page_title: White Latin Americans
section_title: Mexico
hierarchical_section_title: White Latin Americans / Populations / North America / Mexico
caption_attribution_description: Català: Guillermo del Toro, fotografiat durant el Festival Internacional de Cinema Fantàstic de Catalunya (Sitges, 2017) English: Guillermo del Toro, photographed during the Festival Internacional de Cinema Fantàstic de Catalunya (Sitges, 2017)
context_page_description: White Latin Americans, or European Latin Americans, are Latin Americans who are considered white, typically due to European or Levantine, descent. Latin American countries have often encouraged intermarriage between different ethnic groups since the beginning of the colonial period.
  People descended from European settlers who arrived in the Americas during the colonial and post-independence periods can be found throughout Latin America. Most of the earliest settlers were Spanish and Portuguese; after independence, the most numerous immigrants have been Europeans, followed by Levantine Semites, Armenians, and other Europeans.
  Composing from 33% to 36% of the population as of 2010, according to some sources, White Latin Americans constitute the largest racial-ethnic group in the region. White is the self-identification of many Latin Americans in some national censuses. According to a survey conducted by Cohesión Social in Latin America, conducted on a sample of 10,000 people from seven countries of the region, 34% of those interviewed identified themselves as white.
context_section_description: White Mexicans are for the most part descendants of Spanish immigrants who arrived mainly from northern regions of Spain such as Cantabria, Navarra, Galicia and the Basque Country; however in the 19th and 20th century many non-Iberian immigrants arrived to the country, either motivated by economic opportunity (Americans, Canadians, English), government programs (Italians, Irish, Germans) or political motives such as the French during the Second Mexican Empire. In the 20th century, international political instability was a key factor to drive immigration to Mexico; in this era Greeks, Romanians, Portuguese, Armenians, Poles, Russians, Lebanese, Palestinians and Jews, along with many Spanish refugees fleeing the Spanish Civil War, also settled in Mexico whereas in the 21st century, due to Mexico's economic growth, immigration from Europe has increased (mainly France and Spain), people from the United States have arrived as well, nowadays making up more than three-quarters of Mexico's roughly one million legal migrants. In that time, more people from the United States have been added to the population of Mexico than Mexicans to that of the United States, according to government data in both nations.
  Mexico's northern and western regions have the highest percentages of European population, according to the American historian Howard F. Cline the majority of Mexicans in these regions have no native admixture and their aspect resemble that of northern Spaniards. In the north and west of Mexico, the indigenous tribes were substantially smaller than those found in central and southern Mexico, and also much less organized, thus they remained isolated from the rest of the population or even in some cases were hostile towards Mexican colonists. Because of this, Europeans often were the most numerous ethnic group within colonial cities in northern and western Mexico (albeit this trend is also seen in large central Mexican cities such as Mexico City) and became the regions with the highest proportion of whites during the Spanish colonial period. However, recent immigrants from southern Mexico have been changing, to some degree, its demographic trends.
  Estimates of Mexico's white population differ greatly in both, methodology and percentages given, extra-official sources such as the World factbook and Encyclopædia Britannica, which use the 1921 census results as the base of their estimations calculate Mexico's White population as only 9% or between one tenth to one fifth (the results of the 1921 census, however, have been contested by various historians and deemed inaccurate). 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%. 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%). 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, 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 reported a percentages of 47% in 2010 and 49% in 2017 respectively. Another survey published in 2018 reported a percentage significantly lower at 29%, this time however, the surveying of Mexicans from "vulnerable groups" was prioritized, which among other measures meant that states known to have high numbers of people from said groups surveyed more people.
  A study performed in hospitals of Mexico City reported that an average 51.8% of Mexican newborns presented the congenital skin birthmark known as the Mongolian spot whilst it was absent 
caption: Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro
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