Mexicans

Mexicans (Spanish: Mexicanos) are the citizens and nationals of the United Mexican States. The Mexican people have varied origins with the most spoken language being Spanish, but many also speak languages from 68 different Indigenous linguistic groups and other languages brought to Mexico by expatriates or recent immigration. In 2020, 19.4% of Mexico's population identified as Indigenous. There are currently about 12 million Mexican nationals residing outside Mexico, with about 11.7 million living in the United States. The larger Mexican diaspora can also include individuals that trace ancestry to Mexico and self-identify as Mexican but are not necessarily Mexican by citizenship. The United States has the largest Mexican population in the world after Mexico at 10,918,205 in 2021.

The modern nation of Mexico achieved independence from the Spanish Empire in 1821, after a decade-long war for independence starting in 1810; this began the process of forging a national identity that fused the cultural traits of Indigenous pre-Columbian origin with those of Spanish and African ancestry. This led to what has been termed "a peculiar form of multi-ethnic nationalism" which was more invigorated and developed after the Mexican Revolution when the Constitution of 1917 officially established Mexico as an indivisible pluricultural nation founded on its indigenous roots.

Mexicano (Mexican) is derived from the word Mexico itself. In the principal model to create demonyms in Spanish, the suffix -ano is added to the name of the place of origin. However, in Nahuatl language, the original demonym becomes Mexica. The area that is now modern-day Mexico has cradled many predecessor civilizations, going back as far as the Olmec which influenced the latter civilizations of Teotihuacan (200 BC to 700 AD) and the much debated Toltec people who flourished around the 10th and 12th centuries AD, and ending with the last great indigenous civilization before the Nahuatl language was a common tongue in the region of modern Central Mexico during the Aztec Empire, but after the arrival of Europeans and the Spanish Conquest, the conquest of the Aztec empire (February 1519 to 13 August 1521) the common language of the region became Spanish.

The Spanish re-administered the land and expanded their own empire beyond the former boundaries of the Aztec, adding more territory to the Mexican sphere of influence which remained under the Spanish Crown for 300 years. It has been suggested that the name of the country is derived from Mextli or Mēxihtli, a secret name for the god of war and patron of the Mexicas, Huitzilopochtli, in which case Mēxihco means "Place where Huitzilopochtli lives". Another hypothesis suggests that Mēxihco derives from the Nahuatl words for "Moon" (Mētztli) and navel (xīctli). This meaning ("Place at the Center of the Moon") might then refer to Tenochtitlan's position in the middle of Lake Texcoco. The system of interconnected lakes, of which Texcoco formed the center, had the form of a rabbit, which the Mesoamericans pareidolically associated with the Moon. Still another hypothesis suggests that it is derived from Mēctli, the goddess of maguey.

The majority of Mexicans have some combination of Spanish and Mesoamerican ancestry. The term "Mestizos" (lit. 'mixed') is used for this identity, which incorporates elements from both Spanish and indigenous traditions. The post-revolutionary governments and reformers such as José Vasconcelos and Manuel Gamio made deliberate efforts to construct this as the base of a modern Mexican national identity. This process of cultural synthesis is referred to as mestizaje [mestiˈsaxe]. One goal of this was to assimilate indigenous peoples into a single Mestizo Mexican society.

Mexico does not have a strict definition of race, and Mestizo identity is influenced by culture and language.

Since the word Mestizo has had different definitions through Mexico's history, precise estimates of the Mexican Mestizo population are impossible. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, about three-fifths of the Mexican population is Mestizo. A culture-based criteria estimates the percentage of Mestizos as high as 90%.

In certain areas of Mexico the word Mestizo has a different meaning: in the Yucatán peninsula it has been used to refer to the Maya-speaking populations living in traditional communities, because during the caste war of the late 19th century those Maya who did not join the rebellion were classified as Mestizos whereas in the state of Chiapas the word "Ladino" is used instead of "mestizo".