# Mexico and its reconstruction/Chapter 2

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CHAPTER II
THE POPULATION OF MEXICO
One of the most easily understood errors into which we fall is to suppose that political boundaries coincide with those of race and culture. Before the World War how many could have named the lesser peoples who, in the course of the conflict, raised their claims to the right of self-determination and political independence? Few indeed.
When we think of Mexico, we fall into the same error. There have been no important population movements within the territory of the greatest of the Latin republics in North America since the region has been known to Western civilization. There has been no immigration from abroad that has brought in an element that puts forth a claim for a government independent of the rest of the republic. There have been no racial or social barriers which had to be broken down to allow Mexico to become a unit in fact as well as in name. Nevertheless there is to-day no Mexican people, though we speak of one. There never has been one. The feeling of nationality is here one of those artificially created phenomena, the strength of which so often proves out of all proportion to that of the base upon which they rest.
The description of the ideal state conceived by some theorists, "an ethnic unity living within a geographic unity" is fully applicable to but few, if any, nations. It is far from describing the population of Mexico. The ​Mayas, the Zapotecs, the Yaquis, these are all Mexican citizens but the political bond is almost the only one that unites them. Historically, culturally, economically they have little in common that indicates that they should owe a common allegiance.
Above the native stocks are the mixed bloods who have at least the common bond of their racial connection and above these are those of European lineage, descendants of the immigrants of colonial times or of later arrivals. These two latter classes, by their adaptability and by their more intimate contact with the civilization of the outside world, are the cement of the Mexican peoples.
It is hard to secure information that will give a satisfactory picture of Mexican life because neither the government nor any private agency has ever attempted a thoroughgoing survey of economic and social conditions. There has never been an accurate census of the peoples of Mexico that established even their number much less one that gives a picture of their economic and social status and organization. For the earlier years only the roughest estimates are available and for the later ones enumerations by the government must be relied upon, which, while nominally complete, have not been based upon an actual count in many parts of the republic.
The records of colonial times are more complete, in fact, than those of the first fifty years of the republic because for the estimates referring to that time the ​parish registers of all who were born or who died in the republic were available. The first general census was not taken until the close of the nineteenth century but even after that event an authoritative Mexican work declares that "nothing can be asserted honestly about the growth of population of Mexico considering the want of facts and the defectiveness of the few we possess." In spite of this stricture the various estimates that have been made from time to time are presented to indicate, if not the exact conditions, the opinion of those best informed concerning them.
A report to the king in 1793 represented the population as totaling 4,483,529. Humboldt estimated it to be 5,783,750 in 1803. In 1823 it was thought to be about 6,998,337. The census of 1855 put the population at 8,069,046. In 1877-8 it was announced by the government as 10,577,279, an average of 4.89 per square kilometer. The central states such as Aguascalientes and ​Puebla had between twenty and thirty people to the square kilometer, the south was less populated. Chiapas averaged about nine and Yucatan three. The north was sparsely populated and large districts were practically unoccupied. Sonora had only about 1.5 to the square kilometer, Coahuila 1.4, Chihuahua 1.2, and the arid territory of Lower California one person to six square kilometers. In 1890 the total was estimated at 11,632,924, and the census of 1910 declared that there were 15,160,369 souls in the republic.
ESTIMATED RACIAL DIVISIONS IN MEXICO AT VARIOUS PERIODS
​large portion of the area of which is taken up by mountains and by great plains of scant rainfall. This area has always been sparsely populated and, it seems, must continue to be so. The percentage of white blood among its people is higher than in other regions and they have contributed beyond what would be indicated by their numbers to the initiative for development that has been shown in Mexico.
The Gulf and Pacific coast states form another group. The former are on the average less thickly populated than the latter, though Lower California is an exception, great areas being still without population. Jalisco, Michoacan, and Oaxaca have been the most thickly populated and important states of the Pacific group.
Now as always, however, the greater part of the Mexican population is found in the states of the central plateau, where the civilization of the country also finds its best development.
If it is difficult to ascertain the population of Mexico, it is even more difficult to find out the proportion in which the various racial elements are represented. The report to the king in 1793, above referred to, gave the total number of Europeans as 7,904, white Creoles 677,458, castes 1,478,426, and Indians 2,319,741. This would have made the percentages.2; 15; 33; and 52, respectively. An approximate picture of the racial developments since that time may be secured from the estimates, official and unofficial, made at various periods as shown in the table opposite, ​The proportions of these racial classes vary greatly in different parts of the country. In the north the Indian tribes as such have practically disappeared. The Tarahumaras and Tepehuanas and especially the Yaquis, living in regions until recently little valued by the whites, by their resistance to further encroachments on their rights have had more attention drawn to them than their number warrants. In the south the indigenes are in general a larger part of the population. Guerrero and Michoacan inhabited by the Tarascas; Oaxaca with its Miztecs in the west and Zapotecs in the east; and Yucatan, Campeche, and Chiapas, in which the population is very largely of the Maya group, are the most distinctively Indian areas.
The number of the pure Indians has decreased relatively with the gradual spread of intermarriage with whites and mixed bloods and doubtless will continue to do so. In a large part of the republic, however, they are the most important part of the population numerically and they are the chief source of the labor supply.
The descriptions of the Indians of Mexico at various periods in the history of the republic are almost interchangeable. In general they have kept, with but slight modification, the customs they had four centuries ago when America was discovered. In many parts of the country they continue to live in almost complete isolation, sufficient unto themselves. Even now they ​consume little from abroad and their demands are so few that they produce little that enters into general trade within the country itself, Nor do they contribute to export trade in proportion to their numbers. They are not now and they never have been important in the creation of public wealth."
At the other end of the racial scale is the white population which, since the time of the Spanish dominion, has shown a preference for life in the cities, especially the capital. In Mexico, however, there does not exist any sharp social cleavage such as separates those of color from the Caucasian in the United States. This has always been the case. The Spanish colonist did not as a rule bring with him a wife or wife and children but took unto himself a native wife and from such unions have sprung the mixed bloods who form the increasing percentage of the population of Mexico. There are among the upper class Mexicans many who are proud of pure Castilian descent and who evidence a desire to pass it on to their children, but this feeling appears to be one resting on tradition and family pride rather than on racial feeling. There is little if any disadvantage under which a person of mixed blood works in business life or in the seeking of public office.
The mestizo population, which has arisen between the ​unleavened Indian peoples and those of white blood, constitutes at the present time over half of the total. It is the hope of some friends of Mexico and the desperation of others. In the opinion of most observers it is an improved stock as compared to the aborigines, quick to learn but inconstant in the application of the lessons taught. At present this population drifts as far as may be into the lighter occupations. Unfortunately it shows an unwillingness to undertake manual labor and a desire for an education of a literary or professional sort that will assure that physical labor will be unnecessary.
These are the people upon whom the future Mexico will depend, but from whom she has not yet received constructive leadership. Their ability to develop the qualities of constancy and responsibility, which they now lack, will determine whether Mexico assumes the independent position economically and politically that her physical endowment indicates is possible. Unless the trend of immigration changes, thus upsetting the racial developments now in progress, Mexico seems destined to become a mestizo republic. It is already far on the way to becoming one.
Perhaps no characteristic of Mexican life speaks more plainly of the diversity of the elements entering into its composition than the languages spoken by the peoples of the republic. To appreciate the degree to which the existence of the many tongues found in use indicates lack of unity one must bear in mind the immobile character of the population, the low state of education, and the lack of facilities for communication, all elements that work for particularism. ​The great majority of Mexicans, of course, speak Spanish. Of those included in the language enumeration in 1914, 88 per cent used Spanish as the usual means of communication. The rest were divided among 48 enumerated tongues. The Nahuatl or Mexicano was still used by over half a million, the Maya by 227,883, the Zapoteco by 224,863, and the Otomi by 209,640. None of the others were spoken by as many as one hundred thousand and some were evidently disappearing remnants. Nevertheless that the Spanish tongue has not been adopted by so large a proportion of Mexicans in the four hundred years since dominion was established is an indication that the church, the school, and the government have all failed to bring a large number of Mexicans into touch with European standards of civilization.
One of the least satisfactory of the schedules of any census is that dealing with religion, because the declaration of membership in a church made to the enumerator may mean merely an occasional attendance or an almost inherited membership. The religious census of Mexico is not an exception. The conversion of the country to Christianity after the conquest was accomplished under circumstances similar to all those of the time. It was a surface conversion and often hardly that. Even up to the present time though 99 per cent of the population are listed as Catholics, the depth of the belief of a large part of the ignorant lower classes is obviously not great. ​That there is, on the part of the natives, even in remote corners of the country, a formal devotion is beyond question. Even in the villages of interior Yucatan, miles from a railroad or from anything which elsewhere would be dignified by the name of a wagon road, each oval mud and stake hut has its family altar with its Virgin and such ornaments as its barefoot proprietor and his wife can provide. In such communities, it appears that the church has exercised quite as much influence as the state, which is the more remarkable because of the relations that the two have borne to each other since the Juarez period.
The fact is, however, that in the districts away from the centers of civilization and the railroads neither the state nor the church is a very important factor in the life of the people. The functions of each are formal to a large extent, and skillful agitators can sway the populace to an attack on one as easily as upon the other. Of the two, if anything, the church seems in the weaker position. To be sure, in some states like Puebla, it seems that the revolution surged about the bases of the cathedrals yet, as a rule, left them unharmed; but taking the country in general the churches fell before the hands of the revolutionists with but little popular protest. That so small a minority as that which grasped the standard of revolution in Yucatan, for example, could dominate the population so completely and make them allow, when they did not abet, the general destruction of church property does not show that the church held the position in the lives of the people that the census statistics would indicate. ​The fact is that the church has been held up before the people, since the Laws of Reform, as an influence threatening the life of the republic. It has been used as a bogey by the liberals to support their power and guard against the possibility that the clergy might return to their former position of influence among the people. For a generation and a half at least it has been unimportant as a political influence. There is no Catholic political party and even devoted Catholics have been agreed, at least until recently, that it would be inadvisable to form one. The position that has been forced upon the church by political developments has not only destroyed its political influence very largely, but has undermined its prestige. It has not been able to continue as effectively as formerly its work for the education of the Indian population nor for its real conversion. It is admitted even by enthusiastic churchmen that in the districts away from the larger cities the Indian is reached only in a formal way by educational influences and that to his religion he is attached without an understanding of any but its most simple teachings.
Nor has the church maintained its hold upon the so called upper class. Formally these too are in large majority Catholic but regular church attendance has admittedly become less general, especially among the men, a large number of whom are more or less openly agnostic.
If, however, the official figures be relied upon to give a picture of Mexican religious conditions, there is little to show that the campaign against the Catholic church by political leaders, the missionary work of Protestant ​churches, or the gradual infiltration of foreign influences have had much effect in this land, which, like others under Spanish dominion, was once Catholic exclusively and perforce. Of the 15,160,369 Mexicans listed in the census of 1910, 15,011,176 were Catholics; 68,839 were Protestants; 6,237, Buddhists; 602, Mohammedans; 630, Greek Orthodox; 254, Israelites; and 5,605 of other faiths.
Even the latest statistics of the Mexican population give no adequate basis on which a statement can be made concerning the general education of the people. The school system is not well developed. Illiteracy is still very high. With the figures available it is impossible to make more than general statements concerning either the total population unable to read and write or the relative illiteracy in different parts of the country. The census of 1910 reports that among the 15,160,369 persons enumerated, 7,065,464 are persons 12 years of age or over who do not know how to read or write. Comparisons of census figures in other countries indicate that the portion of the population less than 12 years of age is roughly one-sixth. This would indicate that the illiterate population 12 years of age or over constituted about 52 per cent of the total. As a basis of comparison may be taken the statement that of the population of the United States over 10 years of age in 1910, 7.7 per cent were reported illiterate. The figures make a ​much more favorable showing than those in mi official estimates. These indicate an illiteracy ranging between 80 and 85 per cent. Some of such estimates are based on the total population, which is evidently an unfair standard if education is being considered in relation to ability to understand public affairs as presented through the printed page and in relation to ability for self-government. The estimates of many careful observers agree, however, that the census returns, even making all allowances, present the picture in a very favorable light and calculate the illiteracy of even the adult population at near to 70 or 75 per cent.
Whichever standard most closely approximates the truth, it is clear that literacy in Mexico, as elsewhere, if taken as a test of general intelligence must be considered along with the actual amount of reading done by the population, the circulation of books, magazines, and newspapers, and the general intellectual activity of the community. In these respects the life of Mexico, with the exception of that in the cities, is backward, even more so, it seems clear, than the official figures or individual estimates indicate.
Accepting the official figures as a basis for comparison of the relative prevalence of illiteracy in different districts it appears, as would be expected, that the northern states and those in which the larger cities of ​the central plateau are located make a better showing than the rest of the country. These are the regions where foreign influence has made itself most felt and where the government supervision of education has been most effective.
The census of 1910 does not classify the population in a way that makes possible more than a very general statement concerning the activities to which the people devote themselves. In some cases there is great detail, as in the enumeration of the single archeologist and the lone apiculturist with which the country is credited. In another case 58,840 persons are lumped as "workers in industrial establishments." The enumeration of the chief classes given in the table below is valuable only for the general picture it gives of the proportion assigned to the larger divisions, and as an indication of the undiversified character of the national economic life.
Chief Occupations in Mexico
| Unproductive, chiefly minors and students | 5,423,170 |
| Domestic workers | 4,673,804 |
| Agricultural workers, including 3,130,402 peons | 3,570,674 |
| Industries | 723,023 |
| Commerce, including 236,278 listed as merchants | 275,130 |
| Mining | 95,878 |
All told there were enumerated in the census of 1910 only 115,972 foreign born and of these only 658 had accepted the nationality of the land of adopted residence.
​The foreigner in Mexico is not on the road to becoming a citizen, as is the case in the United States. He is a foreigner and he intends to remain one and that his son even though born in Mexico shall be one. In only about one case in 175 does he who can remain a foreigner become a Mexican. In 1910 of those enumerated who had become Mexicans, a little less than one-third were Spaniards and one-fifth were citizens of the United States. One Spaniard in every 140 became naturalized, one American in every 155. Forty-five per cent of the naturalized citizens lived in the Federal District and 32 per cent in the states along the northern frontier. Eleven per cent lived in Puebla. A naturalized citizen elsewhere in Mexico is a rara avis.
Of the 115,314 foreigners who had kept their nationality 25 per cent were Spaniards, 18 per cent were Guatemalans who had crossed the southern border chiefly to stay in the coffee districts, and almost 18 per cent were Americans. Eleven per cent were Chinese and another 11 per cent was made up of French, Germans, and Cubans. More than half of the Americans resident in Mexico were reported from the northern states, Chihuahua, Sonora, Coahuila, and Nuevo Leon, ranking in the order indicated.
No study of Mexican conditions can show the underlying causes making the republic a problem to itself and to its neighbors which overlooks the elements that have been briefly sketched in this chapter. A varied population, native, mestizo, and white, without a cultural basis ​upon which to create a uniform civilization, living in territory of wide climatic contrasts, of necessity has serious problems to solve.
The population of Mexico is a group of peoples among whom primitive tongues are still spoken by a considerable portion, and among whom the standard of life, even among those speaking a European tongue, is still of a very simple type. They are peoples largely illiterate and among whom literary and professional, rather than vocational, education has been held up as the standard to be sought for. They are non-industrial and, up to the present, as a rule non-industrious. The development of the resources of the country has fallen into the hands of foreigners who, however great the benefits they have conferred upon the country, do not become a part of its political life as well as of its economic life. Those who seek to bring Mexico out of these conditions into the course of the civilization that we have come to know as European have before them no easy task.
* ↑ An excellent recent study in this field is Wallace Thompson, The People of Mexico, New York, 1921.
* ↑ Justus Sierra, editor, Mexico, Its Social Evolution, vol. i, p. 19. The first general census was taken in October, 1895.
* ↑ The estimates for 1793, 1803, and 1823 are quoted from Joel Roberts Poinsett, Notes on Mexico, accompanied by an historical sketch of the revolution, Philadelphia, 1824, p. 109.
* ↑ Estadística de la república mexicana. Estado que guardan la agricultura, industria, minería, y comercio; Anexo num. 3 a la memoria de Hacienda del ano económico de 1877 a 1878, Mexico, 1880, p. 420. Carlos Butterfield, in United States and Mexico, p. 58, published in 1861, quoting the "latest and best authenticated returns," gave the population as 8,288,088. Antonio Garcia Cubas and George F. Henderson in The Republic of Mexico, in 1876, estimated the population at 9,495,157 souls.
* ↑ Estadística de la república mexicana. Estado que guardan la agricultura, industria, minería, y comercio; Anexo num. 3 a la memoria de hacienda del ano económico de 1877 a 1878, México, 1880, p. 420.
* ↑ The following schedule of estimates for the first part of the Diaz régime is quoted in Luis Pombo, Mexico: 1876-1892, Mexico, 1893, p. 1: 1874—9,343,470 (Garcia Cubas) 1878—9,384,193 (Secretaria de Gobernación) 1880—10,001,884 (Emiliano Busto) 1886—10,791,685 (Bodo von Glumer) 1888—11,490,830 (Dirección General de Estadística) 1889—11,395,712 (Garcia Cubas) 1890—11,632,924 (Antonio Peñafiel) For further discussion of this subject see Wallace Thompson op. cit., pp. 56-85.
* ↑ Boletín de la dirección general de estadística, 5, Mexico, 1914, p. 18.
* ↑ Estimated racial divisions in Mexico at various periods 1. Figures quoted in Poinsett, op. cit., from report to the king, 1703. 2. Quoted from Karl Von Sapper, Wirtschaftsgeographie von Mexico, 1908. His figures are based on Humboldt. 3. Including European and native born whites. 4. Carlos Butterfield, op. cit., p. 58, "quoting the best authenticated returns" but evidently of an earlier year than 1861. 5. Antonio Garcia Cubas and George Henderson, op. cit., The estimates of proportion of races upon which these entries are based were partly from incomplete returns from the state governments and from other estimates, especially those of the German scholar E. Sartorius. 6. Erich Gunther, Handbuch von Mexico, Leipzig, 1912, p. 65. His statement is: About one-ninth, over one-half, and about three-ninths fall in different classes. The total above inserted is that of the census of 1910. The wide variations that appear in the figures reported for various years show that only general conclusions can be based upon them. For a more detailed review based on individual estimates and government statistics see Wallace Thompson, op. cit., pp. 35-55
* ↑ Compiled from the figures in Poinsett, op. cit.
* ↑ See a discussion of these points in Erich Gunther, Handbuch von Mexico, Leipzig, 1912, p. 65 et seq., and Wallace Thompson, Op. cit., pp. 8-34 and 56-85.
* ↑ Memoria de hacienda y credito publico. . . 1 de Julio de 1891 a 30 de Junto 1892, Mexico, 1892, p. 21 et seq. For a very similar description of the Indian population in 1824 see Poinsett, op cit., pp. 109-141.
* ↑ An interesting discussion of race mixtures at the beginning of the Diaz régime in Mexico is found in Antonio Garcia Cubas and George F. Henderson, op. cit., pp. 12-20.
* ↑ Boletín de la dirección general de estadística, 5, México, 1914, p. 159.
* ↑ Ibid., p. 1 55. A good discussion of the church as an element in the social life of Mexico is found in Wallace Thompson, op. cit., pp. 170-194. See also Manuel Calero, Ensayo sobre la reconstruccion de Mexico, New York, 1920, p. 12 et seq., and p. 37 et seq.
* ↑ T. Esquivel Obregón, Influencia de España y los Estados Unidos sobre México, Madrid, 1918, p. 102, asserts that 9 per cent of the voting population of Mexico is illiterate. Jorge Vera-Estañol in his Carranza and His Bolshevik Régime, Los Angeles, 1920, p. 33, estimates the illiterates at "over four-fifths" of the population.
* ↑ The examination of the reports for individual states, however, does much to destroy faith in the value of the educational enumeration. The difference in the percentage of illiteracy announced in various districts seems much less than what must be the fact when the known inadequacy of the school system in some states is considered and seems to indicate that the census must have been taken very carelessly or that the test of what was to be considered ability to read and write was very low.
* ↑ None of the other general classes includes 100,000 souls. There are evident inconsistencies in classification. Railway workers, for example, are not classified under transportation though sailors are, and under miscellaneous are placed many classes that should apparently go under industries. The figures are from Boletin de la dirección general de estadística, 5, Mexico, 1914, p. 95. A more detailed analysis of occupations in Mexico is given in Wallace Thompson, op. cit, pp. 815-47.
* ↑ Carlos Butterfield, op. cit, p. 11.
* ↑ The above figures are compiled from Boletin de la dirección general de estadística, 5, Mexico, 1914 pp. 18, 32, 39, 53, 65 and 75.