexico, you could just see it in the media where most of the people like actors, and news casters are "Euro lookin'" and here in the north part of Mexico people who look European are part of every day life in either northern major cities or rural ares they are the people who you would usually see in the streets and by the media in northern mexico putting people who look "Euro" does right, but that is certainly not the case for the rest of the country. In central Mexico where most Mexicans live, the majority are Mestizos (except for major central Mexican cities where the Europen lookin' people are the majority), but the thing is that most people in central and southern Mexico dont live in major cities, they live in smaller cities, and head to rural zones and mostly evryone is Amerindian especially in the south. The Mexican media has even been crticized by some human rights activists for choosing lke 90% of the time European descent Mexican actors and rejecting jobs for those who are Mestizo or Amerindian (not all the time for Mestizos but certainly all the time for Amerindians) and in our popular culture, Amerindians are seen as comical things to make fun of and laugh at, just watch a Mexican comedy show on a Mexican Television Channel like "Televisa" or also a channel called "TVA" and you will understand what I am talking about, so I find my society here in my country Mexico rather "hippocratic" when they call the U.S.A. a racist nation. Anyway just don't believe the CIA World Fact Book that much any more beacuse after what I found out of them is that they do not have verifiability for statistics of Mexican Ethnography, and I do she's my aunt who works for the Mexican census institution, and I am glad I could share this with the world, if you have any comments or questions please post them and I will gladly read them and you can e-mail me to
peahippo@hotmail.com