Mexicans men and women, are of short stature, men stout and muscular when young and fat when older. As for women, the señorita of the north was difficult to find in the urban Mexico cities, instead big breasted and wide hipped females without any sexual charm or attraction.
I found Mexicans well dressed, men in business suits and women in skirts and blouses and jackets. Women and girls were casually dressed in a halter tops, or a sleeveless T-shirt, and a short skirt or Shorts. Office workers and bureaucrats in black suits, students in uniforms. Men wore well polished shoes with high heels, and had well trimmed, short cut hair. I also found Mexicans unsmiling and incurious people, devoid of any expressions on their faces. Seroius and sombre expressions. Mexican are courteous people but the elegance and grace and gallantry of the Spanish which wafted over the ocean, was no longer evident.
Ethnically Mexicans are divided in different classes, people from Spanish and European descendants, who considered themselves of pure and white blood, their descendants the Creoles, then Mestizos (mixed blood) and los Indios (the Indians), who were the direct descendants of original people who were the occupants of the country in pre-Hispanic times. There existed many tribes and in order of population, Nahuatlan, Zapotecan, Mayan Mistecan could be mentioned. The Mayan and Nahuatlan people were the formost tribes who have left, in the vally of Mexico and inYucatan, the monuments and cultural sites, their long lasting history. We were told by the guides that there are still numerous monuments in stone, scattered in the forests of Mexico, which are still to be discovered.
Columbus, who was searching for the sea route to India, erroneously thought that he had reached the shores of India and called the natives los Indios, name which came to be termed with contempt by the Europeans and Americans. The native tribes of Peru and Brazil are also called Indios, as are the indians of India by the Spanish. In Mexico there are many different tribes of Indians and Zapotec and Mistecas comprise more than half the population of the country.
As has happened in many countries like Venezuela, Peru and Chile and Argentina in South America, in Philippines, Malaya, Indonesia etc, in South East Asia, the so called white upper class people controlled the large part of the properties and businesses, administrative jobs etc, although the majority of the population consisted of people of mixed or Indian blood. These people for centuries, have been the backbone of the mining industry and agriculture. In the olden days you would find the well heeled people in Europeans dress and the working class in the garb of a peon, with a collarless shirt,very tight white trousers, colourful cloth belt (la faja) some times a bolero short jacket, reaching up to the waist, a colourful blanket (la manta) thrown over his shoulder. And a hat or el sombrero to shield him from the merciless desert heat.
Although the working and and labour class (peons) suffered from the Spanish greed for gold and silver, were the victims of their injustice and cruel slavery, which today would be described as crimes against humanity and holocaust, Mexican Indians do not suffer from any social and political discrimination or marginalisation. President Juarez and General Porfirio Diaz, the autocrat President, were from Zapotec and Misteca tribes respectively. Many people with whom I talked about the Spanish, were still angry at the uncivilised and barberic way the Spanish treated the Mexicans. And Spanish have never apologised for their brutal and inhuman treatment of the Mexican Indians.
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