Our Mexican Immigrants

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AMERICAN public opinion regarding Mexican immigration is confused, chiefly because of the confusion of races in Mexico. The population of Mexico is approximately 13,000,000, of which not more than 10 percent are of unmixed white blood. Although Cortes subdued the natives of Mexico a full hundred years before the Pilgrims settled at Plymouth, the population south of the Rio Grande is predominantly Indian, whereas among the English-speaking peoples to the north the Indian has become a curiosity. The contrast is explained by the fact that the Indians of the north for the most part had never advanced beyond the hunting and fishing stage and consequently were few in number, while the fertile valleys of Mexico were peopled with a dense agricultural population.

The process of racial fusion was hastened by the fact that the Spaniards introduced few white women into their colonies, with the result that the population of Mexico is now made up of from 5,000,000 to 6,000,000 pure-blood Indians, 1,500,000 to 2,000,000 whites, and 7,000,000 to 8,000,000 Mestizos in which the Indian element is predominant. Nevertheless, all natives of Mexico are listed as white in our official census and immigration reports, a practice which also is followed by the various states of the Union, and there is a tacit but universal understanding among government officials that the biological characteristics of the Mexican people shall be assumed to be what they are not in fact.

This is not the place to attempt even a summary of Mexican civilization other than to say that in many important respects it has remained an Indian civilization with but a veneer of European culture. There are at least two million who speak no Spanish and an equal number who prefer to speak their native Indian tongues. The ancient way of living has changed but little for the masses, who till the soil in the native way, eat the native food, and wash it down with pulque just as their forefathers did a thousand years ago...