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You touch on a social-class aspect, not a "racial" one. People in Mexico only mix with other people who they regard to have the same social-class customs and beliefs. This is how Latin societies tend to work.
Not true.
When Spain left, criollos took the place of Spanish.
Criollos, descendants of Spanish, only mixed with other criollos, criollos are still very much in power even in places like Ecuador...just imagine in Mexico with a much larger "criollo" population.
Of course, criollos are not migrants or they are probably not perceived as Mexicans.
So there was no real independence, in the sense that non-criollos gained any power.
In fact, during Independency wars (just as in the US), Indians backed Spain because they hated criollos.
In the 1812 war, Britain backed Indians.
Bolivar was a criollo, educated in one Spanish military academy, so all the leaders.
Benito Juarez was the first indigena president.
They might have Amerindian ancestry the same way that most Americans that have been living in the US since the 17th century might have some Indian blood.
Mexico is older than the US.
I believe that the US will be very similar to Mexico in 100 years.
That's simply incorect. The exact etymology of 'Mexico' is unclear and in dispute, but it is a Nahuatl word and doesn't have any connection to the words 'mix' or 'mixed'.
When Cortez arrived, the Nahuatl plateau was known as Mejiicali, land of the Mejicas..
Written in old Spanish as Mexico, the X having the sound of a modern J. In modern Spanish it would be Méjico...Tejas, etc.
Aztecs were sort of barbarians that came from the north that invaded and replaced older cultures and were defeated by a confederacy led by Cortez..but the real brain was the Malinche, and Tlascalans the fiercest warriors..
But what exterminated most of the population was smallpox, a much higher mortality that the bubonic plague in Europe that exterminated almost half of the European population.
Aztecs were exterminated by the famine, plagues, war and by the condeferate tribes. Tenochtitlan was reduced to rubble, according to Cortez, a well travelled and cultured man, the most beautiful and cleanest city in the world.
That's simply incorect. The exact etymology of 'Mexico' is unclear and in dispute, but it is a Nahuatl word and doesn't have any connection to the words 'mix' or 'mixed'.
Yes. The tribe that essentially built Tenochtitlan were called the Mexica. They were the largest ethnic group on the island of Tenochtitlan - they were essentially the Aztecs. The built a beautiful city on that island in the middle of Lake Texoco, but they did so very much on the slave labor and subjugation of other tribes around MesoAmerica. The never ending bloods sacrifices on the Templo Mayor also mostly consisted of victims captured from outlying communities. About twenty years before Cortez arrived the ruling chief of T engineered a great facelift for the Templo Mayor. To celebrate the completion, he sacrificed 80,000 people. This is why all these outlying tribes were perfectly happy to help Cortez wipe out Tenochtitlan. Tenochtitlan was apparently a stunningly beautiful city, but the politics that existed there was pure evil.
The interesting thing though is the Spanish did properly name Mexico. Sort like Massachusetts and Canada. They retain their original names. The name America of course is an epic misnomer, named after Amerigo Vespucci - who was not the discoverer of the "New World".
In the US Hispanics would not be considered White because most of them are heavily mixed (even the white looking ones). Most of Latin America has tried to downplay the downplay the heavy mixing that occurred during slavery and only point to mixing with the Spanish and indigenous people, but the Spanish mixed quite a bit with the Africans too and not just in the Caribbean or areas near the coast. Now I'm not going to say that Mexicans have the degree of African admixture that say Dominicans do because that isn't true, but while many Mexicans may look "mestizo" there are plenty that have black in them and either may not know it or may not think that they do because the African, Spanish and Indigenous mixture doesn't scream that they have black in them but certain features make it quite obvious even with the amount of Indigenous and Spanish features that they have. Nose, lips, cheekbones, skin color etc. Not all of that came from the Indigenous people...
Heck even the Spanish mixed with the Moors, and were already a heavily mixed group before they arrived to the Americas, so to think Mexicans are so "pure" is a joke.
Actually,most Spanish/Spaniards were and still are WHITE people, not mixed. The claim of Spain being racially and genetically mixed is often exaggerated.
As for Mexicans most Mexicans are a mix of European, Native American, African, Asian etc in varying degrees.
Last edited by SobreTodo; 09-29-2014 at 12:18 AM..
What are you talking about? I dealt with this issue in another one of my articles about the so-called Moors of Spain. If they truly were Moors then why are most “criollos” in Mexico today white people with Spanish last names? Also, for there to have been Moors “in the hundreds of thousands” as you say, then that meant that the local whites of Spain would have still outnumbered the Moors and most of the Moroccan/Algerian countryside would have been completely emptied of its human inhabitants. Today we find the main non-Amerindian Y-chromosome gene (haplogroup) in Mexicans to be R1b, the same that modern Spaniards have. If North Africans were the main population in Spain and the colonizers of Mexico, then the dominant gene would be E1b1b1b2 (E-Z827), not R1b. And we would also find E-Z827 to be a major gene in Spaniards yet it is found only in rather small amounts. They also did a genetic study back in the early 2000’s where a Muslim-era cemetery was dug up and several Islamic (not just Arabic) named (“Muhammad”, “Abdullah”, “Ahmad”, etc.) individuals from the cemetery were gene typed. The researchers found E-Z827 to be higher than in today’s Spanish population, and they also found a higher amount of sub-Saharan (black) genes than in modern Spaniards. However, the majority of the genes in the studied individuals was still R1b, the western European gene. So, even the Muslims of Spain were mainly R1b, not E-Z827. What does that say about their ancestry and the real number of Berbers/non-Europeans in Spain?
It is a well known fact that most of today’s Arabic-speaking peoples are predominantly descended from the pre-Islamic populations that lived there. The true original Arabs, the (peninsular) Arabians (Saudis, Yemenis, Omanis, Qataris, Emiratis), mostly carry Y-DNA haplogroup J1. The main haplogroup in Syrians, Iraqis, Palestinians, Lebanese, Bahrainis, and Jordanians is haplogroup J2, not J1. The main haplogroup in Egyptians and Libyans is E1b1b1b1 while most Tunisians, Algerians, Moroccans, and Mauretanians carry E1b1b1b2. Ironically, the only “Arabs” of the Arab world that carry mostly J1 are the Sudanese, who look black. However, the Sudanese carry a different subclade (“subgene”) of the haplogroup (gene) J1 than the peninsular Arabians. So therefore, who is to say that the “Arabs” (aka “Moors”, which is a foreign name that the Muslims of North Africa & Spain never used for themselves) of Spain were also not locals? It seems like they were because there are many descendants of the Spanish Muslims in Morocco and Tunisia, and many of them look European.
Well, first of all, there is no such thing as “Muslim ancestry”. Second of all, most of the Muslims in Spain were neither North Africans nor Middle Easterners. Initially of course, the first Muslim inhabitants of Spain were Arabians and Berbers. Later on, a few Syrians arrived. However, the majority of the Spaniards living within al-Andalus underwent a gradual process of cultural change similar to the cultural change which would impact most of the Amerindians in Latin America. Notice that when I say “cultural change”, that does not mean “genetic change” or “racial change”. It is simply a change in culture.
Most of the Amerindians in Mexico for example, became admixed with Spaniards. However, for those that didn’t and remained “pure”, their culture was still dramatically changed. They adopted the Castillian (“Spanish”) language and the Roman Catholic religion, and alot of them identify as “Hispanics” or “Latinos” (especially in the USA) even though obviously they are neither Spaniards nor Italians.
Likewise, a similar thing happened in the Muslim-ruled areas of Iberia/Spain itself from the 8th century to the 15th century. The original Muslim conquerors and settlers were mainly Berbers with a minority of Arabian (Bedouin, Yemeni, “Saudi”) settlers and later by a few Syrians who followed the Umayyad caliph ‘Abd ar-Rahman who fled Syria. Add to this a small number of enslaved peoples brought to al-Andalus (mainly blacks and eastern Europeans). Gradually however, the Arabic language and the religion of Islam took hold in the Andalusian society. Notice that at no point in the history of Andalusia were Spaniards ever reduced to a minority. (I use the word Andalusia to refer to all al-Andalus, not just today’s “Andalusia” province of the Kingdom of Spain.) The majority of Spaniards up until the middle of the 10th century were Christians who spoke in a form of Latin. Their form of Latin increasingly adopted Arabic words, phrases, and general lexicon and grammar. Around the middle of the 10th century, the majority of Spaniards living within Andalusia had converted to Islam. The Arabic language was then fully adopted by the 12th century, and it had supplanted the Arabized-Latin dialect (“Mozarabic”) that was spoken in Andalusia. So yes, Muslims did make the majority of Andalusia at one period in history, however, those Muslims were not North Africans or Middle Easterners, those Muslims were Spaniards. By the time of the Fall of Granada, the Muslim Spaniards had assimilated the minorities (MidEasterners, NorthAfricans, Visigoths, blacks, east Europeans) and the whole nation had become an “Arab” Andalusian society. That is to say, they identified as “Arabs” and these are the people who are ignorantly called “Moors” in the West. The only real Moors are Moroccans and North Africans.
That may seem far fetched, but consider that the Egyptians, Syrians, Iraqis, Moroccans, Libyans, Sudanese, and Mauritanians all identify as “Arab” even though they are of diverse origins and DNA studies have shown none of these people originate from Arabia. The only real Arabs are the Yemenis, Omanis, Saudis, Qataris, Emiratis, and probably Kuwaitis (maybe Jordanians too). Egyptians, Syrians, Iraqis, Lebanese, Palestinians, Bahrainis, Sudanese, Mauritanians, Moroccans, Libyans, Tunisians, Algerians, and the “Arabs” of the Sahara and Iran are not truly Arabs at all. They are just descendants of pre-Islamic peoples who converted to Islam, adopted the Arabic language, and eventually became called as “Arabs”. It’s quite obvious that the Sudanese, for example, are not Arabs but it is harder for people to tell that Syrians, Egyptians, etc. are not Arabs either due to their Middle Eastern looks. So the Andalusian “Arabs” were not Arabs (nor Berbers nor blacks), they were just Arabic-speaking Muslim indigenous Iberians. This is similar to how the “Turks” of Turkey speak Turkish and are Muslims, yet they are obviously not Central Asian or Mongolic; they are Anatolians (plus some Greeks, Caucasians, Slavs, Albanians, etc.) who adopted the Turkish language and the Islamic religion. Spaniards, Portuguese, French, Moldovans, Romanians, and alot of Belgians and Swiss all speak in Romance/Latin languages, though that does not make them Romans or Italians right? This is all proved and backed up by multiple genetic studies. To deny this is to deny scientific evidence and believe in the old ignorance of medieval times.
I also have found that most of the people who claim the Spanish are mixed with Arabs/North Africans/blacks tend to be north Europeans and Americans (especially blacks), not Muslims.
Of course, today’s Spaniards are not Muslim nor Arabic-speaking because the Christian Spanairds from up north drove the Muslims away or converted them to Christianity and imposed the Romance (mostly Castillian) language upon them. Some of the descendants of the Andalusian Muslims live today in villages in Morocco and Tunisia. You’ll find that most of them look European, not North African. In fact, I covered this topic in one of my articles here, you should check it out.
Oh really? In the Y-chromosome, the haplogroup R1b (west European gene) is prevalent and is carried by over 50% of Mexican men. Haplogroups J1/J2 (Middle Eastern) and E1b1b (North African) combined show up in less than 20% of Mexican men. Haplogroups G, I, and R1a (Caucasus, Scandinavian/Balkans, and east Europeean, respectively) show up at around a combined 12% of Mexican males. Haplogroup Q (Amerindian/Native American) is carried by around 16% of Mexican males. Other haplogroups are also present in much smaller amounts. So yes, North Africans, Arabs, and Jews are ancestors of some Mexicans, but most of Mexicans’ male ancestors are Europeans (predominantly western Europeans) as shown by the high percentage of R1b and relatively high combined percentage of R1a, G, and I.
However, the percentage of J1, J2, and E1b1b is similar in Mexicans as it is in Spaniards. So this suggests that most Mexicans did not get this ancestry from North Africans and Middle Easterners directly, but rather they mostly got it from Spanish men who carried these lineages.
Today we find the main non-Amerindian Y-chromosome gene (haplogroup) in Mexicans to be R1b, the same that modern Spaniards have.
An excellent point!
Are you familiar Cherson Haplogroup Diversity Index (CHDI) ? Cuba, Belize, El Salvador have the highest CHDI. I would have considered these countries some of the least diverse in the Americas.
Do I not understand the index or is my perception mistaken?
Actually,most Spanish/Spaniards were and still are WHITE people, not mixed. The claim of Spain being racially and genetically mixed is often exaggerated.
As for Mexicans most Mexicans are a mix of European, Native American, African, Asian etc in varying degrees.
Spain is one of the less genetically mixed countries in Europe due to Inquisition and Ethnic Cleansing, and to the fact that invasions were always very minoritary in comparison with the volume of the population of the peninsula. People that say such stupidity are usually protestant American rednecks or the people you mentioned.
In fact, 99 percent of Andalusia were Hispano-Romans turned Muslims to avoid taxes or muladies and Hispano-Romans that were Christians or Mozarabes. Most "immigrant labour" were northern Christians and northen Europeans that worked as mercenaries (they were called Slavs). And that time, most of Europe was a very barbaric territory. In Catalonia, for example, there was no coinage in the year 900 and bear ham was the main item for barter exchange. The only asset worth of mortgaging were swords. The few currency left were Roman coins, very used coins, and Muslim coin from Cordoba obtained by "gastarbeiters".
Spain also had natural frontiers, and could not be invaded as easely as Poland, Germany, etc.
Spain was attacked by anti-Spanish propaganda during the 16th and 17th Century...."The Spanish Black Legend"..and one of the principles of such a legend was that Spanish were swarthy, moors, catholics, cruel, bad breath, etc. Quite curious, the only people that repeat such a legend nowdays are some American protestant denominations.
They also love to put down Spanish America, when those countries are 20 times more European than the US. Yes, criollos in Mexico are Spanish, some have been living there 400 years. They come a lot to Spain.
Are you familiar Cherson Haplogroup Diversity Index (CHDI) ? Cuba, Belize, El Salvador have the highest CHDI. I would have considered these countries some of the least diverse in the Americas.
Do I not understand the index or is my perception mistaken?
Cuba is not very diverse, most white people come from the same areas and most blacks too.
As to mixes, not much richness there either.
Some Cantonese here and there, people that assert thay have Indian blood, not very diverse.
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