Mexicans of European descent
Race or ethnicity Population ( est . ) Percentage ( est . ) Year
Indigenous 26,000,000 21.5% 2015
Black 1,400,000 01.2% 2015
White 56,000,000 47.0% 2010
Foreigners residing in Mexico ( of any race ) 1,010,000 < 1.0% 2015
East Asian 1,000,000 < 1.0% 2010
Middle Eastern 400,000 < 1.0% 2010
Jewish 68,000 < 1.0% 2010
Muslim 4,000 < 1.0% 2015
Unclassified ( most likely Mestizos ) 37,300,000 30.0% -
Total 123,500,000 100% 2017
Official censuses -- Present day
Mexican actress Natasha Dupeyrón Mariana Bayón Mexican model , best known for winning the first cycle of Mexico 's Next Top Model . The following table is a compilation of ( when possible ) official nationwide surveys conducted by the Mexican government who have attempted to quantify different Mexican ethnic groups . Given that for the most part each ethnic group was estimated by different surveys , with different methodologies and years apart rather than on a single comprehensive racial census , some groups could overlap with others and be overestimated or underestimated .
Mexicans of European descent or European Mexicans are Mexican citizens or, people who identify with the Mexican cultural or national identity, who are of complete or predominant European descent. While the Mexican government does conduct ethnic censuses in which a Mexican has the option of identifying as White the results obtained from these censuses are not published. What Mexico's government publishes instead is the percentage of light-skinned Mexicans there are in the country, with it being 47% in 2010 and 49% in 2017. Due to its less directly racial undertones, the term Light-skinned Mexican has been favored by the government and media outlets over White Mexican as the go-to choice to refer to the segment of Mexico's population who possess European physical traits when discussing different ethno-racial dynamics in Mexico's society. Nonetheless, sometimes White Mexican is used. Estimates of Mexico's white population differ greatly in both methodology and percentages given; unofficial sources such as the World Factbook and Encyclopædia Britannica, which use the 1921 census results as the base of their estimations, calculate the White Mexican population as only 9% or between one tenth to one fifth of the population. The results of the 1921 census, however, have been contested by various historians and deemed inaccurate. Surveys that account for phenotypical traits and have performed actual field research suggest rather higher percentages: using the presence of blond hair as reference to classify a Mexican as white, the Metropolitan Autonomous University of Mexico calculated the percentage of said ethnic group at 23%. With a similar methodology, the American Sociological Association obtained a percentage of 18.8%. Another study made by the University College London in collaboration with Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History found that the frequencies of blond hair and light eyes in Mexicans are of 18% and 28% respectively, nationwide surveys in the general population that use as reference skin color such as those made by Mexico's National Council to Prevent Discrimination and Mexico's National Institute of Statistics and Geography report percentages of 47% and 49% respectively. Europeans began arriving in Mexico during the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire; and while during the colonial period most European immigration was Spanish, in the 19th and 20th centuries European and European-derived populations from North and South America did immigrate to the country. According to 20th and 21st century academics, large scale intermixing between the European immigrants and the native Indigenous peoples would produce a Mestizo group which would become the overwhelming majority of Mexico's population by the time of the Mexican Revolution.