Mexicans of European Descent - Establishment of A European Elite

Establishment of A European Elite

The main reason for the presence of European-descended people in Mexico is the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire in the early 16th century. Hernán Cortés and the conquistadors, with their light skin, brown or blonde hair and light-colored eyes, had never been seen before by the people of Mesoamerica. There are stories that Moctezuma took Cortés to be the return of the God Quetzalcoatl, but this has been disputed. Cortés managed to conquer the Aztecs through a series of alliances with enemy peoples which in the end made the Spanish dominant politically, although a very small minority numerically. Further migration into Mexico from Spain supplemented the numbers of ethnic Europeans during the colonial period. The conquest and subsequent domination by Europeans was justified by the Spanish as the indigenous were uncivilized and needed to be converted to Christianity. Spanish language and culture was imposed with indigenous ones suppressed.

The Mexican experience mirrors much of that of the rest of Latin America, as attitudes towards race, including identification, were set by the conquistadors and Spanish who came soon after. Through the colonial period, the Spanish and their descendents, called "criollos", remained vastly outnumbered by the indigenous and "mestizos", or those of mixed Spanish and indigenous parents. To keep power, the Spanish and criollo elite perpetuated the idea of "Spanish" being equivalent to "civilized". The population of Mexico (or New Spain) was organized into a hierarchical class system with those from Spain being the most privileged, followed by criollos, then mestizos than the indigenous. Classification of this system was mostly by race, which was determined mostly by whom one descended from. The system was not completely rigid and elements such as social class and social relations did figure into it. However, the notion of "Spanishness" would remain at the top and "Indianness" would be at the bottom, with those mixed being somewhere in the middle. This idea remained officially in force through the rest of the colonial period.

Criollo resentment to the privileges afforded the Spain-born or peninsulares was part of the reason behind the Mexican War of Independence. When the war ended in 1821, the new Mexican government expelled the peninsulares in the 1820s and 1830s. However, Independence did not do away with economic and social privilege based on race as the Criollos took over those of the Spain born. A division between "Spanish" and "indigenous" remained despite a majority mestizo or mixed race population. However, biological features were often not enough to distinguish between the two in many cases and some mixing occurred even in the upper classes. The main distinction between criollos and mestizos became money and social class and less about biological differences. The Criollos distinguished themselves from the rest of society as the guardians of Spanish culture as well as the Catholic religion.

Those considered to be white/criollo/European were never the majority of the country's population, reaching a peak at around 47% during the early 19th century, according to census records. By 1921, the last time the official census took race into account, about ten percent were considered to be "white". This is one reason why many of the political struggles of the latter 19th and early 20th centuries would be between these elite and the majority mestizos.