With a population of about 129 million in 2022,[4] Mexico is the 10th most populated country in the world. It is the largest Spanish-speaking country in the world and the third-most populous country in the Americas after the United States and Brazil,[5] the most populous city in the country is the capital, Mexico City, with a population of 8.9 million (2016), and its metropolitan area is also the most populated with 20.1 million (2010). Approximately 50% of the population lives in one of the 55 large metropolitan areas in the country. In total, about 78.84% of the population of the country lives in urban areas, and only about 21.16% in rural ones.
Demographic censuses are performed by the Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía e Informatica. The National Population Council (CONAPO) is an institution under the Ministry of Interior in charge of the analysis and research of population dynamics. The National Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples (CDI), also undertakes research and analysis of the sociodemographic and linguistic indicators of the indigenous peoples. Throughout most of the 20th century Mexico's population was characterized by rapid growth. Although this tendency has been reversed and average annual population growth over the last five years was less than 1%, the demographic transition is still in progress; Mexico still has a large youth cohort.
Estimates vary for the Pre-Columbian population of Mexico from 1.5 million to 21 million,[9] but the most accepted figure is about 12 million people, including the population of the Aztec Empire which is estimated at 6 million people.[10] In 1600, the population was estimated to have been around 1 to 2 million and in 1700, the population was estimated to be around 4 million. In 1900, the Mexican population was 13.6 million.[11] During the period of economic prosperity that was dubbed by economists as the "Mexican Miracle", the government invested in efficient social programs that reduced the infant mortality rate and increased life expectancy. These measures jointly led to an intense demographic increase between 1930 and 1980.
Intense population growth in the northern states, especially along the US-Mexican border, changed the country's demographic profile in the second half of the 20th century, as the 1967 US-Mexico maquiladora agreement through which all products manufactured in the border cities could be imported duty-free to the US. Since the adoption of NAFTA in 1994, however, which allows all products to be imported duty-free regardless of their place of origin within Mexico, the non-border maquiladora share of exports has increased while that of border cities has decreased.[12] This has led to decentralization and rapid economic growth in Mexican states (and cities), such as Quintana Roo (Cancun), Baja California Sur (La Paz), Nuevo León (Monterrey), Querétaro, and Aguascalientes whose population grew by more than one-third from 2000 to 2015, while the whole of Mexico grew by 22.6% in this period.
While the national annual growth rate was still positive (1.0%) in the early years of the 2000s, the national net migration rate was negative (-4.75/1000 inhabitants), in the 2010s, however, the net migration rate reached 0, given the strong economy of Mexico, changes in US Immigration Policy & Enforcement, US Legislative and CFR-8 decisions, plus the (then) slowly recovering US economy, causing many of its former residents to return. Given the former strong flow of immigrants to the United States; an estimated 5.3 million undocumented Mexican immigrants lived in the United States in 2004[13] and 18.2 million American citizens in the 2000 Census declared having Mexican ancestry.[14]
The population's annual growth rate has been reduced from a 3.5% peak in 1965 to 0.99% in 2005. While Mexico is now transitioning to the third phase of demographic transition, close to 50% of the population in 2009 was 25 years old or younger.[15] Fertility rates have also decreased from 5.7 children per woman in 1976[16] to 1.9 in 2020.[17] After decades of the gap narrowing, in 2020 the fertility rate in Mexico fell below the United States for the first time falling 22% in 2020 and a further 10.5% in the first half of 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[18] The Mexican government projects[19] that the country's population will grow to about 123 million by 2042 and then start declining slowly. Assumptions underlying this projection include fertility stabilizing at 1.85 children per woman and continued high net emigration (slowly decreasing from 583,000 in 2005 to 393,000 in 2050).
Mexico is composed of 32 federal entities which include 31 states and Mexico City, the five most populous federal entities in 2020 were the State of Mexico (16.9 million), Mexico City (9.2 million), Jalisco (8.3 million), Veracruz (8.0 million) and Puebla (6.5 million), which collectively contain around 40% of the national population.[20] The Greater Mexico City metro area, which includes Mexico City and adjacent municipalities of surrounding states, is the most populous in the country and is estimated to be the second most populous in the world (after Tokyo), according to the UN Urbanization Report.
The average annual population growth rate of Mexico City was 0.2%. The state with the lowest population growth rate over the same period was Michoacán (-0.1%), whereas the states with the highest population growth rates were Quintana Roo (4.7%) and Baja California Sur (3.4%),[21] both of which are two of the least populous states and the last to be admitted to the Union in the 1970s. The average annual net migration rate of Mexico City over the same period was negative and the lowest of all political divisions of Mexico, whereas the states with the highest net migration rate were Quintana Roo (2.7), Baja California (1.8) and Baja California Sur (1.6).[22]
According to the 2012 revision of the World Population Prospects, the total population was 117,886,000 in 2010, compared to only 28,296,000 in 1950. The proportion of children below the age of 15 in 2010 was 30%, 64% of the population was between 15 and 65 years of age, and 6% was 65 years or older.[23]
Population by Sex and Age Group (Census 12.VI.2010; including an estimation of 1 334 585 people corresponding to 448 195 housing units without information of the occupants):[24]
Population by Sex and Age Group (Census 15.III.2020) (Including an estimation of 6 337 751 persons corresponding to 1 588 422 housing units without information of the occupants.):[25]
Source: Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía e Informática (INEGI)[26][27]
The following estimates were prepared by the Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía e Informatica:
Life expectancy in Mexico from 1893 to 1950. Source: Our World In Data
The Population Department of the United Nations prepared the following estimates.[23]
Aside from the original Spanish colonists, many Europeans immigrated to Mexico in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Non-Spanish immigrant groups included British, Irish, Italian, German, French and Dutch.[35] Large numbers of Middle Eastern immigrants arrived in Mexico during the same period, mostly from Syria and Lebanon.[36] Asian immigrants, mostly Chinese, some via the United States, settled in northern Mexico, whereas Koreans settled in central Mexico.[37] The PRI governments, in power for most of the 20th century, had a policy of granting asylum to fellow Latin Americans fleeing political persecution in their home countries. This led to the arrival of immigrants, mainly political refugees from Argentina, Chile, Cuba, Peru, Colombia and Central America during the 1970s and 1980s.
A second wave of immigrants has come to Mexico as a result of the economic crises experienced by some countries in the region. The Argentine community is quite significant estimated to be somewhere between 11,000 and 30,000.[38][39] Due to the 2008 Financial Crisis and the resulting economic decline and high unemployment in Spain, many Spaniards have been emigrating to Mexico to seek new opportunities.[40] For example, during the last quarter of 2012, a number of 7,630 work permits were granted to Spaniards.[41] In recent time, the country has also received increasing numbers of refugees and migrants from the Caribbean and Central America.[42]
Mexico is also the country where the largest number of American citizens live abroad, with Mexico City playing host to the largest number of American citizens abroad in the world. The American Citizens Abroad Association estimated in 1999 that a little more than one million Americans live in Mexico (which represent 1% of the population in Mexico and 25% of all American citizens living abroad).[43] This immigration phenomenon could well be explained by the interaction of both countries under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), but also by the fact that Mexico has become a popular destination for retirees, especially the small towns: just in the State of Guanajuato, in San Miguel de Allende and its surroundings, 10,000 Americans have their residence.[44]
Discrepancies between the figures of official legal immigrants and all foreign-born residents is quite large. The official figure for foreign-born residents in Mexico in 2020 was 1,212,252,[17] with the majority being born in the United States, who also are the most common immigrant group across the country's states with the exception of the state of Chiapas, where the majority of immigrants are from Central America.[45] The six states with the most immigrants are Baja California (12.1% of total immigrants), Mexico City (11.4%), Jalisco (9.9%), Chihuahua (9%) and Tamaulipas (7.3%).[45]
The national net migration rate of Mexico is negative, estimated at -1.8 migrants per 1,000 population as of 2017[update].[47]The great majority of Mexican emigrants have moved to the United States of America, this migration phenomenon has been a defining feature in the relationship of both countries for most of the 20th century.[48] During World Wars I and II, the United States government approved the recruitment of Mexican workers in their territory, and tolerated unauthorized migration to obtain additional farm- and industrial-workers to fill the necessary spots vacated by the population in war, and to supply the increase in the demand for labor. Nonetheless, the United States unilaterally ended the wartime programs – in part as a result of arguments from labor and from civil-rights groups.[49] In spite of that, emigration of Mexicans continued at varying rates, growing significantly during the 1990s and the first years of the 2000s. In fact, it has been estimated that 37% of all Mexican immigrants to the United States in the 20th century arrived during the 1990s.[48] In the year 2000 approximately 20 million American residents identified themselves as either Mexican, Mexican-Americans or of Mexican origin, making "Mexican" the sixth-most cited ancestry of all US residents.[50]
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In the year 2000 the INEGI estimated that about eight million Mexican-born people, which then was equivalent to 8.7% of the population of Mexico itself, lived in the United States of America[51] and according to the Pew Hispanic Center in 2006, an estimated ten percent of all Mexican citizens lived in the United States.[52] For the 2015-2020 period the states who sent the highest percentages of migrants to the United States were Guanajuato (7.8%), Jalisco (7.5%), Michoacán (6.3%) y el Estado de México (5.4%), with the total number of migrants being 803 thousand people,[17] the great majority being men[53] and approximately 30% of them coming from rural communities.[54][55] For the same period, it was reported that 178 thousand migrants returned to Mexico.[17]
The population of Mexican immigrants residing illegally in the United States fell from around seven million in 2007 to about 6.1 million in 2011.[56] This trajectory has been linked to the economic downturn which started in 2008 and which reduced available jobs, and to the introduction of stricter immigration laws in many States.[57][58][59][60] According to the Pew Hispanic Center the total number of Mexican-born people had stagnated in 2010 and then began to fall.[61] After the Mexican-American community, Mexican Canadians are the second-largest group of emigrant Mexicans, with a population of over 50,000.[62] A significant but unknown number of mestizos of Mexican descent migrated to the Philippines during the era of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, when the Philippines was a territory under the rule of Mexico city.[63] Mexicans live throughout Latin America as well as in Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Arab Emirates.
In 2010, Mexico had more than 189,432 localidades (lit. "localities" or "settlements"), which are census-designated places defined as a small town, a large city, or simply as a single unit housing in a rural area whether situated remotely or close to an urban area.[86] Localities with more than 2,500 inhabitants are considered urban settlements whereas thos with less than 2500 inhabitants are considered rural settlements. In 2010 there were 3,021 cities with a population between 2,500 and 15,000 inhabitants, 413 with a population between 15,000 and 50,000 inhabitants, 86 with a population between 50,000 and 100,000, 95 with a population between 100,000 and 500,000, 25 with a population between 500,000 and one million and 11 with a population of more than one million. Urban areas contain 76.81% of Mexico's total population and rural settlements contain 23% of the population.[87]
Municipalities (municipios in Spanish) and boroughs (delegaciones in Spanish) are incorporated places in Mexico, that is, second or third-level political divisions with internal autonomy, legally prescribed limits, powers and functions. In terms of second-level political divisions there are 2,477 municipalities, including 16 semi-autonomous boroughs all within Mexico city.[88] A municipality can be constituted by one or more cities one of which is the cabecera municipal (municipal seat). Cities are usually contained within the limits of a single municipality, with a few exceptions in which small areas of one city may extend to other adjacent municipalities without incorporating the city which serves as the municipal seat of the adjacent municipality. Some municipalities or cities within municipalities are further divided into delegaciones or boroughs. However, unlike the boroughs of the Federal District, these are third-level administrative divisions; they have very limited autonomy and no elective representatives.
Municipalities in central Mexico are usually very small in area and thus coextensive with cities (as is the case of Guadalajara, Puebla and León), whereas municipalities in northern and southeastern Mexico are much larger and usually contain more than one city or town that may not necessarily conform a single urban agglomeration (as is the case of Tijuana).
A metropolitan area in Mexico is defined as a group of municipalities that heavily interact with each other, usually around a core city.[89] In 2004, a joint effort between CONAPO, INEGI and the Ministry of Social Development (SEDESOL) agreed to define metropolitan areas as either:[89]
In 2020 there were 48 metropolitan areas in Mexico, in which close to 53% of the country's population lives.[90] The most populous metropolitan area in Mexico is the Metropolitan Area of the Valley of Mexico, or Greater Mexico City, which in 2020 had a population of 21.8 million, or around 18% of the nation's population. The next four largest metropolitan areas in Mexico are Greater Monterrey (5.3 million), Greater Guadalajara (5.2 million), Greater Puebla (3.2 million) and Greater Toluca (2.3 million),[85] whose added population, along with Greater Mexico City, is equivalent to nearly 30% of the nation's population. Greater Mexico City was the fastest growing metropolitan area in the country since the 1930s until the late 1980s. Since then, the country has slowly become economically and demographically less centralized. From 2000 to 2005 the average annual growth rate of Greater Mexico City was the lowest of the five largest metropolitan areas, whereas the fastest growing metropolitan area was Puebla (2.0%) followed by Monterrey (1.9%), Toluca (1.8%) and Guadalajara (1.8%).[91]
Demographic statistics according to the 2022 World Population Review.[94]
Demographic statistics according to the CIA World Factbook, unless otherwise indicated.[95]
Note: a new coronavirus is causing sustained community spread of respiratory illness (COVID-19) in Mexico; sustained community spread means that people have been infected with the virus, but how or where they became infected is not known, and the spread is ongoing; illness with this virus has ranged from mild to severe with fatalities reported; as of June 6, 2022, Mexico has reported a total of 5,782,405 cases of COVID-19 or 4,484.8 cumulative cases of COVID-19 per 100,000 population with a total of 324,966 cumulative deaths or a rate of 252 cumulative deaths per 100,000 population; as of May 20, 2022, 66.68% of the population has received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine.
definition: age 15 and over can read and write (2016 est.)
Mexico is ethnically diverse. The second article of the Mexican Constitution defines the country to be a pluricultural state originally based on its indigenous peoples.
Regardless of ethnicity, the majority of Mexicans are united under the same national identity.[96] This is the product of an ideology strongly promoted by Mexican academics such as Manuel Gamio and José Vasconcelos known as mestizaje, whose goal was that of Mexico becoming a racially and culturally homogeneous country.[97][96][98] The ideology's influence was reflected in Mexico's national censuses of 1921 and 1930: in the former, which was Mexico's first-ever national census (but second-ever if the census made in colonial times is taken into account)[99] that considered race, approximately 60% of Mexico's population identified as Mestizos,[100] and in the latter, Mexico's government declared that all Mexicans were now Mestizos, for which racial classifications would be dropped in favor of language-based ones in future censuses.[101]
During most of the 20th century these censuses' results were taken as fact, with extraofficial international publications often using them as a reference to estimate Mexico's racial composition,[102][103] but in recent time historians and academics have claimed that said results are not accurate, as in its efforts to homogenize Mexico, the government inflated the Mestizo label's percentage by classifying a good number of people as such regardless of whether they were of actual mixed ancestry or not,[104][105][106][107] pointing out that an alteration so drastic of population trends compared to earlier censuses such as New Spain's 1793 census (on which Europeans were estimated to be 18% to 22% of the population, Mestizos 21% to 25%, and Indigenous peoples 51% to 61%)[99] is not possible.[108][109]
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 [mestiˈsaxe]. Mexican politicians and reformers such as José Vasconcelos and Manuel Gamio were instrumental in building a Mexican national identity upon this concept, [110][111] 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.[112]
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.[113] 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.[114] 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.[115][116][117]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[107] whereas in the state of Chiapas the word "Ladino" is used instead of "mestizo".[118]
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[119] while a culture-based criteria estimates a percentage as high as 90%.[101] 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,[120] recent research based on self-identification indeed has observed that many Mexicans do not identify as mestizos[121] and would not agree to be labeled as such,[122] with "static" racial labels such as White, Indian, Black etc. being more commonly used.[123]
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.[124][125]
Other historians, however, point that Aguirre-Beltran's numbers tend to have inconsistencies and take too much 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),[126][105] often omitting data of New Spain's northern and western provinces.[127] His self-made classifications thus, although could be plausible, are not useful for precise statistical analysis.[128]
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 couldn't 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),[105] 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.[129][126][105] 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.[130]
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.[131] 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[132] in the 19th century and those who immigrated from Guatemala in the 1980s.[133] The category of "indígena" (indigenous) in Mexico has been defined based on different criteria throughout 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 people that speak an Indigenous language. Based on this criterion, approximately 6.1% of the population is Indigenous.[134][135] Nonetheless, activists for the rights of indigenous peoples have referred to the usage of this criterion for census purposes as "statistical genocide."[136][137]
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-identify as Indigenous. According to these criteria, 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), state that there are 15.7 million indigenous people in Mexico of many different ethnic groups,[138] which constitute 14.9% of the population in the country,[139] with 1.2% not speaking Spanish.[140][141] The states with the greatest percentage of people who speak an Amerindian language or identify as Amerindian are Yucatán (59%), Oaxaca (48%), Quintana Roo (39%), Chiapas (28%), Campeche (27%), Hidalgo (24%), Puebla (19%), Guerrero (17%), San Luis Potosí (15%) and Veracruz (15%). Oaxaca is the state with the greatest number of distinct indigenous peoples and languages in the country.
The latest intercensal survey carried out by the Mexican government in 2015 reports that 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.[142] Finally, according to the 2020 national Mexican census, 19.4% of the population self-identified as Indigenous[17] and 11.8 million people, or 9.36% of the Mexican population lived in what is designated as "Indigenous households" (households where someone spoke an indigenous language).[143]
White Mexicans are Mexican citizens of full or majority European descent.[145] Spaniards and other Europeans began arriving in Mexico during the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire and continued immigrating to the country during colonial and independent Mexico. 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 the Mexican Revolution.[146] However, according to church registers from the colonial times, the majority (73%) 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[147][148] as there were menial workers and people in poverty who were of complete Spanish origin.[149] This ethnic group contrasts with the Afro-Mexican and Indigenous Mexican groups in the fact that phenotype (hair color, skin color etc.) is often used as the main criterion to delineate it.[150][151][145]
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Estimates of Mexico's white population differ greatly in both, methodology and percentages given, extra-official sources such as The World Factbook or Latinobarómetro which use the 1921 census results as the base of their estimations calculate this population as only 10%[152][153] (the results of the 1921 census, however, have been contested by various historians and deemed inaccurate)[154] Encyclopædia Britannica does not give an exact percentage, albeit estimate it at around 30% of the population.[119] 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%.[155] 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%).[156]
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 of 18% and 28% respectively,[93] 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 report percentages that range from 27%[157] to 47%[158][159][160][161]
A study performed in hospitals of Mexico City suggests that socioeconomic factors influence the frequency of Mongolian spots among newborns, as evidenced by the higher prevalence of 85% in newborns from a public institution, typically associated with lower socioeconomic status, compared to a 33% prevalence in newborns from private hospitals, which generally cater to families with higher socioeconomic status.[162] The Mongolian spot appears with a very high frequency (85–95%) in Asian, Native American, and African children.[163] The skin lesion reportedly almost always appears on South American[164] and Mexican children who are racially Mestizos,[165] while having a very low frequency (5–10%) in Caucasian children.[166] According to the Mexican Social Security Institute (shortened as IMSS) nationwide, around half of Mexican babies have the Mongolian spot.[167]
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.[168] In the north and west of Mexico the indigenous tribes were substantially smaller and unlike those found in central and southern Mexico they were mostly nomadic, therefore remaining isolated from colonial population centers, with hostilities between them and Mexican colonists often taking place.[169] This eventually led the northeast region of the country to become the region with the highest proportion of whites during the Spanish colonial period albeit recent migration waves have been changing its demographic trends.[42]
While the majority of European immigration to Mexico has been Spanish with the first wave starting with the colonization of America and the last one being a consequence of the Spanish Civil War of 1937,[170] immigrants from other European countries have arrived to Mexico as well. During the Second Mexican Empire, the immigration was mostly French. Then, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, spurred by government policies of Porfirio Díaz, migrants came mainly from Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom,and ireland, taking advantage of the liberal policies then valid in Mexico, and went into merchant, industrial and educational ventures while others arrived with no or limited capital, as employees or farmers.[171] 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.[35][172] Additionally, small numbers of White Americans, Croats, Greeks, Poles, Romanians, Russians, and Ashkenazi Jews came.[172] The European Jewish immigrants joined the Sephardic community that lived in Mexico since colonial times, though many lived as Crypto-Jews, mostly in the northern states of Nuevo León and Tamaulipas.[173] Some communities of European immigrants have remained isolated from the rest of the general population since their arrival, among them the German-speaking Mennonites from Russia of Chihuahua and Durango,[174] and the Venetos of Chipilo, Puebla, which have retained their original languages.[175]
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 individuals of African descent in Mexico has its origins in the slave trade that took place during colonial times and that did not end until 1829 after the consumation of the Mexican independence. The institution wasn't as prominent as elsewhere in the Americas and was already in decay by the late 1700s, which led to the number of free black people eventually surpassing that of enslaved ones. Historically, the presence of this ethnic group within the country has been 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 society or mixing of European and indigenous only.[177] Nowadays this ethnic group also includes people from Africa, the Caribbean and elsewhere in the Americas who have been arriving in recent migration waves to the country.[42]
The majority of Mexico's Afro-descendants are Afromestizos, i.e. "mixed-race".According to the intercensal survey carried out in 2015, 1.2% of the population self-identified as Afro-Mexican[178] with 64.9% (896,829) of them also identifying as indigenous and 9.3% being speakers of indigenous languages.[142] In the 2020 census survey carried out by the Mexican government, Afro-Mexicans were reported to make up 2.04% of the country's population.[134]
An Arab Mexican is a Mexican citizen of Arabic-speaking origin who can be of various ancestral origins. The vast majority of Mexico's 1.1 million Arabs are from either Lebanese, Syrian, Iraqi, or Palestinian background.[36] 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.[179] The fusion between Arab and Mexican food has highly influenced the Yucatecan cuisine.[180]
Arab immigration to Mexico started in the 19th and early 20th centuries.[181] Roughly 100,000 Arabic-speakers 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 León, Sinaloa, Chihuahua, Coahuila, and Durango, as well as the city of Tampico and Guadalajara. During the 1948 Israel-Lebanon war and the Six-Day War, thousands of Lebanese left Lebanon for 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.[36] Another concentration of Arab-Mexicans is in Baja California facing the U.S.-Mexican border, esp. in cities of Mexicali in the Imperial Valley U.S./Mexico, and Tijuana across from San Diego with a large Arab American community (about 280,000), some of whose families have relatives in Mexico. 45% of Arab Mexicans are of Lebanese descent.
The majority of Arab-Mexicans are Christians who belong to the Maronite Church, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Rite Catholic Churches[182] and a scant number are Muslims, The term "Arab Mexican" may include ethnic groups that do not in fact identify as Arab. The inter-ethnic marriage in the Arab community, regardless of religious affiliation, is very high; most community members have only one parent of Arab ancestry. As a result, the Arab community in Mexico shows marked language shift away from Arabic. Only a few speak any Arabic, and such knowledge is often limited to a few basic words. Instead, the majority, especially those of younger generations, speak Spanish as a first language. Today, the most common Arabic surnames in Mexico include Nader, Hayek, Ali, Haddad, Nasser, Malik, Abed, Mansoor, Harb, and Elias.
Although Asian Mexicans make up less than 1% of the total population of modern Mexico, they are nonetheless a notable minority. Due to the historical and contemporary perception in Mexican society of what constitutes Asian culture (associated with the Far East rather than the Near East), Asian Mexicans typically refers to those of East Asian descent, and may also include those of South and Southeast Asian descent. For Mexicans of West Asian descent, see the Arab Mexicans section.
Asian immigration began with the arrival of Filipinos to Mexico during the Spanish period. For two and a half centuries, between 1565 and 1815, many Filipinos and Mexicans sailed to and from Mexico and the Philippines as sailors, crews, slaves, prisoners, adventurers and soldiers in the Manila-Acapulco Galleon assisting Spain in its trade between Asia and the Americas. Also, on these voyages, thousands of Asian individuals (mostly males) were brought to Mexico as slaves and were called "Chino",[183] which means Chinese, although in reality they were of diverse origins, including Koreans, Japanese, Malays, Filipinos, Javanese, Cambodians, Timorese, and people from Bengal, India, Ceylon, Makassar, Tidore, Terenate, and China.[184][185][186] 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".
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These early individuals are not very apparent in modern Mexico for two main reasons: the widespread mestizaje of Mexico during the Spanish period and the common practice of Chino slaves to "pass" as Indios (the indigenous people of Mexico) to attain freedom. As had occurred with a large portion of Mexico's black population, over generations the Asian populace was absorbed into the general Mestizo population. Facilitating this miscegenation was the assimilation of Asians into the indigenous population. The indigenous people were legally protected from chattel slavery, and by being recognized as part of this group, Asian slaves could claim they were wrongly enslaved.
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.[187]
Romani people have settled in Mexico since the colonial era.[188] There are around 50,000 Vlax Romani in Mexico.[189]
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. Since only part of its original datasets survive, most of what is known of it comes from essays made by researchers who back in the day 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;[146] however, according to the historic archives of Mexico's National Institute of Statistics, that was not the case).[190] While the 1921 census was the last time the Mexican government conducted a census that included a comprehensive racial classification, in recent years 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.
Also known as the "Revillagigedo census" from the name of the Count who ordered that it be conducted, this census was the first nationwide population census of Mexico (then known as the Viceroyalty of New Spain). Most of its original datasets have reportedly been lost, so most of what is known about it nowadays 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 don't vary greatly, with Europeans ranging from 18% to 22% of New Spain's population, Mestizos from 21% to 25%, Indians from 51% to 61%, and Africans from 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 whites 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 whites and mestizos having higher birthrates, the reason for the indigenous population's numbers decreasing lies in their suffering higher mortality rates due to living in remote locations rather than in cities and towns founded by the Spanish colonists or in being at war with them. For the same reasons, the number of Indigenous Mexicans presents the greatest variation range between publications, as in some cases their numbers in a given location were estimated rather than counted, leading to possible overestimations in some provinces and possible underestimations in others.[191]
~Europeans are included within the Mestizo category.
Regardless of the possible inaccuracies related to the counting of Indigenous peoples living outside of the colonized areas, the effort that New Spain's authorities put into considering them as subjects is worth mentioning, as censuses made by other colonial or post-colonial countries did not consider American Indians to be citizens or subjects; for example, the censuses made by the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata would only count the inhabitants of the colonized settlements.[192] Another example is the censuses made by the United States, which did not include Indigenous peoples living among the general population until 1860, and indigenous peoples as a whole until 1900.[193]
Made right after the consummation of the Mexican revolution, the social context in which this census was conducted makes it particularly unique, as the government of the time was in the process of rebuilding the country and was looking to unite all Mexicans in 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 in cementing the mestizaje ideology (which 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 remains prominent nowadays, with extraofficial international publications such as The World Factbook and Encyclopædia Britannica using the 1921 census as a reference to estimate Mexico's racial composition up to this day.[102][119]
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 impossible and cite, among other statistics, the relatively low frequency of marriages between people of different continental ancestries in colonial and early independent Mexico.[194] It is claimed that the mestizaje process sponsored by the state was more "cultural than biological", which resulted in the numbers of the Mestizo Mexican group being inflated at the expense of the identity of other races.[195] 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):[196]
When the 1921 census' results are compared with the results of Mexico's recent censuses[142] as well as with modern genetic research,[197] there is high consistency with respect to the distribution of Indigenous Mexicans across the country, with states located in south and south-eastern Mexico having both the highest percentages of population who self-identify as Indigenous and the highest percentages of Amerindian genetic ancestry. However, this is not the case when it comes to European Mexicans, as there are instances in which states that have been shown through scientific research to have a considerably high European ancestry are reported to have very small white populations in the 1921 census, with the most extreme case being that of the state of Durango, where the aforementioned census asserts that only 0.01% of the state's population (33 persons) self-identified as "white" while modern scientific research shows that the population of Durango has similar genetic frequencies to those found on European peoples (with the state's Indigenous population showing almost no foreign admixture either).[198] Various authors theorize that the reason for these inconsistencies may lie in the Mestizo identity promoted by the Mexican government, which reportedly led to people who are not biologically Mestizos to identify themselves as such.[113][199]
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Since the end of the Mexican Revolution, the official identity promoted by the government for non-indigenous Mexicans has been the Mestizo one (a mix of European and indigenous culture and heritage).[146] Established with the original intent of eliminating divisions and creating a unified identity that would allow Mexico to modernize and integrate with the international community,[200] this policy has not been able to achieve its goal. It is speculated that this is due to the identity's own internal contradictions,[146] as it includes in the same theoretical race people who, in daily interactions, do not consider each other to be of the same race and have little in common biologically,[201] with some of them being entirely Indigenous, others entirely European, and including also Africans and Asians.[113] Today, there is no definitive census that quantifies Mexico's white population, with estimates from the Mexican government raging from 27%[157] to 47%,[202][159] with this figure being based on phenotypical traits instead of self-identification of ancestry. The lack of a clear dividing line between white and mixed race Mexicans has made the concept of race relatively fluid, with descent being more of a determining factor than biological traits.[146][200]
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.[203] 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.[120][204] Even though there is a large variation in phenotypes among Mexicans, European looks are still strongly preferred in Mexican society, with lighter skin receiving more positive attention, as it is associated with higher social class, power, money, and modernity.[200][113] In contrast, Indigenous ancestry is often associated with having an inferior social class, as well as lower levels of education.[146][205] These distinctions are strongest in Mexico City, where the most powerful of the country's elite are located.[200]
Despite Mexico's government not using racial terms related to European or white people officially for almost a century (resuming using such terms after 2010), the concepts of "white people" (known as güeros or blancos in Mexican Spanish) and of "being white" didn't disappear [206] and are still present in everyday Mexican culture: different idioms of race are used in Mexico's society that serve as mediating terms between racial groups. It is not strange to see street vendors calling a potential costumer Güero or güerito, sometimes even when the person is not light-skinned. In this instance it is used to initiate a kind of familiarity, but in cases where social/racial tensions are relatively high, it can have the opposite effect.[200] However contemporary sociologists and historians agree that, given that the concept of "race" has a psychological foundation rather than a biological one and to society's eyes a Mestizo with a high percentage of European ancestry is considered "white" and a Mestizo with a high percentage of Indigenous ancestry is considered "Indian," a person who identifies with a given ethnic group should be allowed to, even if biologically doesn't completely belong to that group.[201]
Languages in Mexico (by percentage):[1]
Spanish is the de facto official language in Mexico, being spoken by 98.3% of the population.[207] Mexican Spanish is spoken in a variety of dialects, accents and variations in different regions across the country. Some indigenous languages are still being spoken by around 5% of Mexicans according to the latest census, in 2003 the General Law of Linguistic Rights of the Indigenous Peoples recognized 68 indigenous languages as "national languages", with the "same validity" in all territories and contexts where they are spoken. The indigenous language with the greatest number of speakers is Nahuatl (1,586,884 speakers in 2010 or 1.5% of the nation's population), followed by Yucatec Maya (796,405 speakers in 2010 0.8%) spoken Yucatán Peninsula, Mixtecas languages (494,454), Tzeltal (474,298), Zapotecas languages (460,683), Tzotzil (429,168), Otomí (288,052), Totonaca (250,252) Mazateco (230,124), Chol (222,051) and 1,462,857 speakers of other languages. After half a century of rural-to-urban migration, in Mexico City and other major cities large districts and sections use both written and spoken Amerindian languages. Approximately 7,364,645 Mexicans (6.1% of the population) speak an indigenous language according to the 2020 Mexican Census.[208]
During the first half of the 20th century the government promoted a policy of castellanización, that is, promoting the use of Spanish as a way to integrate indigenous peoples into Mexican society. Later, this policy changed, and since the 1980s the government has sponsored bilingual and intercultural education in all indigenous communities. This policy has mainly been successful in large communities with a significant number of speakers. While some languages, with less than 1,000 speakers, are still facing extinction.
The second most spoken language in Mexico, however, is English. It is used extensively at border areas, tourist centers and large metropolitan areas, a phenomenon arguably caused by the economic integration of North American under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the immigration phenomenon and the return of workers and their families from the United States.[209] In border cities, American TV and radio waves in English (and Spanish) are received as much Spanish-speaking radio and TV stations from Mexico on the US side of the border, thus a bilingual cross-cultural exchange is at work. Among the languages brought to the country by immigrants are the Venetian of Chipilo, and Mennonite Low German spoken in Durango and Chihuahua.
The Constitution of Mexico grants Mexican nationality based on birth and naturalization. Mexican laws regarding nationality by birth are very open. Mexican nationality by birth is granted to:[210]
Mexican nationality by naturalization is granted to:[210]
Religion in Mexico (by percentage):[1]
The Mexican population is predominantly Catholic (78% of the population aged five and older, according to the 2020 census),[211] although the percentage representing those who attend church on a weekly basis is lower (46%).[212] About 7.6% of the population was classified as Protestant or Evangelical, 2.5% were classified as "Non-Evangelical Biblical" (a classification that groups Adventists, Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses), 0.05% as practicing Jews, and 4.6% without a religion.[213] The largest group of Protestants are Pentecostals and Charismatics (classified as Neo-Pentecostals).
The states with the highest percentage of professing Catholics are central states, namely Guanajuato (96.4%), Aguascalientes (95.6%) and Jalisco (95.4%), whereas southeastern states have the lowest percentage of Catholics, namely Chiapas (63.8%), Tabasco (70.4%) and Campeche (71.3%).[213] The percentage of professing Catholics has been on the decrease over the last four decades, from over 98% in 1950 to 78% in 2020.[211]
The average annual growth of Catholic believers from 1990 to 2000 was 1.7% whereas that of non-Catholics was 3.7%.[214] Given that the average annual population increase over the same time period was 1.8%,[215] the percentage of Catholics in relation to the total population continues to be in overall decline.
Since 1857 with the La Reforma laws, the Mexican Constitution drastically separates Church and State, unlike some other countries in Latin America or Ibero-America. The State does not support or provide any economic resource to the Church (as is the case in Spain and Argentina),[216] and the Church cannot participate in public education (no public school can be operated by a Catholic order, although they can participate in private education). Moreover, the government nationalized all the Church's properties (some of which were given back in the 1990s), and priests lost the right to vote or to be voted for (although in the 1990s they regained the right to vote).
The United States unilaterally ended both war-time bracero programs, in part because US labor and civil rights groups argued that the presence of Mexican migrants depressed wages and increased unemployment for similar US workers.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)mestizo (Amerindian-Spanish) 60%, Amerindian or predominantly Amerindian 30%, white 9%, other 1%
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.
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.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)mestizo (Amerindian-Spanish) 62%, predominantly Amerindian 21%, Amerindian 7%, other 10% (mostly European)
2020-Census was invoked but never defined (see the help page).