Editing Demographics of Mexico (section)

===Mestizo Mexicans===
{{main|Mestizos in Mexico}}
[[File:General Porfirio Díaz.JPG|thumb|upright|President [[Porfirio Diaz]] was of Mestizo descent.]]
A large majority of Mexicans have been classified as "Mestizos", meaning in modern Mexican usage that they neither identify fully with any indigenous culture nor with a Spanish cultural heritage, but rather identify as having cultural traits incorporating elements from both indigenous and Spanish 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'' {{IPA|es|mestiˈsaxe|}}. Mexican politicians and reformers such as [[José Vasconcelos]] and [[Manuel Gamio]] were instrumental in building a Mexican national identity upon this concept, <ref name="Wade 1981:32">Wade (1981:32)</ref>{{full citation needed|date=April 2025}}<ref>Knight (1990:78–85)</ref> which were designed with the main goal of "helping" indigenous peoples to achieve the same level of progress as the rest of society by transforming indigenous communities into Mestizo ones, eventually assimilating them into the Mestizo Mexican society.{{sfn|Bartolomé|1996|page=5}}

As the Mestizo identity promoted by the government is more of a cultural identity, it has achieved a strong influence in the country and 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, with many people who may be considered "White" being historically classified as Mestizos.<ref name="Lizcano Fernández 2005">{{cite journal |last1=Lizcano Fernández |first1=Francisco |title=Composición Étnica de las Tres Áreas Culturales del Continente Americano al Comienzo del Siglo XXI |trans-title=Ethnic Composition of the Three Cultural Areas of the American Continent at the Beginning of the XXI Century |language=es |journal=Convergencia |date=August 2005 |volume=12 |issue=38 |pages=185–232 |url=http://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1405-14352005000200185 |access-date=November 17, 2020 |archive-date=September 22, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220922054604/https://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1405-14352005000200185 |url-status=live }}</ref> 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, In Mexican society an indigenous person can be considered mestizo.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Bartolomé |first1=Miguel Alberto |title=Pluralismo cultural y redefinicioń del estado en México |trans-title=Cultural pluralism and redefinition of the state in Mexico |language=es |date=1996 |publisher=Departamento de Antropologia, Universidade de Brasilia |oclc=605212355 |page=2 |quote=En primer lugar cabe destacar que en México la pertenencia racial no es un indicador relevante ni suficiente para denotar una adscripción étnica específica. [...] 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. }}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite book|last=Knight|first=Alan|editor=Richard Graham|title=The Idea of Race in Latin America: 1870–1940|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AjK65boWTxwC&pg=PA73|access-date=July 17, 2013|date=September 1, 2010|publisher=[[University of Texas Press]]|isbn=978-0-292-78888-6|page=73}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|editor-last=Schaefer |editor-first= Richard T. |year=2008|title=Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity and Society |page=900|publisher=Sage|isbn=978-1-4129-2694-2|quote=In New Spain, there was no strict idea of race (something that continued in Mexico). The Indians that had lost their connections with their communities and had adopted different cultural elements could "pass" and be considered mestizos. The same applied to Blacks and castas.}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Wade|first=Peter|title=Race And Ethnicity In Latin America|url=https://archive.org/details/raceethnicityinl0000wade|url-access=registration|access-date=July 17, 2013|date=May 20, 1997|publisher=Pluto Press|isbn=978-0-7453-0987-3}}</ref> In certain areas of Mexico the word Mestizo has a different meaning: in the Yucatán peninsula it has been used 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<ref name="Bartolomé 1996:2"/> whereas in the state of Chiapas the word "Ladino" is used instead of "mestizo".<ref>Wade (1997:44–47)</ref>

[[File:GAE_-_Ajax_-_52787520422_(cropped).jpg|thumb|left|upright|[[Edson Álvarez|Edson Omar Álvarez]], Mexican football player.]]

Given that the word Mestizo has different meanings in Mexico, estimates of the Mexican Mestizo population vary widely. According to the ''[[Encyclopædia Britannica]]'', which uses a biology-based approach, around three-fifths of the Mexican population is Mestizo<ref name="Encyclopædia Britannica">{{cite encyclopedia|title=Mexico- Ethnic groups|url=https://www.britannica.com/place/Mexico/Ethnic-groups|encyclopedia=[[Encyclopædia Britannica]]|access-date=October 1, 2016|archive-date=October 11, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161011224953/https://www.britannica.com/place/Mexico/Ethnic-groups|url-status=live}}</ref> while a culture-based criteria estimates a percentage as high as 90%.<ref name="EL MESTIZAJE Y LAS CULTURAS REGIONALES">{{Cite web|url=http://www.nacionmulticultural.unam.mx/Portal/Izquierdo/BANCO/Mxmulticultural/Elmestizajeylasculturas-elmestizaje.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130823015618/http://www.nacionmulticultural.unam.mx/Portal/Izquierdo/BANCO/Mxmulticultural/Elmestizajeylasculturas-elmestizaje.html|url-status=dead|title=en el censo de 1930 el gobierno mexicano dejó de clasificar a la población del país en tres categorías raciales, blanco, mestizo e indígena, y adoptó una nueva clasificación étnica que distinguía a los hablantes de lenguas indígenas del resto de la población, es decir de los hablantes de español.|archive-date=August 23, 2013}}</ref> 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,{{sfn|Bartolomé|1996|page=2}} recent research based on self-identification indeed has observed that many Mexicans do not identify as mestizos<ref name="Schwartz-Marín & Silva-Zolezzi 2010">{{cite journal |last1=Schwartz-Marín |first1=Ernesto |last2=Silva-Zolezzi |first2=Irma |title="The Map of the Mexican's Genome": overlapping national identity, and population genomics |journal=Identity in the Information Society |date=December 2010 |volume=3 |issue=3 |pages=489–514 |doi=10.1007/s12394-010-0074-7 |s2cid=144786737 |doi-access=free |hdl=10871/33766 |hdl-access=free }}</ref> and would not agree to be labeled as such,<ref name="Clute Journals">R. Martínez & C. De La Torre (2008): [https://www.clutejournals.com/index.php/JDM/article/download/4993/5084 "Racial Appearance And Income In Contemporary Mexico, pag 9 note 1"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210806021728/https://www.clutejournals.com/index.php/JDM/article/download/4993/5084 |date=August 6, 2021 }}, ''Journal of Diversity Management'', 2008. Retrieved April 1, 2021.</ref> with "static" racial labels such as White, Indian, Black etc. being more commonly used.<ref name="mestizajeenmexico">{{cite web |title=El mestizaje en Mexico |language=es |trans-title=The miscegenation in Mexico |first=Federico |last=Navarrete Linares |url=http://enp4.unam.mx/amc/libro_munioz_cota/libro/cap4/lec10_federiconavarreteelmestizaje.pdf |access-date=July 31, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170801102632/http://enp4.unam.mx/amc/libro_munioz_cota/libro/cap4/lec10_federiconavarreteelmestizaje.pdf |archive-date=August 1, 2017|url-status=dead}}</ref>

[[File:Guadalajara_mariachis.jpg|thumb|A group of mariachi musicians in [[Guadalajara]], [[Jalisco]].]]
The use of variated methods and criteria to quantify the number of Mestizos in Mexico is not new: Since several decades ago, many authors have analyzed colonial censuses data and have made different conjectures respecting the ethnic composition of the population of colonial Mexico/New Spain. There are Historians such as Gonzalo Aguirre-Beltrán who claimed in 1972 that practically the totality of New Spain's population, in reality, were Mestizos, using to back up his claims arguments such as that affairs of Spaniards with non-Europeans due to the alleged absence of female European immigrants were widespread as well as there being a huge desire of Mestizos to "pass" as Spaniards, this because Spanishness was seen as a symbol of high status.<ref name="Población negra de México">{{cite book|author1= Gonzalo Aguirre-Beltran|title=La población negra de México: estudio etnohistórico|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KFsSAQAAIAAJ&q=Euromestizo|access-date=March 13, 2019|date=1972|publisher=Fondo de Cultura Económica|isbn=9789681609122|page=267}}</ref><ref name="ConciseMexico">{{cite book|author1= Michael Werner|title=Concise Encyclopedia of Mexico|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MOI4CQAAQBAJ&q=euromestizo&pg=PA117|access-date=March 13, 2019|date=2001|publisher=Routledge|isbn=9781135973773|page=117}}</ref> 

Other historians, however, point that Aguirre-Beltran's numbers tend to have inconsistencies and take too many liberties (it is pointed out in the book ''Ensayos sobre historia de la población. México y el Caribe 2'' published in 1998 that on 1646, when according to historic registers the mestizo population was of 1% he estimates it to be 16.6% already, with this being attributed to him interpreting the data in a way convenient for a historic narrative),<ref name="Racismomestizaje">[https://cuadrivio.net/racismo-falso-mestizaje-y-desigualdad-social-en-mexico/ "Racismo, falso mestizaje y desigualdad social en México"]{{Dead link|date=August 2019 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}, ''Revista Cuadrivio'', 2016. Retrieved March 13, 2019.</ref><ref name="Mexicosinmestizaje" /> often omitting data of New Spain's northern and western provinces.<ref name="EnsayospoblaciónMéxico2">{{cite book|author1=Sherburne Friend Cook|author2=Woodrow Borah|title=Ensayos sobre historia de la población. México y el Caribe 2|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DSCVztyTANcC&pg=PA188|access-date=March 13, 2019|date=1998|publisher=Siglo XXI|isbn=9789682301063|page=188}}</ref> His self-made classifications thus, although could be plausible, are not useful for precise statistical analysis.<ref name="EnsayospoblaciónMéxico3">{{cite book|author1=Sherburne Friend Cook|author2=Woodrow Borah|title=Ensayos sobre historia de la población. México y el Caribe 2|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DSCVztyTANcC&pg=PA197|access-date=March 13, 2019|date=1998|publisher=Siglo XXI|isbn=9789682301063|page=197}}</ref> 

[[File:Folkloremexicano.jpg|thumb|Mexican folklore in [[La Coruña]], [[Galicia (Spain)|Galicia]], ([[Spain]]).]]
According 21st-century historians, Aguirre Beltran also disregards facts such as the population dynamics of New Spain being different depending on the region at hand (i.e. miscegenation could not happen in a significant amount in regions where the native population was openly hostile until the early 20th century, such as most of New Spain's internal provinces, which nowadays are the northern and western regions of Mexico),<ref name="Mexicosinmestizaje" /> or that historic accounts made by investigators at the time consistently observed that New Spain's European population was notoriously concerned with preserving their European heritage, with practices such as inviting relatives and friends directly from Spain or favoring Europeans for marriage even if they were from a lower socioeconomic level than them being common.<ref name="MinerosYcomerciantes">{{cite book|author1=David A. Branding|author2=Woodrow Borah|title=Mineros y comerciantes en el México borbónico (1763–1810)|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LYH_DAAAQBAJ&pg=PT156|access-date=January 27, 2018|date=1975|publisher=Fondo de Cultura Económica|isbn=9789681613402|page=156}}</ref><ref name="Racismomestizaje" /><ref name="Mexicosinmestizaje" /> Newer publications that do cite Aguirre-Beltran's work take those factors into consideration, stating that the Spaniard/Euromestizo/Criollo ethnic label was composed on its majority by descendants of Europeans, albeit the category may have included people with some non-European ancestry.<ref name="HistoriadeMexico">{{cite book|author1= Gloria M. Delgado de Cantú|title=Historia de Mexico, Legado Historico Y Pasado Reciente|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WbYYZiMANjEC&pg=PA99|access-date=March 13, 2019|date=2004|publisher=Pearson Educación|isbn=9702605237|page=99}}</ref>