Mexicans admit they’re racist — if only we could
Stop the presses! There is racism in Mexico!
Ten percent of Mexico is “gachupine” (gah-choo-pee-neh), which is loosely translated as “white” — an Aztec word meaning “a man wearing shoes with pins,” or spurs. (There were no horses in the Western Hemisphere when the Spanish arrived, so there were no spurs.) Sixty percent of Mexico is mixed Indian and white, and 30 percent pure Amerindian.
Mexico News Daily published last year an in-depth article about recent studies conducted on Mexican racism.
No honest Mexican can deny the fact of Mexican racism; multiple studies confirm that beyond any doubt. In one, conducted by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography, the study determined that skin color directly influences how much education is achieved and what kind of employment an individual is offered.
Yet his is not the only study ever conducted in Mexico that shows that racial differences heavily influence Mexican society.
No study was needed between 1519 and 1821, when the Spanish ran Mexico with racial codes that organized the Spanish Western Hemisphere into more than a dozen different racial classifications starting with those born in Spain, the Peninsulares; they were No. 1. Their children born in the New World, the Criollos, were No. 2; No. 3 was the part-Spanish, part-Indian, the mestizo. The penultimate category was the Zamba, half-black and half-Indian. Last was the 100 percent Indian, or Indio.
The only people who could own land and conduct government affairs were in the No. 1 and No. 2 classifications; there was no voting as Spain was a monarchy, not a democracy. Governance limited to Spanish-born white men and their male children left much to be desired.
No wonder, then, that a fed-up Catholic priest, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, enamored with American independence and democratic government, loudly pronounced “Death to bad government, death to the gachupines!” to his parishioners at midnight, Sept. 16, 1810; the churchgoers rushed out and attacked Spanish-owned businesses and government property, starting more than 10 years of war for independence.