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{{Short description|Ethnic group(s)}}{{Use American English|date = March 2019}}{{Use mdy dates|date=April 2024}}{{lead too long|date=April 2024}}

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, INEGI, June 16, 2017, Retrieved on April 30, 2018.Ethnic composition (2010): Approximately two fifthsMEXICO: ETHNIC GROUPS ENCYCLOPEDIA=ENCYCLOPæDIA BRITANNICA TRANS-TITLE=MARCH 21: INTERNATIONAL DAY FOR THE ELIMINATION OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION PUBLISHER=NATIONAL COUNCIL TO PREVENT DISCRIMINATION>LOCATION=MEXICODATE=2017ARCHIVE-DATE=MAY 25, 2017URL-STATUS=LIVE, In the page 7 of the press release, the council reported that 53.5% of Mexican women and 39.4% of Mexican men identified with the lightest skin colors used in the census questionary, CONAPRED, Mexico, March 21. Retrieved on April 28, 2017.HTTP://WWW.CONAPRED.ORG.MX/USERFILES/FILES/ENADIS-2010-RG-ACCSS-002.PDF >TITLE=ENCUESTA NACIONAL SOBRE DISCRIMINACIóN EN MEXICO 2010LANGUAGE=ES LOCATION=MEXICO ACCESS-DATE=AUGUST 24, 2017ARCHIVE-DATE=NOVEMBER 8, 2012United States 16,794,111ENNIS LAST2=RIOS-VARGAS LAST3= ALBERT DATE=MAY 2011 TITLE=2010 CENSUS ARCHIVE-DATE=JANUARY 27, 2018 PAGE=14 (TABLE 6), July 11, 2011, Sonora, Sinaloa, Baja California Sur, Baja California, Durango, Jalisco, Zacatecas, Coahuila, Chihuahua (state)>Chihuahua, Nuevo León, Mexico CityVenetian language>Venetian (Chipilo Venetian dialect), Plautdietsch language>PlautdietschHTTP://IMBEUROPE.ORG/EMBRACEPDF/PROFILES/PLAUTDIETSCH.PDF>TITLE=PLAUTDIETSCH IN MEXICOACCESS-DATE=JANUARY 13, 2016ARCHIVE-URL=HTTPS://WEB.ARCHIVE.ORG/WEB/20141006102957/HTTP://IMBEUROPE.ORG/EMBRACEPDF/PROFILES/PLAUTDIETSCH.PDF, October 6, 2014, | religions = Christianity (predominantly Roman Catholicism, minority Protestantism), Judaism, MormonismWhite Latin Americans · Spaniards · Italians · French people>French · GermansIncludes Poles: Wojciech Tyciński, Krzysztof Sawicki, Departament Współpracy z Polonią MSZ (Warsaw, 2009). "Raport o sytuacji Polonii i Polaków za granicą (The official report on the situation of Poles and Polonia abroad)" (PDF file, direct download 1.44 MB). Ministerstwo Spraw Zagranicznych (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland), pp. 1–466. Retrieved June 14, 2013 (Internet Archive). · Mestizos| footnotes = }}White Mexicans () are individuals in Mexico who identify as white, often due to their physical appearance or their recognition of European ancestry.{{Failed verification|date=April 2024}} The Mexican government conducts ethnic censuses that allow individuals to identify as "White,""Resultados del Modulo de Movilidad Social Intergeneracional" {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180709120023weblink |date=July 9, 2018 }}, INEGI, June 16, 2017, Retrieved on April 30, 2018. but the specific results of these censuses are not made public. Instead, the government releases data on the percentage of "light-skinned Mexicans" in the country, with 12.5% of Mexican people surveyed choosing the three lightest shades in 2017."Visión INEGI 2021 Dr. Julio Santaella Castell" {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190121234012weblink |date=January 21, 2019 }}, INEGI, July 3, 2017, Retrieved on April 30, 2018. Using the same skin tone categories, a 2022 survey found that 10.2% chose the three lightest shades.WEB, Encuesta Nacional sobre Discriminación (ENADIS) 2022,weblink April 2, 2024, www.inegi.org.mx, es, The term "Light-skinned Mexican" is preferred by both the government and media to describe individuals in Mexico who possess European physical traits when discussing ethno-racial dynamics."Documento Informativo Sobre Discriminación Racial En México" {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170525133620weblink |date=May 25, 2017 }}, CONAPRED, Mexico, March 21, 2011, retrieved on April 28, 2017. However, "White Mexican" is still used at times."Por estas razones el color de piel determina las oportunidades de los mexicanos" {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180622011146weblink |date=June 22, 2018 }}, Huffington post, July 26, 2017, Retrieved on April 30, 2018."Ser Blanco" {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180619075811weblink |date=June 19, 2018 }}, El Universal, July 6, 2017, Retrieved on June 19, 2018."Comprobado con datos: en México te va mejor si eres blanco" {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181105202809weblink |date=November 5, 2018 }}, forbes, August 7, 2018, Retrieved on November 4, 2018."¿Seras racista? Causa polémica su nueva campaña de publicidad" {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200721213516weblink |date=July 21, 2020 }}, Economiahoy.mx, March 5, 2020, Retrieved on July 21, 2020."Critican series mexicanas de Netflix por sólo tener personajes blancos" {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210419222723weblink |date=April 19, 2021 }}, Tomatazos.com, 23 mayo 2020, consultado el 19 de diciembre de 2020."Resultados de vida y color de piel en México", Biblioteca del senado de México, July 3, 2017, Retrieved on December 30, 2018.Estimates of Mexico's white population vary significantly due to different methodologies and percentages. Unofficial sources such as the World Factbook, which base their estimates on the 1921 census results, suggest a white population of just 10% WEB,weblink The World Factbook: North America: Mexico: People and Society, The World Factbook, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), other 10% (mostly European), August 23, 2017, January 26, 2021,weblink live, However, the accuracy of the 1921 census results has been contested by historians and are considered inaccurate,BOOK, Federico Navarrete, Mexico Racista,weblink February 23, 2018, 2016, Penguin Random house Grupo Editorial Mexico, 9786073143646, 86, with independent research in 2008 also suggesting that Mexicans may not identify in the way the 1921 census indicate.R. Martínez & C. De La Torre (2008): "Racial Appearance And Income In Contemporary Mexico, pag 9 note 1" {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210806021728weblink |date=August 6, 2021 }}, Journal of Diversity Management, 2008, Retrieved April 1, 2021. Other sources such as Encyclopædia Britannica do not give an exact percentage, albeit estimate it at around 30% of the population.Surveys considering phenotypical traits and field research yield higher percentages of white Mexicans. For instance, one study using blond hair as a reference found that 23% of the Metropolitan Autonomous University of Mexico population could be classified as white.JOURNAL, Ortiz-Hernández, Luis, Compeán-Dardón, Sandra, Verde-Flota, Elizabeth, Flores-Martínez, Maricela Nanet, Racism and mental health among university students in Mexico City, Salud Pública de México, April 2011, 53, 2, 125–133, 10.1590/s0036-36342011000200005, 21537803, free, The American Sociological Association obtained a nationwide percentage of 18.8% using a similar method.JOURNAL, Villarreal, Andrés, Stratification by Skin Color in Contemporary Mexico, American Sociological Review, 2010, 75, 5, 652–678, 10.1177/0003122410378232, 20799484, 145295212, Another study conducted by the University College London in collaboration with National Institute of Anthropology and History found that 18% of Mexicans had blond hair, and 28% had light eyes."Admixture in Latin America: Geographic Structure, Phenotypic Diversity and Self-Perception of Ancestry Based on 7,342 Individuals" table 1 {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170525170929weblink |date=May 25, 2017 }}, Plosgenetics, September 25, 2014. Retrieved on May 9, 2017. Nationwide surveys from the National Council to Prevent Discrimination using skin color as a reference report percentages of 53.5% of the women and 39.4% of the men choosing the 3 lightest shades. The presence of Europeans in Mexico dates back to the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, and during the colonial period, most European immigration was Spanish. However, in the 19th and 20th centuries, significant waves of European and European-derived populations from North and South America immigrated to Mexico. This intermixing between European immigrants and Indigenous peoples resulted in the emergence of the Mestizo group, which became the majority of Mexico's population by the time of the Mexican Revolution.WEB,weblinkweblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20130823015618weblink">weblink August 23, 2013, dead, El mestizaje y las culturas, Federico, Navarrete, México Multicultural, UNAM, es, Mixed race and cultures, July 19, 2011, Some scholars challenge this narrative, citing church and census records that indicate interracial unions in Mexico were rare among all groups.{{harvnb|Federico Navarrete|2016|pp=109–110|ps=: "To make matters worse, the few Germans, Italians and other Europeans who did reach our shores also did not mix in large numbers with the Mexican population, and even less so with the indigenous people, whom they were supposed to make disappear with the superior powers of Mexico: its race. In fact, they founded regional enclaves where they married preferentially among themselves, as the Creoles and the indigenous had traditionally done. The historian Moisés González Navarro studied the population censuses of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which allow us to know more accurately the behavior of the population than in previous periods. Contrary to what the mestizaje legend would have us believe, he found that informal marriages and unions between white men and indigenous women, or any other combination, hardly existed.2"}}JOURNAL, San Miguel, G., Ser mestizo en la nueva España a fines del siglo XVIII: Acatzingo, 1792, To be 'mestizo' in New Spain at the end of the XVIII th century. Acatzingo, 1792, es, Cuadernos de la Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales. Universidad Nacional de Jujuy, November 2000, 13, 325–342,weblink July 1, 2017, October 23, 2020,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20201023172608weblink">weblink live, These records also dispute other academic narratives, such as the idea that European immigrants were predominantly male or that "pure Spanish" individuals formed a small elite. In fact, Spaniards were often the most numerous ethnic group in colonial citiesBOOK, Sherburne Friend Cook, Woodrow Borah, Ensayos sobre historia de la población. México y el Caribe 2,weblink September 12, 2017, 1998, Siglo XXI, 9789682301063, 223, "Household Mobility and Persistence in Guadalajara, Mexico: 1811–1842, page 62" {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181210110946weblink |date=December 10, 2018 }}, fsu org, December 8, 2016. Retrieved on December 9, 2018. and there were menial workers and people in poverty who were of full Spanish origin. There were also impoverished individuals of full Spanish origin.In addition to White Mexicans and Indigenous populations, there is a group known as Mestizos who have varying degrees of European and Indigenous ancestry, with some having European genetic ancestry exceeding 90%.JOURNAL, Wang, Sijia, Ray, Nicolas, Rojas, Winston, Parra, Maria V., Bedoya, Gabriel, Gallo, Carla, Poletti, Giovanni, Mazzotti, Guido, Hill, Kim, Hurtado, Ana M., Camrena, Beatriz, Nicolini, Humberto, Klitz, William, Barrantes, Ramiro, Molina, Julio A., Freimer, Nelson B., Bortolini, Maria Cátira, Salzano, Francisco M., Petzl-Erler, Maria L., Tsuneto, Luiza T., Dipierri, José E., Alfaro, Emma L., Bailliet, Graciela, Bianchi, Nestor O., Llop, Elena, Rothhammer, Francisco, Excoffier, Laurent, Ruiz-Linares, Andrés, 4, Geographic Patterns of Genome Admixture in Latin American Mestizos, PLOS Genetics, March 21, 2008, 4, 3, e1000037, 10.1371/journal.pgen.1000037, 18369456, 2265669, free, While genetic evidence suggests that most European immigrants to Mexico were male, and that the modern population of Mexico was primarily formed through the mixing of Spanish males and Native American females,JOURNAL, Bonilla, C., Parra, E. J., Pfaff, C. L., Dios, S., Marshall, J. A., Hamman, R. F., Ferrell, R. E., Hoggart, C. L., McKeigue, P. M., Shriver, M. D., Admixture in the Hispanics of the San Luis Valley, Colorado, and its implications for complex trait gene mapping, Annals of Human Genetics, March 2004, 68, Pt 2, 139–153, 10.1046/j.1529-8817.2003.00084.x, 15008793, 2027.42/65937, 13702953,weblink 0003-4800, October 3, 2022, October 3, 2022,weblink live, free, "Both studies have revealed a pattern of directional mating in this population, an asymmetric interaction between Spanish males and Native American females, much like in other Hispanic populations of Latin America (Green et al. 2000; Carvajal-Carmona et al. 2000, 2003; Rodriguez-Delfin et al. 2001). During the conquest and colonization of America the immigration of women from the Iberian Peninsula was significantly lower than that of men, so European males frequently took native women as wives or partners (Morner, 1967). After the initial directional contact between European and Native American populations it seems likely that the admixed group became mostly endogamic, which would explain the high levels of Native American mtDNA (Merriwether et al. 1997)."BOOK, Wheelwright, Jeff, The Wandering Gene and the Indian Princess: Race, Religion, and DNA, January 16, 2012, W. W. Norton & Company, 978-0-393-08342-2, 96,weblink en, "The Hispanos generally resemble other Hispanic and Mexican-American groups while having a somewhat higher proportion of European blood than the rest. Genetics research has also confirmed the harshly one-sided nature of the admixture. By paying special attention to the Y-chromosome and the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), scientists proved that the genetic exchange in the early years of New Mexico was almost entirely between Spanish males and Indian females." [...] "The Y chromosome of Hispano men is hardly Native American at all, while their mtDNA is about 85 percent Indian. Again, the former represents fatherhood, the latter motherhood. The skew between the two means that mating happened in one direction. It means that Indian men and Spanish women were largely on the sidelines when the admixture between Spanish men and Indian women occurred."BOOK, Suarez-Kurtz, Dr G., Pharmacogenomics in Admixed Populations, August 3, 2007, CRC Press, 978-1-4987-1379-5, 39,weblink en, "In Mexico, approximately 90% of the maternal lineages are of Native American ancestry, implying that there has been very little European female contribution throughout colonial and post-colonial history."JOURNAL, Kumar, Satish, Bellis, Claire, Zlojutro, Mark, Melton, Phillip E., Blangero, John, Curran, Joanne E., Large scale mitochondrial sequencing in Mexican Americans suggests a reappraisal of Native American origins, BMC Evolutionary Biology, October 7, 2011, 11, 1, 293, 10.1186/1471-2148-11-293, 21978175, 3217880, 1471-2148, free, 2011BMCEE..11..293K, "Thus the observed frequency of Native American mtDNA in Mexican/Mexican Americans is higher than was expected on the basis of autosomal estimates of Native American admixture for these populations i.e. ~ 30-46% [53, 55]. The difference is indicative of directional mating involving preferentially immigrant men and Native American women. This type of genetic asymmetry has been observed in other populations, including Brazilian individuals of African ancestry, as the analysis of sex specific and autosomal markers has revealed evidence for substantial European admixture that was mediated mostly through men [56]." how pronounced said gender asymmetry was varies considerably depending on the study. The Native American maternal contribution figures range from 90% to 59%,Campos-Sanchez et al. (2006): "Genetic structure analysis of three Hispanic populations from Costa Rica, Mexico, and the southwestern United States using Y-chromosome STR markers and mtDNA sequences" {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221004202217weblink |date=October 4, 2022 }}, Pubmed, 2006, Retrieved October 4, 2022. while research on the X chromosome shows less variation, with the reported Native American female contribution oscillating between 50% and 54%.JOURNAL, Price, Alkes L., Patterson, Nick, Yu, Fuli, Cox, David R., Waliszewska, Alicja, McDonald, Gavin J., Tandon, Arti, Schirmer, Christine, Neubauer, Julie, Bedoya, Gabriel, Duque, Constanza, Villegas, Alberto, Bortolini, Maria Catira, Salzano, Francisco M., Gallo, Carla, Mazzotti, Guido, Tello-Ruiz, Marcela, Riba, Laura, Aguilar-Salinas, Carlos A., Canizales-Quinteros, Samuel, Menjivar, Marta, Klitz, William, Henderson, Brian, Haiman, Christopher A., Winkler, Cheryl, Tusie-Luna, Teresa, Ruiz-Linares, Andrés, Reich, David, 4, A Genomewide Admixture Map for Latino Populations, The American Journal of Human Genetics, June 2007, 80, 6, 1024–1036, 10.1086/518313, 17503322, 1867092, "Results are reported in table 2 and indicate higher total Native American ancestry for LA Latinos and Mexicans (45% and 44%, respectively) than for Brazilians and Colombians (18% and 19%, respectively), which is in line with previous studies.21,22 We also observed uniformly higher Native American ancestry on the X chromosome (57% for LA Latinos, 54% for Mexicans, 33% for Brazilians, and 27% for Colombians), which is consistent with evidence of predominantly European patrilineal and Native American matrilineal ancestry in Latino populations.22" The criteria for defining what constitutes a Mestizo varies from study to study, as in Mexico a large number of European-descended people have been historically classified as Mestizos. After the Mexican Revolution the Mexican government began defining ethnicity on cultural standards (mainly the language spoken) rather than racial ones.JOURNAL, Lizcano Fernández, Francisco, Composición Étnica de las Tres Áreas Culturales del Continente Americano al Comienzo del Siglo XXI, Ethnic Composition of the Three Cultural Areas of the American Continent at the Beginning of the XXI Century, es, Convergencia, August 2005, 12, 38, 185–232,weblink November 18, 2020, September 22, 2022,weblink live,

History

Establishment of Europeans in Mexico

File:Retrato de familia Fagoga Arozqueta - Anónimo ca.1730.jpg|thumb|right|Portrait of the family Fagoga Arozqueta. An upper class colonial Mexican family of Spanish ancestry (referred to as Criollos) in Mexico City, New SpainNew SpainThe presence of Europeans in what is nowadays known as Mexico dates back to the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire in the early 16th centuryJOURNAL, Fortes de Leff, Jacqueline, Racism in Mexico: Cultural Roots and Clinical Interventions1, Family Process, December 2002, 41, 4, 619–623, 10.1111/j.1545-5300.2002.00619.x, 12613120, THESIS, PhD, For The Enjoyment of All:" Cosmopolitan Aspirations, Urban Encounters and Class Boundaries in Mexico City, Alejandra M. Leal Martínez, 2011, Columbia University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 3453017, by Hernán Cortés, his troops and a number of indigenous city-states who were tributaries and rivals of the Aztecs, such as the Totonacs, the Tlaxcaltecas and Texcocans among others. After years of war, the coalition led by Cortés finally managed to conquer the Aztec Empire which would result in the foundation of the Viceroyalty of New Spain and while this new state granted a series of privileges to the members of the allied indigenous tribes such as nobiliary titles and swathes of land, the Spanish held the most political and economic power.WEB,weblink Tlaxcala, New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia, March 11, 2012, May 22, 2012,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20120522064530weblink">weblink live, THESIS, PhD, Composición Étnica de las Tres Áreas Culturales del Continente Americano al Comienzo del Siglo XXI,weblinkweblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20080920172933weblink">weblink September 20, 2008, Francisco Lizcano Fernández, 2005, Centro de Investigación en Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, UAEM, Mexico, July 19, 2011, The small number of Spaniards who inhabited the new kingdom would soon be complemented by a steady migration flow of Spanish people, as it was the interest of the Spanish crown to Hispanicize and Christianize the region given that Indigenous peoples and their customs were considered uncivilized, thus the Spanish language and culture were imposed and indigenous ones suppressed.WEB,weblink Población inmigrante, Luz María, Martinez Montiel, México Multicultural, UNAM, Mexico, es, Immigrant population, July 19, 2011, dead,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20110722230642weblink">weblink July 22, 2011, The Mexican experience mirrors much of that of the rest of Latin America, as attitudes towards race, including identification, were set by the conquistadors and Spanish who came soon after. Through the colonial period, the Spanish and their descendants, called "criollos" remained outnumbered by the indigenous and "mestizos" or those of mixed Spanish and indigenous parents (albeit a person of 7/8 Spanish ancestry and 1/8 or less indigenous ancestry could be considered to be "criollo").JOURNAL, Morales, Efraín Castro, Los cuadros de castas de la Nueva España, Caste cadres of New Spain, es, Jahrbuch für Geschichte Lateinamerikas, January 1983, 20, 1, 10.7767/jbla.1983.20.1.671, 162365969, To keep power, the Spanish enforced a hierarchical class system in New Spain's society, with those born in Spain (known as Peninsulares) being the most privileged, followed by criollos, then Mestizos, then the indigenous and finally the Africans. Nonetheless, the system was not completely rigid and elements such as social class, social relations and who a person descended from did figure into it. However, the notion of "Spanishness" would remain at the top and "Indianness" would be at the bottom, with those mixed being somewhere in the middle. This idea remained officially in force through the rest of the colonial period.File:1909. Vendedora de ollas. Saturnino Herrán.jpg|thumb|Vendedora de ollas (Pot saleswoman). Saturnino HerránSaturnino HerránCriollo resentment of the privileges afforded to the Peninsulares was the main reason behind the Mexican War of Independence. When the war ended in 1821, the new Mexican government expelled the peninsulares (approximately 10,000 – 20,000 people) in the 1820s and 1830s which, to a degree, kept the European ethnicity from growing as a percentage; this expulsion, however, did not lead to any permanent ban on European immigrants, even from Spain. Independence did not end the economic and social privilege based on race, as the Criollos took over from those of Spanish birth. A division between "Spanish" and "indigenous" remained, with Criollos distinguishing themselves from the rest of society as the guardians of Spanish culture as well as the Catholic religion.JOURNAL, Buchenau, Jurgen, Spring 2001, Small numbers, great impact: Mexico and its immigrants, 1821–1973, Journal of American Ethnic History, 20, 3, 23–49, 10.2307/27502710, 27502710, 17605190, 29111441, However, due to the abolition of the caste system, the division became more about money and social class and less about biological differences, which increased the possibilities of social mobility for Mestizo and Indigenous Mexicans. For this reason, many of the political and cultural struggles of the latter 19th and early 20th centuries would be between the Criollos and the Mestizos.According to Mexico's first ever racial census published in 1793, the Eurodescendant population was between 18%-22% of the population (with Mestizos being 21%-25% and Amerindians being 51%-61%);JOURNAL, Lerner, Victoria, Consideraciones sobre la población de la Nueva España (1793-1810): Según Humboldt y Navarro y Noriega, Considerations on the population of New Spain (1793-1810): According to Humboldt and Navarro and Noriega, es, Historia Mexicana, 1968, 17, 3, 327–348, 25134694, but by 1921, when the second nationwide census that considered a person's race took place, 59% of the population self-identified as being of European descent, with 59% being Mestizo and 29% being Amerindian. While for a long time the 1921 census' results were taken as fact, with international, although unofficial publications such as The World Factbook using them as a reference to estimate Mexico's racial composition up to this day, more recently, Mexican academics have subjected them to scrutiny, claiming that such a drastic alteration of demographic trends is not possible and cite, among other statistics, the relatively low frequency of marriages between people of different continental ancestries.WEB, Anchondo, Sandra, de Haro, Martha,weblink El mestizaje es un mito, la identidad cultural sí importa, Miscegenation is a myth, cultural identity does matter, es, Istmo, Mexico, July 4, 2016, August 24, 2017,weblink" title="wayback.archive-it.org/all/20171010154747weblink">weblink October 10, 2017, dead, In the early 1890s, Northern Italian immigrants were brought from the Veneto area to Mexico to whiten the population.BOOK,weblink The Mexican Aristocracy: An Expressive Ethnography, 1910–2000, 9780292773318, Nutini, Hugo G., January 2010, University of Texas Press,

Distribution

Official censuses

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 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, however according to the historic archives of Mexico's National Institute of Statistics that was not the case)."censo General de la Republica Mexicana 1895" {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170810035109weblink |date=August 10, 2017 }}, "INEGI", Mexico, Retrieved on July 24, 2017. 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 censusFile:Mapa del Virreinato de la Nueva España (1819).svg|thumb|left|New Spain in 1819 with the boundaries established at the Adams-Onís TreatyAdams-Onís TreatyAlso 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 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 much, with Europeans ranging from 18% to 22% of New Spain's population, Mestizos ranging from 21% to 25%, Indians 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 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 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.{| class="wikitable sortable" style="float:center; text-align:center;"!Intendecy/territory!European population (%)!Indigenous population (%)!Mestizo population (%) Mexico| 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 Potosi| 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% Yucatan| 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 Mexico| ~| 30.8%| 69.0% Vieja California| ~| 51.7%| 47.9% Nueva California| ~| 89.9%| 09.8% Coahuila| 30.9%| 28.9%| 40.0% Nuevo Leon| 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 of 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 American Indians 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.Historical Dictionary of Argentina. London: Scarecrow Press, 1978. pp. 239–40. 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."American Indians in the Federal Decennial Census" {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201120144444weblink |date=November 20, 2020 }}, Retrieved on July 25, 2017.1921 censusFile:Vicente Fox (23847933328).jpg|thumb|Vicente Fox Quesada, 62nd President of Mexico.]]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 using them as a reference to estimate Mexico's racial composition up to this day.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 in demographics for 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. 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.JOURNAL,weblink Más desindianización que mestizaje. Una relectura de los censos generales de población, Pla Brugat, Dolores, Dimensión Antropológica, 53, September–December 2011, 69–91, es, More de-Indianization than miscegenation. A rereading of the general population censuses, November 18, 2020, December 6, 2020,weblink live, 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):DEPARTAMENTO DE LA ESTADISTICA NACIONAL {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304060335weblink |date=March 4, 2016 }} CENSO GENERAL DE HABITANTES 1921 Census (Page: 62){| class="wikitable sortable" style="float:center; text-align:center;"!Federative Units!Mestizo Population (%)!Amerindian Population (%)!White Population (%) 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% Morelos| 61.24%| 34.93%| 03.59% Nayarit| 73.45%| 20.38%| 05.83% Nuevo Leon| 75.47%| 05.14%| 19.23% Oaxaca| 28.15%| 69.17%| 01.43% Puebla| 39.34%| 54.73%| 05.66% Querétaro| 80.15%| 19.40%| 00.30% Quintana Roo| 42.35%| 20.59%| 15.16% San Luis Potosí| 61.88%| 30.60%| 05.41% Sinaloa| 98.30%| 00.93%| 00.19% Sonora| 41.04%| 14.00%| 42.54% Tabasco| 53.67%| 18.50%| 27.56% Tamaulipas| 69.77%| 13.89%| 13.62% Tlaxcala| 42.44%| 54.70%| 02.53% Veracruz| 50.09%| 36.60%| 10.28% Yucatán| 33.83%| 43.31%| 21.85% Zacatecas| 86.10%| 08.54%| 05.26%When the 1921 census's results are compared with the results of Mexico's recent censusesWEB,weblink Principales resultados de la Encuesta Intercensal 2015, Principal results of the Intercensal Survey 2015, es, INEGI, Mexico, December 2015, August 23, 2017,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20170422033628weblink">weblink April 22, 2017, dead, as well as with modern genetic research,"El impacto del mestizaje en México" {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170622040134weblink |date=June 22, 2017 }}, "Investigación y Ciencia", Spain, October 2013. Retrieved on June 1, 2017. high consistence is found in regards 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 that self-identifies 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 on which states that have been shown to have a considerably high European ancestry per scientific research 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). 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 as such.El mestizaje y las culturas regionales {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130823015618weblink |date=August 23, 2013 }}.Present dayThe following table is a compilation of (when possible) official nationwide surveys conducted by the Mexican government who have attempted to quantify different Mexican ethnic groups. Given that for the most part each ethnic group was estimated by different surveys, with different methodologies and years apart rather than on a single comprehensive racial census, some groups could overlap with others and be overestimated or underestimated.{| class="wikitable sortable" style="float:center; text-align:center;"!Race or ethnicity!Population (est.)!Percentage (est.)!Year Indigenous| 26,000,000 | 21.5%|2015 Black| 2,576,213 | 2.4%WEBSITE=WWW.INEGI.ORG.MX ACCESS-DATE=JANUARY 26, 2021 ARCHIVE-URL=HTTPS://WEB.ARCHIVE.ORG/WEB/20220214192634/HTTPS://WWW.INEGI.ORG.MX/PROGRAMAS/CCPV/2020/, live, White| 56,000,000 | 47.0%|2017 Foreigners residing in Mexico (of any race)| 1,010,000|