Mexico's People

Filed in archive Latin Culture on March 10, 2008

The Americas is a wonderful region of cultural fusions. In Mexico, in addition to European, mestizo, and indigenous groups, there are also all sorts of interesting immigrant groups that give the areas they live in a special flavor.

Mennonites

In Chihuahua there are something on the order of 50,000 German-speaking Mennonites. They are known for many things, including their private community closed to the rest of the modern world and their amazing cheese known as queso Chihuahua.

Some of the more liberal members of this group can be found in Zacatecas, Durango, and Campeche, where they tend to run restaurants, pharmacies, bazaars and the like.

Lebanese

They are one of the largest non-European immigrant groups in Mexico with about 500,000 Lebanese descendants in the country. Many if not most still speak at least some Arabic.

A high number arrive as maronites (an eastern Catholic church) and mix in pretty quickly with the local population. The Muslim Lebanese established the first mosque in the country in Torreon, Coahuila.

The Lebanese are part of the population of most states, but especially of Puebla, Mexico State, Nuevo Leon, Jalisco, Guanajuato, Hidalgo, Oaxaca, Yucatan, Coahuila, and San Luis Potosi.

US Citizens

Many of Mexico's US immigrants are retirees. And yet others are dual citizens. They're either born in the States to Mexican parents or born in Mexico and naturalized in the States.

They often live either near the border, in Mexico city or in beach-front cities near or on resorts. I've seen several population estimates ranging from 600,000 to 1,000,000.