Mexico’s 2020 Census

Mexico’s 2020 Population and Housing Census was conducted in March 2020. More than 147,000 interviewers traveled the nearly two million square kilometers of the national territory, visiting all Mexican households to obtain information about the demographic, socioeconomic and cultural characteristics of the people of each state. Finally, in January 2021, Mexico proudly became the first country in the world to announce the results of its 2020 census.  The censuses of many other countries had to be delayed or postponed because of the COVID Pandemic.

The Basic and Extended Questionnaires

In the 2020 census, Mexico’s “Cuestionario Básico” (basic questionnaire) consisted of 30 questions that all Mexican households answered. That questionnaire asked if an indigenous language was spoken by members of the household. It also asked if a person identified as an Afro Mexican.

The “Cuestionario Ampliado” (Extended Questionnaire) was used as a probability sample, asking about 75 questions of 4 million Mexican households. This questionnaire asked about the indigenous status of those households as follows: “De acuerdo con su cultura, ¿ [NOMBRE] se considera indígena? [According to your culture, is [NAME] considered indigenous?]

The Decline of Indigenous Languages in Mexico (2010 to 2020)

The table below shows the number and percentage of persons 3 years and older in Mexico who spoke an indigenous language in 2010 and 2020. Between those years, the number of indigenous speakers rose from 6.9 million to 7.3 million. However, the percentage of indigenous speakers dropped from 6.6% in 2010 to 6.1% in 2020.

The Decline of the Monolingual Indigenous Speakers in Mexico (2010 to 2020)

The table below shows that there has been a significant drop in the percent of persons 3 years of age and more who speak an indigenous language, but do not speak Spanish. These people are referred to as monolingual indigenous speakers.

To many of us, the monolingual indigenous speakers represent a segment of the Mexican population that is pure and untouched by the dominant Spanish-speaking culture. Most of the monolingual communities are located in rural communities, usually some distance from municipio capitals or other major cities.

From the 2010 census to the 2020 census, the rate of monolingualism dropped from 15.9% to 11.8%.

Between the 2010 census and the 2020 census, the number of persons who were monolingual speakers of indigenous languages dropped from 1,096,512 to 865,972, a very precipitous decline.

Mexico’s Indigenous Speaking Population (by State)

The primary indicator of the Mexico’s ethnicity has been the number of indigenous speakers 3 years of age and more. The table below shows each of the 32 Mexican states, sorted by the percentage of indigenous speakers in each state (in the last column).

Oaxaca is the only Mexican state in which more than 30% of the people speak an indigenous language. Chiapas comes in second at 28.20%, and Yucatán – the primary stronghold of the Yucatec Mayan language – is third place with 23.70% of its people speaking a native tongue. Only four states have 15% or more of their citizens who speak some Indian language.

On the other hand, 14 states have indigenous speaking populations that represent 2% or less of their total population 3 years or more. In fact, 21 Mexican states have indigenous speaking populations of 5% or less.

The People Who Self-Identify as Indigenous

Most Mexican people are descended from the indigenous people who lived in the Americas for thousands of years before the arrival of the Spaniards. But most of their ancestors were conquered in the 15th or 16th centuries, after which their progeny mixed with both Europeans and Africans and, as a result, were gradually assimilated.  This led to the creation of the mestizo, a person who is of mixed European-Indian ancestry. During the 20th Century, the process known as mestizaje was coined to refer to the racial and cultural mixing that took place in Mexico during the colonial period.

Even today, a significant portion of the Mexican population still identifies itself as being primarily indigenous, even if they do not speak a native tongue. In the table below, the percent of people who considered themselves to be indigenous culturally (Column 4) is compared with the percent of people who speak an indigenous language (Column 5).

Two states – Oaxaca and Yucatán – have populations in which nearly 70% of their citizens identify themselves as being of indigenous origin and/or culture.  However, the percent of people in those two states who actually speak indigenous languages is far less.  Only eight states have populations of 30% or more who identify themselves as indigenous. Thirteen states have populations of 20% or more who identify themselves as being of native origin.

 The two states with the least Indigenous identity were Zacatecas and Coahuila, but eleven states had a figure of less than 10% who identified as Indigenous.

Afro Mexican Identity in the 2020 Census

Mexico’s 2020 Basic Questionnaire asked all Mexicans, “Por sus antepasados y de acuerdo con sus costumbres y tradiciones, ¿[NOMBRE] se considera afromexicano (a), negro (a), o afrodescendiente?” [Because of your ancestors and according to your customs and traditions, does [NAME] consider yourself Afro-Mexican, Black, or Afro-descendant?]

Mexico’s Afro-Mexican population amounts to almost 2.6 million Mexicans, representing 2% of Mexico’s overall population. Together, Guerrero and Oaxaca have 13.3% of the Afro-Mexican population in the entire country. However, a total of nine Mexican states have Afro-Mexican populations that exceed 2% and those nine states account for 31.2% of the Afro-Mexican citizens living throughout the country.

The Most Common Indigenous Languages in Mexico

In 2020, Náhuatl speakers remained the largest indigenous group of Mexico, representing 22.4% of all indigenous language speakers in Mexico 3 years of age and more. In the 1895 census, Náhuatl speakers made up 31.8% of all indigenous speakers in Mexico.

The second most spoken tongue in Mexico was the Maya language of the Yucatán Peninsula, which was spoken by 10.5% of the population. The four most spoken languages – Náhuatl, Maya, Tseltal, and Tsotsil – accounted for 48.4% of Mexico’s indigenous language speakers.

 Among these most common languages spoken in Mexico, the Tsotsil and Tseltal were the two major languages that had roughly one-fifth of their language speakers who were monolingual and did not communicate in Spanish at all. These two languages are most common in the southern state of Chiapas and have two of the highest monolingual rates of all the indigenous languages in Mexico.

In fifth and sixth place were the Mixteco and Zapoteco languages, both of which are spoken primarily in Oaxaca, but Mixteco is also spoken by almost one-third of Guerrero’s indigenous population. The table below shows the most spoken indigenous languages in Mexico. Their percentage of all indigenous speakers in Mexico is shown in Column 4 and the monolingual rate is shown in the last column.

The Indigenous Languages with the Highest Monolingual Rates

By definition, “monolingual” means the ability to speak only one language. The majority of indigenous speakers in Mexico are bilingual and speak two languages: their own language and Spanish.  The monolingual rate of a language is the rate of those who do not speak Spanish divided by the total speakers of that language.

 In 1930, more than half (52.7%) of Mexico’s indigenous speakers were monolingual. Today, that monolingual rate has dropped to 11.8% for all of Mexico. In the 2020 census, five indigenous languages of Mexico had monolingual rates of 20% or more: the Tsotsil, Cora, Tseltal, Amuzgo, and Tlapaneco.

 One might assume that the majority of the monolingual indigenous speakers would be found in the more indigenous states of the south (Oaxaca, Chiapas, and Yucatán), but the Cora, Tepehuano, Huichol and Tarahumara’s monolingual rates prove that hypothesis wrong as those four languages are spoken in the northern reaches of the country.

Mexico As an Indigenous Nation

According to Luis Enrique Lopez (2009), 80% of the total indigenous population of Latin American is concentrated in five countries: Mexico, Guatemala, Bolivia, and Peru. According to Luis Enrique López, “Reaching the Unreached: Indigenous Intercultural Bilingual Education in Latin America,” Paper Commissioned by the Education for All Global Monitoring Report (2009), Mexico leads all of the Americas in its indigenous nature, as noted in the following table. Guatemala and Bolivia come in at a distant second and third place ranking.

As a matter of fact, some sources state that Mexico is one of the ten countries in the world with the greatest linguistic and cultural diversity. Considering that designation, it is very alarming that 31 of Mexico’s languages are at risk of disappearing.

However, there is a distinction between those Mexicans who identify as being indigenous culturally and those who speak an indigenous language. In the 2020 census, 19.41% of Mexicans identified as indigenous. But only 6.1% stated that they spoke an indigenous language.