she’s basically accusing me of “stolen valor” by saying “youre not indigenous, youre mexican,” despite having 25% “indigenous peoples: mexico” on my ancestry DNA test. can anyone please explain to my mother how this works? i tried to explain it but she wont listen to me.
In: 82
A good portion of practically all Mexican’s ancestors are native to **North** America. The continent, not the nation. Tha means they are “indigenous” to North America. The Aztec empire (and all the surrounding groups) had millions and millions of people. Small pox wiped out a lot, but their numbers simply never cratered like the smaller and more commonly nomadic tribes further north.
The conquistadors were horrific rat-bastards in just about every way. They conquered the natives and systemically wiped out their culture, fooling them into thinking they were Spanish. They really did bring over a lot of Spanish citizens, so all of central America is now a mix of some percent Spanish (the European sort, not the language) and some percent indigenous. But by importing and forcefully converting everyone over to the Catholic church (and murdering everyone who said no), they wiped out a whole lot of history and culture.
To put this in overly simplistic terms: Ask her why Mexicans have darker skin if Spanish people have white European skin? Where does she think that comes from?
Maybe she doesn’t know what “indigenous” means? Explain that Germans are indigenous to Europe.
Mexican culture is the result of the blending of Spanish and Aztec cultures (and a splash of Napoleonic French). It’s even in the name. The Spanish arrived and asked the Aztecs where they were and they answered, “Mexica.” And the Spanish went, “No, it has an ‘a’ at the end so that means it’s a girls name. We’re in Mexic***o***.”
A lot of Aztecs died during the Spanish colonization and conquest, but many didn’t. There were a lot of encounters; some consensual and some not, that blended the bloodlines.
Does she not know the story of La Malinche?
I think this will help:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippian_culture
There were actually “Aztec like” Indians in the United States, but they did not flourish like the Aztec / Mayan / Olmec did.
Ask her a rhetorical question: what’s the genetic difference between a 100% Native American born one mile north of the border and a 100% indigenous Mexican born one mile south of the border
First, why is this an argument between you and your mom? Don’t y’all have better things to discuss?
Now for the answer…. This used to be taught in school. Not sure if it is any more. But the common theory of people in north, central, and south America is that they were nomads that came over the ice bridge from Russia to Alaska and continued south. Some stopped along the way, some kept moving south.
US indigenous Americans would naturally be very closely related to indigenous Mexicans. The Mexicans just kept moving south while the other stopped along the way to settle.
This is why this entire line of people look so similar to each other. From “Eskimos” all the way down in to indigenous people of south America.
This of course gets a bit mixed in areas because of European colonization. So you have whiter looking Mexicans and similar.
I’d recommend that you and your mom sit down and do a family tree. Really figure things out instead of arguing about this nonsense.
It’s always Sunny in Philadelphia explains it well.
Mac: Yea, the Mexicans killed the Mayans
Frank: No, the Spaniards banged the Mayans, turned them into Mexicans.
Tf does she think the brown came from? Not from Europe lol
“part native Mexican” is not the same as “part native American”. You may be taking about two very separate tribes, and yours may not be one that inhabited what is now the U.S.
When the Spanish arrived in Mexico, there were already people there, indigenous peoples called the Aztecs and the Maya. These people were mostly wiped out by plagues that the Spanish brought over, and genocide. The Spanish also raped the Aztecs and Maya and therefore created a new ethnic group: Mestizos. Mesitzos are people who are a mix of indigenous and Spanish. Most Mexicans are Mestizo, it’s extremely rare to be 100% white or 100% indigenous in Mexico.
Mexicans don’t use the term Native American (they say indígena or indigenous), but for all intents and purposes, Aztecs and Mayans were Native Americans. They were the native people of an area of the Americas.
The colonization of Mexico used the Indigenous peoples as slave labor by the Spanish. Naturally there grew a caste system with the pure bred Europeans at the top and the Indigenous people at the bottom. Mestizo were the mixed race majority, they also included other mixings including Blacks from the Caribbean and South America. As a result you’ll see quite a disparity in ethnic diversity, from the European looking to the more Indigenous. There was also quite a range in the ethnic types of Indigenous people from the Maya, Aztec, Apache, Navajo, just to name a few.
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