Mexican Americans

I

Introduction

Mexican Americans, residents of the United States who trace their ancestry to Mexico. Mexican Americans are also known as Chicanos, Xicanos, Mexicanos, La Raza, and Mex-Americans. While the term Chicano has gone in and out of fashion since the late 1940s, it is still the preferred identification for many Mexican Americans. The term Mexican American, on the other hand, is commonly used in government documents, by the mainstream media, and by Mexican Americans in interactions with other ethnic groups.

In the 2000 U.S. census 21.5 million people identified themselves as Mexican Americans. An additional 2 to 3 million illegal immigrants from Mexico are estimated to live in the United States. Mexican Americans constitute the largest group of Hispanic Americans. About 90 percent of the Mexican American population today can be traced to emigration from impoverished rural regions of northern Mexico during the 20th century. The rest trace their roots to 17th- and 18th-century colonists who settled in Mexican territories that are now part of the southwestern United States, including California, Texas, and parts of New Mexico, Colorado, and Arizona. Mexican Americans still live primarily in these southwestern states. Large Mexican American communities have also been established outside the Southwest in a number of big cities, including Chicago and New York City.

Mexican Americans are a multiracial people, joined together by a shared history and culture. Due to Mexico’s long history of interracial marriages, Mexican Americans have a variety of skin colors. The Mexican American population includes whites; Native Americans; mestizos, people of mixed Native American and European descent; and mulattoes, people of mixed African and European ancestry.

II

Language

The Spanish language serves as an important unifying force in the Mexican American community. Unlike members of many other immigrant groups, most second- and third-generation Mexican Americans have not given up their native language. Both English and Spanish are spoken in close to 70 percent of Mexican American households. English is used in the public sphere, particularly in business and at school. Spanish, known as the domestic tongue, is used in the home, for religious occasions, among family members, and in popular entertainment. Spanish links Mexican Americans to other Hispanic Americans, particularly those from Spanish-speaking countries in the Caribbean and Central America.

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The Spanish spoken by most Mexican Americans differs from standard Mexican Spanish. Over the decades, Mexican American Spanish has been so heavily influenced by English that many refer to it as Spanglish, a combination of Spanish and English. Each local Mexican American community incorporates different words from these languages, making its Spanglish unique. Through this peculiar form of trilingualism, combining English, Spanish, and Spanglish, Mexican Americans assert the value of their immigrant heritage. The complex nature of Mexican American language use reflects the community’s hybrid identity. Because Mexico shares a border with the United States, many Mexican Americans travel back and forth between the two countries with relative ease. Mexican Americans live in both countries, and their community spans the international border. The influx of Hispanic immigrants, who continue to speak their native language within their communities, has reinforced the role of Spanish in the United States.

III

Religion

Most Mexican Americans are members of the Roman Catholic Church. However, a significant number of Mexican Americans, particularly in New Mexico, are Jews of Sephardic background. Spanish settlers first brought Sephardic Judaism, which developed in Spain during the Middle Ages, to New Mexico during the 17th and 18th centuries. The recent rise of Evangelicalism in Latin America has encouraged many Mexicans and Mexican Americans to convert to Protestantism. However, the Roman Catholic Church remains a central institution in the Mexican American community. The teachings of the Catholic Church influence the sexual, educational, and political views of most Mexican Americans. Most Mexican Americans practice the distinctive form of Catholicism developed in their home country. Mexican Catholicism gives great importance to the veneration of saints and the Virgin of Guadalupe, a vision of the Virgin Mary revealed to a peasant in central Mexico in 1531.

IV

Holidays

Religious holidays, such as Christmas and Easter, are celebrated with a passion matched only on Mexican national holidays. Cinco de Mayo (Fifth of May) is a popular celebration in the Mexican American community. Cinco de Mayo commemorates a Mexican victory at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862, in which an outnumbered Mexican force defeated a French army attempting to install the Austrian Archduke Maximilian as Emperor of Mexico. Mexican Americans also celebrate Mexican Independence Day on September 16th, honoring the anniversary of the 1810 proclamation in which the revolutionary priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla declared Mexico independent from Spain. On El Día de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead), a holiday observed on November 2nd, many Mexican Americans honor the dead and visit the tombs of their deceased friends and relatives. Mexican Americans celebrate these fiestas, or festivals, with traditional Mexican foods made with ingredients such as corn tortillas, beans, rice, and hot chilies.