Spanish immigration to Mexico

Spanish Mexicans
hispano-mexicanos
Total population
123,189 Spanish nationals (2016)[1]Note
Languages
Religion
Predominantly Roman Catholicism,
also Sephardic Judaism
Related ethnic groups
Mestizo Mexican, other Spanish diaspora

^ Note: 19,223 individuals were born in Spain, 100,067 in Mexico, 3,689 in other countries and 210 were n/a.

Part of a series on
Spaniards
Regional groups

Other groups
Diaspora
Languages

Other languages
Religion
Spain portal

Spanish Mexicans are citizens or residents of Mexico who identify as Spanish as a result of nationality or ancestry. Spanish immigration to Mexico began in the early 1500s and spans to the present day.[2]

The first Spanish settlement was established in February 1519, as a result of the landing of Hernán Cortés in the Yucatan Peninsula, accompanied by about 11 ships, 500 men, 13 horses and a small number of cannons.[3] In March 1519, Cortés formally claimed the land for the Spanish crown, and the conquest of the Aztec Empire, a key event in the Spanish conquest of modern-day Mexico in general, was completed in 1521.

Arrival of the Spanish

The social composition of this immigration of the late sixteenth century included both common people, illiterates, and aristocrats with titles of counts and marquises, all of which quickly disintegrated over the territory. The discovery of new deposits of various minerals in the central and northern areas (from Sonora to the southern provinces of Mexico) allowed New Spain to gradually occupy a privileged position, especially in the extraction of silver. Mining allowed the development of associated activities such as manufacturing and agriculture, that turned the Bajío regions or the valleys of Mexico and Puebla into prosperous agricultural regions with incipient industrial activity.

Spanish culture in Mexico

Charrería is a Mexican sport with Spanish origins

Language

Main article: Spanish Language

Spanish was brought to Mexico around 500 years ago. As a result of Mexico City's central role in the colonial administration of New Spain, the population of the city included relatively large numbers of speakers from Spain. Mexico City (Tenochtitlán) had also been the capital of the Aztec Empire, and many speakers of the Aztec language Nahuatl continued to live there and in the surrounding region, outnumbering the Spanish-speakers for several generations. Consequently, Mexico City tended historically to exercise a standardizing effect over the entire country, more or less, evolving into a distinctive dialect of Spanish which incorporated a significant number of hispanicized Nahuatl words.

Bullfighting

Bullfighting arrived in Mexico with the first Spaniards and the rest of Latin America in the 16th century. Records are found of the first bullfights debuted in Mexico on June 26, 1526, with a bullfight in Mexico City held in honor of explorer Hernán Cortés, who had just come back from Honduras (then known as Las Hibueras). From that point on, bullfights were staged all over Mexico as part of various civic, social and religious celebrations. Today, there are about 220 permanent bullrings throughout Mexico with the largest venue of its kind is the Plaza de toros México in central Mexico City which opened in 1946 and seats 48,000 people.[4]

Spanish place names in Mexico

There are hundreds of places in Mexico named after places in Spain or have Spanish names due to the Spanish colonialism, Spanish settlers and explorers. These include:

Immigration waves

Numerous Spanish children were sent to Mexico by their famalies to escape the Spanish Civil War. President Lázaro Cárdenas is pictured with a group in the bottom-left.
Monument dedicated to the refugees of the Spanish Civil War in Veracruz, Veracruz.

There are three recognized large-scale Spanish immigration waves to Mexico: the first arrived during the colonial period, the second after the Spanish Civil War and the third (and current) after the 2008 financial crisis.

In the 16th century, following the military conquest of most of the new continent, perhaps 240,000 Spaniards entered American ports. They were joined by 450,000 in the next century.[5] Since the conquest of Mexico, this region became the principal destination of Spanish colonial settlers in the 16th century. The first Spaniards who arrived in Mexico were soldiers and sailors from Extremadura, Andalucía and La Mancha after the conquest of America.[6][7] At the end of the 16th century both commoner and aristocrat from Spain were migrating to Mexico.

In the period 1850-1950, 3.5 million Spanish left for the Americas, and Mexico became one of the chief destinations, particularly the Northern region where Porfirio Diaz started a campaign of European immigration to supply labor.[8]

Most recent migrants came during the Spanish Civil War. More than 100,000 Spanish refugees settled in Mexico during this era. Some of the migrants returned to Spain after the civil war, but many more remained in Mexico.

Due to the 2008 Financial Crisis and the resulting economic decline and high unemployment in Spain, many Spaniards have been emigrating to Mexico to seek new opportunities.[9] For example, during the last quarter of 2012, a number of 7,630 work permits were granted to Spaniards.[10]

The Asturians are a very large community that have a long history in Mexico, dating from colonial times to the present. There are about 42,000 people of Asturian birth in Mexico. The Catalans are also very numerous in Mexico. According to sources from the Catalan community, there are approximately 12,000 Catalan-born around the country.. There are also as many as 8,500 Basques, 6,000 Galicians, and 1,600 Canary Islanders.

Regions

The largest population of Spanish descent are located in the Northern region, where they make up the largest proportion of the population. Large populations are found in the states like Sinaloa, Jalisco, Zacatecas, Aguascalientes, Durango, Guanajuato, Mexico City, Puebla, and Veracruz. Also, Northern Mexico is inhabited by many millions of Spanish descendants. Some states like Zacatecas, Sinaloa, Chihuahua, Sonora, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas, have those of Spanish descent as the majority of the population.

As the Spanish royal Government doted the New Spain from Kingdoms and Territories, a great part of them followed names. So we can find lots of Basque criollos in Durango and Southern Chihuahua as those territories were part of the Kingdom of New Vizcay, Galician descendants in Jalisco being part of the Kingdom of New Galicia.

Numbers

Spanish descendants make up the largest group of Europeans in Mexico. Most of their ancestors arrived during the colonial period but a further hundreds of thousands have since then immigrated, especially during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s.[11] According to CIA World Factbook, whites make up 10% of Mexico's population.[12] The Encyclopædia Britannica states those of predominantly European descent make up closer to one-sixth (≈17%) of the Mexican population.[13]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Estadística del Padrón de Españoles Residentes en el Extranjero a 1 de enero de 2016" (PDF). Instituto Nacional de Estadística. Retrieved 18 March 2016.
  2. ↑ http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/379167/Mexico/27384/Ethnic-groups
  3. ↑ Bernard Grunberg, "La folle aventure d'Hernán Cortés", in L'Histoire n°322, July–August 2007
  4. ↑ www.worldstadiums.com
  5. ↑ Axtell, James (September–October 1991). "The Columbian Mosaic in Colonial America". Humanities 12 (5): 12–18. Archived from the original on May 17, 2008. Retrieved 2008-10-08.
  6. ↑ http://www.emperadores.es/circuitos/tierra-de-conquistadores
  7. ↑ http://www.allspainaccommodation.com/extremadura/extremadura.htm
  8. ↑ Patricia Rivas. "Reconocerán nacionalidad española a descendientes de exiliados :: YVKE Mundial". Radiomundial.com.ve. Retrieved 2010-07-10.
  9. ↑ http://newamericamedia.org/2013/02/as-spains-economy-worsens-young-adults-flock-to-mexico-for-jobs.php
  10. ↑ http://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanielparishflannery/2013/04/30/as-spain-falters-spaniards-look-to-latin-america/
  11. ↑ http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=083e0b4728d31cd23a57533cf02c46c5
  12. ↑ CIA World Factbook. See also White Latin American for external sources.
  13. ↑ http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/379167/Mexico/27384/Ethnic-groups?anchor=ref394520
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Sunday, April 03, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.