Estimadas lectoras y estimados lectores,
Nuevomexicanos (and Mexican Americans in general) are quite aware of racism in the United States. However, we do not sufficently appreciate that Mexico is also plagued by racism. In these unpublished sections from my book Lenguaje, A Cultural History of the Spanish Language in New Mexico, I explore the conflicted history of racial relations in Mexico. Contemporary relations among the differing kinds of mexicanos are still greatly affected by this history. We explore these issues in this posting.
Mestizaje
Two worlds meet. Each knew nothing about the existence of the other. An exchange begins, which entails animals, foods, plants, technology, and language. Not the least of this exchange is the human genetic mixture that is initiated. Races mix, giving rise to the concept of mestizaje, or miscegenation. Mestizaje begins as the interbreeding of races but eventually grows to embrace cultural mixing also, as discussed in the Columbian Exchange phenomenon. The process of mestizaje in the New World started in the Caribbean with the sexual encounters between Spanish male colonizers and indigenes, largely Taíno women. Such sexual unions were at the beginning forced (rape) or the result of the concessions of war (women being given by the vanquished to the conquerors), and later due to consensual arrangements. As the native populations greatly diminished in number, African slaves were brought in and this resulted in more racial mixing on the islands.
In Mexico, Malintzin is considered the symbolic mother of mestizaje and her son Martín Cortés is often referred to as the first mestizo (Indian-Spanish male). Gonzalo Guerrero, the Spaniard who rejected his own countrymen in favor of the Maya, had three children with his native wife and these offspring preceded Martín by years; so, the Guerrero children could actually have been the very first Mexican mestizos. Symbolically, however, Martín Cortés is granted to be the first mestizo, the first hijo de la chingada, and his mother Malintzin is the symbolic first chingada.
Mexico in many ways has not yet resolved the contradictions and tensions that have resulted from mestizaje. Race consciousness is still deeply embedded in the Mexican psyche and continues to shape social and political interactions and discourse. In the first two centuries of the Spanish colony in Mexico, racial mixing was tolerated by the Spanish Crown as a pragmatic necessity because most Spanish colonizers were single men. Church authorities urged Spanish men to take indias in marriage, because of the very small number of Spanish or Spanish-descended women. After all, racial mixing had been experienced in Spain with the presence of various Caucasian varieties (Celts, Greeks, Romans, and Visigoths, for example), and Semites (Arabs, Jews, and Phoenicians, and Carthaginians). In general, Spanish men looked upon Indian women favorably. As a result, mestizaje proceeded rapidly in Mexico, both within the sacrament of Christian marriage, or outside of it, via rapes, concubinage, liaisons with servants and slaves, and cohabitation.
- Castas
However, by the 1700s racial attitudes hardened among the Spanish elite. The numbers of children of mestizaje were greatly increasing and threatening to overtake the Spanish population. This demographic threat was coupled by an economic one due to the Bourbon Reforms enacted by King Carlos III in 1707. The Reforms eliminated the monopoly of the part of Cádiz over trade with the colonies, lowered trade barriers, and welcomed independent merchants. These liberalizations stimulated the economy (especially in the mining and mercantile sectors), spurred upward mobility on the part of criollos (persons born in the New World of Spanish parentage), and even improved the condition of marginalized groups, like mestizos. However, the Spanish-born elite (peninsulares) felt economically and socially threatened. As a result, a system for categorizing people according to their racial caste (casta) was developed and implemented in the mid-1700s in Mexico. The Spanish sought to protect their blood-line heritage, which was called limpieza de sangre (cleanliness of blood) or pureza de sangre (blood purity) in the same way that had been done in medieval Spain to certify that Spaniards did not have any taint of Jewish or Moorish blood. In this manner, the elite thought they could reinforce their power and prestige. The criollos went along with this because they were included at the top of the social pyramid along with the peninsulares. This gave rise to a social mathematical system to keep track of castas. Thus, at the zero level of unmixed blood, the castas were:
Zero level: español (Spaniard or European), indio (Indian), and negro (African)
At the first level, names were given to the mixtures of these three foundational castes:67
First level:
Other names
español + india = mestizo(a) ½ E, ½ I
español + negra = mulato (a) ½ E, ½ N
indio + negra = zambo(a) ½ I, ½ N lobo(a), jarocho(a)
Then we have the second level:
español + mestiza = castizo(a) ¾ E, ¼ I
español + mulata = morisco(a) ¾ E, ¼ N
español + zamba = moreno(a) ½ E, ¼ I, ¼ N
indio + mestiza = coyote(a) ¼ E, ¾ I tresalvo(a), mestindio(a)
indio + mulata = lobo(a) ¼ E, ½ I, ¼ N
indio + zamba = zambaigo(a) ¾ I, ¼ N cambujo(a)
negro + mestiza = prieto(a) ¼ E, ¼ I, ½ N
negro + mulata = galfarro(a) ¼ E, ¾ N
negro + zamba = zambo(a) prieto(a) ¼ I, ¾ N
At the third level, examples are:
español + castiza = español(a) 7/8 E, 1/8 I españolo
español + mulata = tercerón(a) ¾ E, ¼ N cuarterón cuatralvo
español + morisca = salta atrás 7/8 E, ¼ N saltatrás, torna atrás
indio + loba = tente en el aire 5/8 E, ¼ I, 1/8 N grifo(a)
indio + mulata = mulato(a) obscuro(a) ¼ E, ½ I, ¼ N
zambo + mulata = calpán mulato(a) ¼ E, ¼ I, ½ N
lobo + negra = chino(a) 1/8 E, ¼ I, 5/8 N
mestizo + india = cholo(a) ¾ E, ¼ I
This is getting to be quite complicated and ludicrous. Some of the terms from here on become quite humorous. A torna atrás (tornatrás) – turn back, throwback, or salta atrás (saltatrás) – jump back, is the offspring of an español parent and a morisco parent, or a lobo parent and an indio parent, or a mestizo parent and a mulato parent. The meaning of the term is that the presence of African blood causes one to go back or descend in the racial hierarchy from that of the ultimate Spanish parent. A tente en el aire (the child of a torna atrás parent and a chino or lobo parent) translates to “hold yourself in midair” or more colloquially, it could imply that the child is left twisting in the wind. Moving along, a tente en el aire coupled with a mulata(o) produces a no te entiendo (I don’t understand you). Finally, the child of a no te entiendo and an india(o) is an ahí te estás, or “there you be”, i.e., “stay where you are”. The terminologies that are used to described the different combinations vary from source to source, so trying to make sense of the casta system can be bewildering. The classification system was bound to collapse from its complexity, so cruder judgment came to be made based on appearance or phenotypical characteristics. One’s skin and eye color, type of hair, and facial features were used as a guide as to how much, European, American Indian or African blood mixture one possessed. Finally, with Mexican Independence from Spain in 1821, recording race in official documents became illegal and the official casta system came to an end.
In the eighteenth century, a number of Mexican artists like Manuel de Arellano, Juan Rodríguez Juárez, Morlette Ruiz, and most notably, Miguel Cabrera, produced paintings, called pinturas de castas, that illustrate some of the combinations inherent in the differing castas. These paintings are idealized and reflect reality only broadly. Human divisions and amalgamations are not so neatly categorized as in the casta paintings. Many of the casta artists were of mixed parentage themselves, so they were attuned to the processes of mestizaje and understood the social meanings of their works. Here is an example of a painting by Miguel Cabrera:
De Español y de India, Mestiza by Miguel Cabrera, 18th Century
The sistema de castas (caste classification system) was outdated by the early nineteenth century and of no practical use. This is not to say by any means that racism has disappeared from Mexican society. While the United States has hardly been affected by the indigenous presence (since American Indians were either killed or put on reservations out of sight), Mexico is saturated, some may say haunted, by Indian influence. Also, the amount of apparent African admixture in the Mexican population is very small due to the absorption of these genes into the larger pool, but a resurgent African consciousness is also being expressed in recent years, as we shall see.
It is very difficult to get a handle on the scope of mestizaje in Mexico because of governmental restrictions and societal attitudes. In 1930 the Mexican government stopped collecting data on its population by racial category of white, indigenous, and mestizo, opting only to count indigenes by their use of an indigenous language. Only recently have official censuses and surveys been conducted to try to determine the extent of Mexicans with African and European ancestry, as well as indigenes by both language use and genetic makeup. What is certain is that the designation mestizo has lost almost all its meaning as a racial classification. In contemporary Mexico, the term mestizo can refer to genetic profile or cultural mixture and can include African contributions. Moreover, the term is no longer prevalent in modern Mexican vocabulary and is considered somewhat pejorative. This further complicates mestizo self-classification. Using a biologically-based classification, the Encyclopedia Britannica estimates that between half to two-thirds of the Mexican population is mestizo (here meaning European-Amerindian mixture), while about 20% is indigenous (Amerindian), and Euro-Mexicans constitute one-tenth to one-fifth of the population.68 Estimates that are based on cultural mestizaje are as high as 90%.69 Generally speaking, the percentage of Indian blood in mestizos in Central and Eastern Mexico is higher than that in Northern Mexico. For example, one genetic study in Mexico City showed mestizos to have an average of 69% indigenous blood, 26% European and 5% African.70 A study of Sonora indicated a mixture of 36% indigenous, 62% European, and 2% African.71
- La Raza Cósmica and Indigenismo
As a result of the 1910 Mexican Revolution, an intellectual movement developed in Mexico centered on the concept of mestizaje and its application to the building of national identity. Mexican philosopher and Secretary of Public Education José Vasconcelos published his influential book La Raza Cósmica in 1925 in which he lauds the creation of a new race of people in Mexico and Latin America, which is the mixture of all the races of the world. He posits that this will lead to the creation of a new color-blind society upon which Mexico will build a modern nation based on a unified national identity, and which will lead to social progress. As a teenager, Vasconcelos lived in Piedras Negras on the U.S./Mexico border and went to school in Eagle Pass, Texas, just across the Rio Grande. As a result, he was bilingual in Spanish and English, but he grew to reject the culture of Anglo Americans. Vasconcelos viewed them as arrogant, materialistic, shallow, and aggressive, as well as racist. He had a vision of a modern Mexico based on the celebration of mestizaje and he promotes Spanish culture and Catholicism as foundational elements to the new society, but these elements would be applied to the context furnished by the New World. While he glorifies the mixture of Spanish and indigenous cultures, he at the same time denigrates Indian and African cultures as barriers to the construction of a modern and progressive Mexico. There is a conflict at the heart of Vasconcelos’ ideas. On the one hand, he supports the mixture of cultures, but he accepts the Indigenous and the African only when they are blended with the European blood and culture, and he places European culture in a superior position. Vasconcelos engages in the reckless and harmful stereotyping of races and cultures. His theories are in essence racist. A quote from La Raza Cósmica illustrates this point, “It is in this fusion of ethnic stocks that we should look for the fundamental characteristic of Ibero-American idiosyncrasy. …. In Latin America, a thousand bridges are available for the sincere and cordial fusion of all races. The ethnic barricading of those to the north in contrast to the much more open sympathy of those to the south is the most important factor, and at the same time, the most favorable to us, if one reflects even superficially upon the future, because it will be seen immediately that we belong to tomorrow, while the Anglo-Saxons are gradually becoming more a part of yesterday. … (The Ibero-American) soul resembles the old Mayan cenote [natural well] of green waters, laying deep and still, in the middle of the forest, for so many centuries since, that not even its legend remains anymore. This infinite quietude is stirred with the drop put in our blood by the Black, eager for sensual joy, intoxicated with dances and unbridled lust. There also appears the Mongol, with the mystery of his slanted eyes that see everything according to a strange angle, and discover I know not what folds and newer dimensions. The clear mind of the White, that resembles his skin and his dreams, also intervenes. Judaic striae, hidden within the Castilian blood since the days of the cruel expulsion, now reveal themselves, along with Arabian melancholy, as a remainder of the sickly Muslim sensuality. …We in America shall arrive, before any other part of the world, at the creation of a new race fashioned out of the treasures of all the previous ones: The final race, the cosmic race.”72 Vasconcelos’ ideas about la raza would be resurrected in altered form in the Chicano Movement of the 1970s, as we will see later. On the other hand, the United States continues to absorb differing peoples from within and without its borders. Time magazine published a special issue in November 1993 of the effect of immigration on the United States and featured the computer-generated morphed face of a woman with the title “The New Face of America”. The physical appearance of the hypothetical woman is what Vasconcelos seemed to be envisioning, but the nation in which this hybridity is being manifested is the United States of (North) America, not Latin (South) America. There is an irony here someplace.
The New Face of America, Time Magazine, November 18, 1993
The different, but related, idea of indigenismo started circulating around the same time and it was promulgated by such thinkers as Mexican anthropologist Manuel Gamio. The presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas gave a great push to the indigenismo movement. Conferences were held on the theme, but indigenous voices were not present, only those of non-indigenous “experts”. The proclamations of these gatherings called for the integration and acculturation of the Indigenous into Mexican society, rather than indigenizing Mexico. Gamio was instrumental in renovating the archeological site at Teotihuacan. It became a tourist attraction, while live Mexican Indians continued to exist in conditions of dire poverty. Gamio served as director of the Instituto Indigenista Interamericano in Mexico City from its founding in 1940 until his death in 1960. His administration of this official organ of the Organization of American States continued its paternalistic policies toward the indigenous peoples of Mexico. The assimilationist attitudes of indigenismo have been increasingly challenged since the 1970s. In this regard, a leader in the movement for indigenous rights was anthropologist Guillermo Bonfil Batalla. He proposed a national state in which indigenous groups could exercise self-determination to improve their economic and social development. In his book México Profundo, he claims that many indigenous groups are culturally connected to their Mesoamerican civilizations and they form the “deep Mexico”, el México profundo. He claims that the problems of the indigenous will only get worse under the mestizo nation-building policies with their emphasis on assimilation and disappearance of intrinsically indigenous communities. More currently, in 1994, an armed populace of poverty- stricken Zapotec and Tzotzil Indians, calling themselves the Zapatista National Liberation Army, revolted in the state of Chiapas and called for reforms such as the return of privatized lands to indigenous communities, improved medical services, fair prices for farm products (which have been depressed due to NAFTA and other governmental policies), and social improvements such as the building of housing and educational facilities. The Zapatistas established several self-proclaimed autonomous communities, which have established cooperative business enterprises to improve their economic status. The Mexican government continues to keep an armed presence in Chiapas to keep an eye on the Zapatistas. In the meanwhile, the Zapatista movement has spread to other regions of Mexico and it is still a revolution in progress. However, Mexico’s elite and its government continue on the path of neo-liberal economic development tied into globalization and, while some have benefitted, there are still severe problems in the country. Mexico has the world’s 11th largest economy in 2018, but it ranks 68th in the world with respect to GDP per capita. Mexico is being held back by high levels of corruption, the fragile rule of law, crime (especially, drug cartels), uneven taxation and collection, impunity, and high levels of poverty. Problems of inequality are enormous. According to a study of the 35 countries composing the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Mexico had the second highest level of inequality after Chile in 2014. The United States was third in inequality. Seven in ten Mexicans are living in poverty or vulnerability. Just one percent of the population owns about half of the country’s wealth.73 We can see that Mexico has a long way to go economically.
- Racism in Mexico
We thus see that Mexico is still suffering from the aftereffects of the Spanish conquest in many ways. Subsequent cultural, social, economic, and psychological problems have affected Mexican society to this day. Not the least of these problems is that of racism. Many Mexicans deny that racism is a reality in Mexico given its widespread political and cultural support of integration and mestizaje. However, the reality of racism in Mexico in everyday life is apparent to anyone who is paying attention. Mexican media such as television, movies, popular magazines, and advertising abound with white Mexicans, but to the exclusion of Indians, Blacks, and even mestizos.
The popular television image of la India María, a comical interpretation of an indigenous woman and portrayed by a non-Indian, is an example that is now being examined critically in Mexico. María is a rural Indian who goes to Mexico City and encounters racism, corruption, and class discrimination with good humor, spunky determination, and a simple sense of what is right or wrong. She was much beloved by the Mexican public in her film and television appearances. However, her portrayal feeds into the prejudices of Mexicans about Indians in the stereotypical way she dresses (braided hair with colorful traditional blouses and skirts), how she speaks (a fractured rural Spanish), about the social roles she fills (mostly as a servant) and regarding her character (naïve, dim, and innocent). An indigenous Mexican would find la India María adhering to the harmful and degrading views Mexicans have of indios. A Mexican blogger writes, “The cultural appropriation and exploitation, in this case, is an abomination.”74 Mexican telenovelas (soap operas) are very popular in Mexico and in the United States among the Spanish-speaking, and the vast majority of the actors in them consists of whites (either Mexicans, Europeans or other Latin Americans). This discrepancy is being noted and commented upon in increasing numbers. One researcher analyzed three Mexican telenovelas (Rebelde, Carrusel, and Amigas y Rivales) with adolescent and primary school characters, and found negative stereotyping of the principals with respect to social position and power, depictions of beauty, and phenotypes.75 Upper-class characters are White and good looking; the newly well-off are shown as crass, vulgar and darker colored; an Indian maid is played by a mestiza actress, and so on. The telenovelas sometimes deal sympathetically with the social conflict engendered by the differences in backgrounds of the characters.
More recently, the Mexican indigenous actress Yalitza Aparicio, who is of Mixteca and Triqui descent was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actress in 2019 for her portrayal as a servant in the movie Roma. She was attacked by Mexican actor Sergio Goyri in a video that went viral that her nomination was for “una pinche india que dice, ‘sí señora, no señora’ …” (a damned Indian who says, “Yes, madam, no, madam …”)76
The contestants in beauty pageants in Mexico are almost exclusively European looking. Of course, beauty pageants are notorious for their racial exclusion, also in the United States. The Mexicana Universal 2018 pageant selected the following winner from the state of Colima, who goes on to the Miss Universe competition:
Winner of Mexican Universal Pageant 2018
For a look at the (almost-all-White) top sixteen contestants in the Mexicana Universal 2018 pageant, follow this link (Miss Universe México 2018 Eliminatoria): https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=fqh-GjumG9A
Middle-class (and above) households in Mexico City universally hire maids, who are overwhelmingly indigenous women. When the garbage truck comes around, the calls of “basura” (trash) resound, and the Indian maids dutifully go out to toss the refuse. It is a remarkable sight to someone from the United States, where only the upper classes have servants. An army of maids descends from the surrounding apartment buildings to see to it that the garbage is thrown. Our family inherited a maid when I went to Mexico City to teach mathematics in 1969. We consented to take the maid from an American mathematician who was returning to the United States. We had a two-year-old in diapers and my wife needed help. There were no washing machine facilities for residents in our apartment building in the Polanco district of Mexico City and laundromats were non-existent. The maids would take the family clothes to the rooftop, where they lived, and there they washed the clothes by hand. This arrangement made it necessary for us to hire a maid, who was an indigenous young woman from Puebla. We treated our maid quite differently from the others in the building. My wife prepared our food and our maid ate with us. Often, maids prepared food for the family, but they would usually eat their own food, alone, away from the family. We also paid her twice as much as the other maids. When Christmas came around, we had our maid go to Puebla to spend the holiday with her family. Our Mexican friends were very surprised at this since it was during the holidays when they would utilize maids the most to help in throwing parties. The other residents of our building were not amused at our violating their social conventions. These are just personal anecdotes, but they are indicative of how Indians are treated. Perhaps things have changed since 1969, but I suspect that improvements since then have been minimal. A 1995 article in the New York Times describes an incident where a U.S. businessman living in Mexico invited his Mexican Indian maid to join them for dinner at a posh Polanco restaurant. He was told, in English, by the restaurant manager that servants were not allowed to be served in the restaurant. The manager said, “We’re not racists. We’re just trying to protect the image of the restaurant.”77 Racism and classism against indigenous peoples are alive and well in modern Mexican society.
Mexicans with sub-Saharan African ancestry make up a very small proportion of the Mexican population. African genes have been largely absorbed in the genetic pool of Mexico so that there are relatively few places where their presence is pronounced. Recognizably Afro-Mexicans are concentrated in the coastal states of Veracruz, Oaxaca, and Guerrero. They are the descendants of slaves and are very poor. Academics have called Afro-Mexicans the “third race” and they certainly are a forgotten group of people. Article 2 of the Mexican federal constitution recognizes the multicultural composition of the country and gives mentions of the indigenous groups, but it does not mention Afro-Mexicans. This exclusion has motivated Black Mexicans to lobby for official recognition. In response to this pressure, in 2015 the Intercensus Estimate allowed Afro-Mexicans to self-identify themselves for the first time and it is hoped that the official 2020 national census will include this identity. The census found that 1.38 million people (1.2% of the total Mexican population) identified themselves as being of African descent. Interestingly, 65% of Afro-Mexicans in the 2015 count also self-identified as Indian and 9.3% also speak an indigenous language.78 México Negro, a civil rights organization for Afro-Mexicans, is working to include material on Africans and Afro-Mexicans in elementary and high school curricula.
Mexican attitudes toward black people vary from hostility to patronization. In 2015, Univision television host Rodner Figueroa said of a picture of Michelle Obama, “You know Michelle Obama looks like she’s from the cast of Planet of the Apes, the movie.” When his cohosts pushed back at him, Figueroa concluded, “But it is true.” The clueless Figueroa was fired by Univision for his remarks. Former Mexican president Vicente Fox addressed a binational business audience regarding his concerns about the G.W. Bush administration policies to reduce illegal immigration of Mexicans to the United States. Fox spoke positively about the many roles that Mexican immigrants fill in the U.S. economy and he went on to say, “There is no doubt that Mexicans, filled with dignity, willingness and ability to work, are doing jobs that not even blacks want to do there in the United States.” Mexican officials and commentators were quick to defend Fox and insisted that his statement was not racist. President Fox issued a vague apology after meeting with Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, U.S. African American leaders, who accused the president of racial insensitivity. What Fox said was in accord with the common Mexican saying. “Trabajo como negro para vivir como blanco.” (I work like a Black in order to live like a White). Shortly after this incident, Mexico issued a set of five postage stamps as part of a celebration of Mexican comic books. The stamps featured the much-beloved young Black character named Memín Pinguín, whose exaggerated depiction includes thick lips and saucer-like eyes, a la Little Black Sambo. Again, voices in the United States cried out racism, without knowing anything about the historical or social context of the comic strip. For example, when Memín and a group of friends are invited to play soccer in Texas, the Black youngster is subject to Jim Crow laws (this was in the 1950s) and insults. Memín is defended by his friends and for good measure, the team goes on to win its soccer match. U.S. observers saw only the cartoonish figure and reacted accordingly. In defense, the otherwise progressive Mexican writer, Elena Poniatowska argued, “During the years of the (comic’s) existence no one in Mexico felt offended; in all, he is a very beloved character. In our country, the image of Blacks awakens an enormous fondness, which is reflected not only in personages like Memín Pinguín but also in popular songs. In Mexico, unlike what occurs in the United States, our treatment toward Blacks has been more affectionate.”79 Nevertheless, her patronizing reaction is reflective of the failure of Mexico’s intelligentsia to take the bull of racism by the horns.
The official ideology of Mexico is to celebrate its mestizaje and most Mexicans deny that racism is a major problem. However, the political, social and economic realities of indigenous and African-descended Mexican citizens speak to the vast racial and class discrimination against them in modern-day Mexico.
References for Mestizaje: Castas, La Raza Cosmica y Idigenismo, and Racism in Mexico
67. Nicolás León, Las castas del México Colonial o Nueva España, Talleres gráficos del
Museo Nacional de Arqueología, Historia y Etnografía, México D.F., 1924. Quoted in
La Pintura de Castas, Artes de México, No. 8, verano de 1990, México, D.F., p. 79.
68. Ethnic groups, Mexico, Encyclopedia Britannica, August 31, 2018.
https://www.britannica.com/place/Mexico/Ethnic-groups
69. Federico Navarrete, El Mestizaje y las Culturas Regionales, excerpted from Las
Relaciones Interétnicas en México, México Nación Multicultural, Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México, México D.F., 2004.
http://www.red.pucp.edu.pe/ridei/files/2012/02/120203.pdf
70. Juárez-Cedillo T, Zuñiga J, Acuña-Alonso V, Pérez-Hernández N, Rodríguez-Pérez JM,
Berquera R, Gallardo J, Jr, Sánchez-Arena R, García-Peña MC, Granados J, et al.,
Genetic admixture and diversity estimations in the Mexican Mestizo population from
Mexico City using 15 STR polymorphic markers, Forensic Science International.
Genetics, 2008;2: e37–e39.
71. Silva-Zolezzi I, Hidalgo-Miranda A, Estrada-Gil J, Fernandez-Lopez JC, Uribe-
Figueroa L, Contreras A, Balam-Ortiz E, Bosque-Plata L, Velazquez-Fernandez D,
Lara C, et al. Analysis of genomic diversity in Mexican
Mestizo populations to develop genomic medicine in Mexico. Proceedings of the
National Academy of Science, USA. 2009; 106: pp. 8611–8616.
72. José Vasconcelos, The Cosmic Race, The Mexico Reader: History, Culture, Politics,
Editors Gilbert M. Joseph and Timothy J. Henderson, Duke University Press,
Durham, 2002, pp. 16–19.
https://www.epcc.edu/faculty/rferrell/Documents/The_Cosmic_Race.pdf
73. Ángel Gurría, Global and Mexico Economic Outlook 2018, Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development, January 13, 2018.
http://www.oecd.org/mexico/global-and-mexico-economic-outlook-2018.htm
See also: 2016 Data for Mexico, The World Bank.
https://data.worldbank.org/country/mexico
74. Roi López, La india pendeja (María): una manifestación del racismo en la cultura
mexicana, November 20, 2014.
http://roiblg.blogspot.com/2014/11/la-india-pendeja-maria-una_72.html
75. Rochel Caballero Ávila, Las telenovelas mexicanas y el racismo, Difusor Ibero,
November 27, 2013.
https://difusoribero.com/2013/11/27/las-telenovelas-mexicanas-y-el-racismo/
76. Los lamentables comentarios racistas y clasistas que ha recibido Yalitza, nación 321
magazine, June 1, 2019.
https://www.nacion321.com/ciudadanos/los-lamentables-comentarios-racistas-que-
ha-recibido-yalitza
77. Anthony DePalma, Racism? Mexico’s in Denial, New York Times, June 11, 1995.
https://www.nytimes.com/1995/06/11/weekinreview/the-world-racism-mexico-s-in-
denial.html
78. ¿Cuánta población se autorreconoce afrodescendiente? Etnicidad, Principales resultados,
Encuesta Intercensal 2015, Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía, México,
2015. http://internet.contenidos.inegi.org.mx/contenidos/productos/prod_serv/
contenidos/espanol/bvinegi/productos/nueva_estruc/promo/eic_2015_presentacion.pdf
79. Fabiola Palapa, Ericka Montano, and Mónica Mateos, Memín Pinguín no es el icono
popular del racismo en México, La Jornada, Mexico City, Julio, 2005.
http://www.jornada.com.mx/2005/07/01/index.php?section=cultura&article
=a04n1cul
LenguajeNM 