Mexican Americans

Mexican Americans (mexicanoestadounidenses, mexicoamericanos, or estadounidenses de origen mexicano) are Americans of full or partial Mexican heritage. In 2019, Mexican Americans comprised 11.3% of the US population and 61.5% of all Hispanic and Latino Americans. In 2019, 71% of Mexican Americans were born in the United States; they make up 53% of the total population of foreign-born Hispanic Americans and 25% of the total foreign-born population. The United States is home to the second-largest Mexican community in the world (24% of the entire Mexican-origin population of the world), behind only Mexico. Most Mexican Americans reside in the Southwest, with over 60% of Mexican Americans living in the states of California and Texas. Most Mexican Americans have varying degrees of Indigenous and European ancestry, with the latter being mostly Spanish origins. Those of indigenous ancestry descend from one or more of the over 60 Indigenous groups in Mexico (approximately 200,000 people in California alone). Mexican Americans who identify as Blaxicans are found mainly in California (Los Angeles County), Texas (Houston), (Dallas), and (San Antonio), Illinois (Chicago), and in Georgia (Atlanta). It is estimated that approximately 10% of the current Mexican American population are descended from early Mexican residents such as New Mexican Hispanos, Tejanos and Californios, who became US citizens in 1848 through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican–American War. Mexicans living in the United States after the treaty was signed were forced to choose between keeping their Mexican citizenship or becoming a US citizen. Few chose to leave their homes in the States. The majority of these Hispanophone populations eventually adopted English as their first language and became Americanized. Also called Hispanos, these descendants of independent Mexico from the early-to-middle 19th century differentiate themselves culturally from the population of Mexican Americans whose ancestors arrived in the American Southwest after the Mexican Revolution.