So I understand over time. Spanish people start having kids with native Americans. Eventually Mexicans grew tired of the Spanish rule and didn’t want it anymore. Now when I go to Mexico. I understand people call themselves Mexicans. But when I was there In puerto Vallarta I encountered 2 men who spoke Spanish but also a Native American language. Nahuatl. They referred to themselves as different people. I can’t remember the name. My Mexican cousin referred to them as different people. I thought abt it and I just find it weird that as a Mexican you share the same blood yet you identify as a different nationality or ethnicity. I’ve heard my grandma use the word Huicholes. Shes Mexican as well.
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They didn’t.
The word ‘Mexican’ comes for ‘Mexihcah.’ This is one of the names the Aztecs used for themselves, but it wasn’t just the Aztecs. the Mexica were one of the culture groups that dominated Central Mexico at the time of Spanish contact. As they were also the principal ethnic group of the Aztec Empire, the name took on even large importance when the Spanish used variations of the name to refer to a region even vaster than the people who lived on it.
Add a few hundred years, cultural evolution and fusion, and you have the transformation where the term ‘Mexican’ refers not just to the Mexihcah but to anyone from the region called Mexico. The modern descendents of the Aztecs use a few different names but the most common is Nahuas (the Mexica were Nahua, but not all Nahua were Mexica in ye olden times). Mexican now encompasses a nationality more than an ethnicity.
But native Mexicans are still Mexicans. We’re talking more a name ‘musical chairs’ than a separation.
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