The Mexican condition in the US
*See note on terminology below article
This is meant to be a brief look at the lives of Mexicans in the U.S. today. This article will also reveal something about the lives of other groups in the U.S., such as Latinos as a whole, Central Americans, blacks, whites, and Asians. I won’t really go into too much detail about a lot of things but I do hope to be able to do this in later articles. I hope that these facts raise some questions among the readers and can lead to fruitful discussions.
Numbers and Mexican Population Breakdown
As of the 2010 census, there were 31,798,258 Mexicans in the U.S., out of a total population of 308,745,538 and out of a total Latino population of 50,477,594. Mexicans make up 10.1% of the total population in this country and 62.9% of Latinos. Most Mexicans live in the Southwest, 46.5% of Latinos are in California and Texas alone, an area that used to be part of Mexico.
Of the 31 million Mexicans in the U.S., 11.7 million were born in Mexico. In 2010, the average median earnings for them was $23,810, lower than the average of $33,130 for foreign born residents in the U.S. The percentage of these Mexicans living in poverty was 29%, higher than the national average of 10% and the national average for foreign born residents, which was 17%. 54% of immigrants from Mexico had less than a high school education, which is more than the national average of 9% and the national average for all foreign born of 27%. The percentage of Mexicans immigrants without a high school diploma was higher than for immigrants from Asia, Africa, Europe, the Caribbean, South America, and Central America.
Of these Mexican immigrants, 4.9 million were undocumented in 2017, a drop from 6.9 million ten years earlier. The significant numbers of immigrants deported under Obama is in large part responsible for this decrease in numbers of undocumented Mexicans in the U.S. Over half (53%) of these immigrants live in California and Texas, with 10% living in Los Angeles County alone.
There are also many indigenous people in the U.S. that are of Mexican descent. According to the 2010 census, 685,000 identified as Latinos of indigenous origin. California alone is home to over 200,000 indigenous people from Mexico, 100,000 to 150,000 from Oaxaca alone. A large number of them speak Mixteco, but many also speak Zapoteco, Chatino, and other languages. According to a 2007 report, indigenous farmworkers from Oaxaca are the fastest growing farmworker group in the California fields (43% with an annual income below $10,000). A majority of Oaxacans in the U.S. face high poverty rates (at or below 150% of the federal poverty threshold), extremely low incomes, lack of access to health insurance, poor housing conditions, and high levels of stress and anxiety.
Indigenous immigrants from Oaxaca face more difficulties than non-indigenous Mexicans. These include lack of fluency in English and Spanish and anti-indigenous racism from non-indigenous Mexicans. Also, indigenous farmworkers are 11% less likely to seek needs based services than non-indigenous farmworkers. A high percentage of indigenous people from Mexico are also undocumented (for example, in 2005 85% of indigenous farmworkers in California were undocumented).
According to the Principales resultados de la Encuesta Intercensal 2015 Estados Unidos Mexicanos, close to 1.4 million people in Mexico identify as Afromexican, which is roughly 1.2% of the population. While the census does not include a category for Afro-Mexicans in the U.S., the number of Latinos who identified as black in 2010 was 2.5%. The number is likely far higher. This can possibly be attributed to the prominence of anti-black racism, different definitions of what it means to be black in many Latin American countries, and other reasons. A 2003 report did state that the number of black Mexicans in the U.S. was close to a quarter million. According to the 2010 census, there were 42,000 Latinos that identified as black in Los Angeles County alone.
Poverty, Wealth, and Income
According to the 2010 census, 22.2% of Latinos lived in poverty, compared to 10.3% of whites, 11.9% of Asians, 26.8% Native Americans and 25.5% of blacks. Amongst Latinos, Mexicans had a poverty rate of 24.9%, compared to 18.9% for Salvadorans, 16.2% for Cubans, 24.9% for Guatemalans and 25.6% for Puerto Ricans, to name a few of the Latino subgroups.
In 2012 the median income for Latinos was $39,005, compared to $33,321 for blacks, $68,636 for Asians, and $57,009 for whites. Something else that further diminishes the purchasing power of Latinos is the fact that they are less likely to be on food stamps than whites or blacks. In 2011 the percent of Latinos on food stamps was 15.7%, for whites it was 38.8%, 39.8% for blacks, and 2.4% for Asians. While the typical income of Latinos was 77% that of whites, Latinas earned 55 cents for every dollar earned by white women and 88 cents for every dollar earned by a Latino male.
Latinos were worse off than any other major ethic group in terms of health coverage. According to a 2009 Gallup Poll, 41.5% of Latinos were uninsured as opposed to 19.9% of blacks, and 11.6% of whites. Of Latinos, Central Americans had the highest uninsured rates: 42.4%, as opposed to 33.6% of Mexicans 14.9% Puerto Ricans, and 23% of Cubans.
The median wealth of white households is twenty times more than for blacks and 18 times more than that of Latino households. In 2009, the typical black household had $5,677 in wealth, the typical Latino household had $6,325 while the typical white household had $113,149. 35% of black households and 31% of Latino households had zero or negative net worth, while this number was 15% for white households.
In 2010, 37.5% of children living in poverty were Latino, 30.5% were white and 26.6% were black. In this case, Latinos are greatly overrepresented since they only constitute 23.1% of U.S. children. Black children are also vastly overrepresented while white children are vastly underrepresented in this case. A third (33%) of Mexican children live in poverty. This is less than the poverty rates for Dominican children (34%), Honduran children (42%), and Guatemalan children (40%), but this is more than all other Latino subgroups. For example, the poverty rate for Nicaraguan children was 24%, while it was 12% for Peruvian children and 21% for Cuban children. The poverty rate for Puerto Rican children was almost equal to that of Mexicans at 32%.
During 2008, 8% of both blacks and Latino borrowers lost their homes to foreclosures; for whites this number was 4.5 percent. These people that lost their homes were more likely to have received notorious high-interest, or “sub-prime,” bank loans. In 2018, a federal lawsuit against Wells Fargo was filed that accused it of giving loans to black and Latino borrowers with higher interest rates than for other groups. Black Wells Fargo borrowers in Sacramento with credit scores above 660 were 2.8 times more likely to receive a high-cost or high-risk loan than comparable white borrowers; Latino borrowers were 1.8 times more likely. Wells Fargo was accused of similar practices in Philadelphia, Miami, and Baltimore.
Wells Fargo is not the only one. A University of California Berkeley study that looked at 30-year, fixed-rate, single-family home loans issued between 2008 and 2015 and found that black and Latino borrowers paid 5.6 to 8.6 basis points higher interest on home purchase loans than their white or Asian counterparts with similar credit profiles. Bank of America was accused of similar practices by the Justice Department during the Obama presidency.
Education
Latinos are the least educated ethnic group. According to the census, only 66.7% have a high school diploma or higher education while only 15.2% have a bachelor’s degree or higher. These same numbers for whites are 92.3% and 34.5%, for blacks it is 84.9% and 20.6%, for Native Americans it was 79.7% 14.3%, for Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders it was 86.9% and 16.9%, and for Asians it was 86.5% and 52.7%. Eleven percent of Mexicans aged 16 to 24 in 2014 were high school drop outs. This is less than for Guatemalan (29%), Honduran (19%) and Salvadoran (15%) youth in 2014, but more than all other Latino groups. Puerto Ricans again come close to Mexicans with a dropout rate of ten percent. 10% of Mexican adults age 25 or older have bachelor’s degrees. This number is higher than that of Guatemalans (8%), Hondurans (9%), and Salvadorans (9%) but it is still lower than all other Latino groups in the U.S. For example, 53% of Venezuelans in the U.S. aged 25 or older have a bachelor's degree or higher, this number is 25% for Cubans, and 18% for Puerto Ricans.
Latinos also face lots of segregation in the nation’s schools. A 2014 UCLA report found that Latinos are more segregated than blacks in suburban America and that Latino and black students tend to be in schools were most of the students are poor, while white and Asian students typically attend middle class schools. Seventy percent of students live in poverty in those schools where blacks and Latinos constitute 81-100% of the student body. Latinos face the most segregation in California schools. Nationally, it is typical that a Latino student goes to a school that is 57% Latino, while the black student goes to a school that is 49% black, and the white student goes to a school that is 72.5% white. The typical Asian student goes to a school that is 24.5% Asian and 39% white. Latino students have less exposure to white students than their white, black, and Asian counterparts.
Jobs, Employment
In terms of jobs, Latinos are overrepresented in low paying industries and underrepresented in high paying industries. Latinos hold 28.5% of construction jobs, 23.9% of agricultural jobs, and 26% of service jobs (whites hold 17% of service jobs). According to a 2016 Congressional report titled “The Economic State of the Latino Community in America”, “very few Hispanics work in typically higher-paying jobs, including jobs in computer and mathematical occupations, and architecture and engineering occupations, which each employ only about 1 percent of Hispanic workers.” The most common occupation for Latinas is restaurants (10.3%) while for Latinos it is construction (17.5%).
The current unemployment rate for Latinos is 5.6%, 1.6% higher than that of whites. The unemployment rate for Latinas is 2.2% higher than that of white women, while 56% of Latinas were employed and 63% of Latinas with children younger than 18 years had jobs. Only 26% of Latinas had higher paying jobs compared to 43% of white women. A third of Latino families are headed by a single mother while this is true for one fifth of white families.
Incarceration, Cop killings
In terms of incarceration, blacks (12% of the national population) made up 33% of those in prison, whites (64% of the populace) made up 30% of that population, and Latino (16% of population) made up 23% of prison population in the U.S.A. Blacks and Latinos are overrepresented as a percentage of the population, while whites are underrepresented. Blacks were incarcerated 6 times the rate of whites, Native Americans 2 times the rate of whites, and Latinos 1.5 times the rate of whites.
In California, black males (6% of the state pop.) make up 29% of the prisoners. Latino males (35% of the state population) make up 43% of the prison population. White males (42% of the population) make up 21% of the prison population. In California, 81% of prisoners were born in the United States; 9% were born in Mexico, 5% in other countries, and 5% are of unknown national origin. By contrast, 65% of all adults in California were US born, while 14% were born in Mexico and 20% were born in other countries. Most of the Latinos in prison in California are likely U.S. born Mexicans.
Latinos in the U.S. are killed by cops at a rate of 3.23 per million. This is less than the rate for blacks (6.66 per million) and that of Native Americans (10.13 per million), but it is more than the rates for whites (2.9 per million) and that of Asians and Pacific Islanders (1.17 per million). Another study has the rate of black men killed by police at 2.1 per 100,000 people, Latino men killed at a rate of 1 per 100,000 and white men killed at a rate of 0.6 men per 100,000. This study also states that Native Americas have a much higher rate of being killed by the cops, but doesn’t give those numbers.
Conclusions
From the facts shown here it is clear that Mexicans are a poor and oppressed people in the U.S. Mexicans are not as educated as most other ethnic groups. For the most part, Mexicans work jobs that are low paying and unskilled or low skilled. Those that are foreign born, undocumented, female, and indigenous are generally worse-off and face more obstacles than the rest of the Mexican population in this country. What is the nature of this poverty and oppression? How do Mexicans improve their situation? Attain liberation? What is meant by liberation? How does the population confront the further oppression of indigenous Latinos, Latinas, and immigrants?
It is also clear that blacks, many other Latinos, and Native Americans are in comparable or worse situations to Mexicans here in the U.S. What is the nature of their oppression? What is the key to their liberation? What role must the larger Mexican and Latino population play in their struggle against oppression? What role will they play in the larger struggles?
There are other issues and questions that will need to be discussed and addressed, such as: racism within the Mexican and Latino communities, especially anti-indigenous and anti-black racism, as well as anti-LGBT discrimination and prejudice, and misogyny and sexism. Past movements must be considered for understanding liberation and justice and what we can learn from them. The reality of U.S. dominance of Mexico and Latin America and how it affects people in the US is another dimension that must be considered. We must be clear on what we want, how to get it, who our allies are, and who our enemies are.
Within this study, I have surveyed the general conditions of Mexicans (and other groups of Latinos to a lesser extent) in the U.S. The intention is to open up a discussion and invite dialogue that can further an analysis of the social, economic, and political systems in place that maintain Mexicans, as well as other groups facing similar realities, locked into conditions of oppression. I hope to use this exchange to engage with those who want to fight for a better world for all the oppressed.
*Note on terminology:
*Note on terminology: When I use the term Mexican, what is meant are Mexicans (Mexican born and U.S. born), Chicanos, and Mexican-Americans. The resources that I used for this article for the most part used “Mexicans” to refer to all three. The same is true of the U.S. census data, which a lot of the resources used for their information. For example, in the 2010 census, people were asked “Is this person of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin?” If they answered yes to this question, they then had the choice of identifying from different Latino groups. One of these choices was “Mexican, Mexican Am., Chicano.” So Chicanos and Mexican Americans that picked this category ended up being included as “Mexican” in all the statistics presented in the census. I did differentiate between people when I could, for example U.S. born Mexican, foreign born, Indigenous, etc.
When I use the term “white,” I mean Anglo-Americans, people from the U.S. that identify as white and are not Latino. When I use the term “black” I mean Americans from the U.S. that identify as black and do not identify as Latino.
Blas Reies grew up in rural California raised by Mexican parents who were agricultural workers. He continues to work and organize in his community, is committed to social change and collaborating with others who want to fight for the liberation of all the oppressed.
