{M} uch of what appears to be American regional culture is, in its origins, the culture of the people who moved here from abroad. David Hackett Fischer’s celebrated 1989 book, Albion’s Seed, made the influential case that the roots of the distinct American cultures of the Eastern seaboard and the Appalachians can be found in the regional cultures of England and the rest of Britain. The English people may look monolithic from a distance, but they brought their own internally distinct folkways here.

Are they the only ones? Joshua Treviño and the Texas Public Policy Foundation have set out to examine a similar question about Mexican Americans. Mexico is a big country, both in terms of territory and population, and a highly decentralized one with a long history of distinct regions and populations. Like America, it is divided into states (31 of them, plus a district for the federal capital in Mexico City), and the authority of the federal government over particular states has often been tenuous.

In looking at the culture and politics of Mexican Americans in different parts of the United States, is it possible that a major influence is that distinct populations of Mexicans have emigrated to different parts of America, bringing with them their own different versions of Mexican culture in the same way that the Scots-Irish and the cavaliers did?

States of Mexico, States of America

Treviño’s specific hypothesis, which he sought to test, was that Mexican Americans in Texas — even fairly recent emigres — vote and live differently from Mexican Americans in California, at least in part due to the culture they brought with them, rather than just the divergent political cultures they found upon their arrival in these two big destination states, one red and one blue. From that hypothesis was born the Mexican Migration Project, a TPPF research effort to identify the origins within Mexico, by Mexican state, of Mexican-immigrant populations in each of the 50 American states. If the data showed that different American states drew their Mexican-American populations from different Mexican states, that would support Treviño’s hypothesis — at least enough to warrant further inquiry.

The data show exactly that. As Treviño writes in the report’s introduction:

The Mexican Migration Project began with a simple question: which Mexicans go where in the United States? It seems a simple and obvious inquiry, but it is mostly ignored in the U.S. public discourse. The tremendous heterogeneity of Mexico and the Mexicans, so evident on the ground, is subsumed in analysis that either categorizes all Mexicans as essentially the same — or worse, groups them together with other national-origin groups under the rubric of “Hispanic,” “Latino,” et cetera. . . .

The civic, cultural, religious, and political habits of a person with roots in the rural Chiapas highlands will of necessity be quite different from those of a person raised under the glass towers of Monterrey. Their differences will probably be ones of ancestry, ethnicity, history, and perhaps even language. There is a Mexican nation — but like the American nation, within it are many peoples.

Mexico, like much of Latin America, is different from the United States in the origins of its population. Most Latin Americans from the former Spanish colonies, at least outside of Argentina and Chile, trace their European roots back to Spain. Most, but by no means all: Just consider El Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele, who is descended from a family of Palestinian Christians, or former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori, whose family came from Japan. Unlike in the United States, however, a large percentage of Mexicans and other Latin Americans are either Native Americans or, more commonly, of mixed European and Native American descent. Add to the distinct indigenous heritage of the populations of different Mexican states their distinct geography and economic and political history in the five centuries since the arrival of Hernán Cortés, and you have the roots of differing regional cultures. Here’s what Treviño concluded:

Look at the origins of Mexicans in Texas: they are concentrated in Tamaulipas, San Luis Potosí, and Guanajuato. By contrast, the Mexicans in California come disproportionally from a southern-coastal belt extending from Jalisco to Oaxaca. (When you look at the U.S.-wide map, the California pattern turns out to be the norm, and the Texas origins the exception.) These are significantly different parts of Mexico, and therein may be keys to differing outcomes within the United States.

The report is composed largely of maps, showing both inflows (the Mexican-state origin of the Mexican-immigrant population of each U.S. state) and outflows (the U.S.-state destinations for emigrants from each Mexican state). For example, the overall map shows that the Mexican-immigrant population of the United States is fairly balanced in origins across Mexico, but weighted toward the southern part of Mexico:

The Mexican population of California is more concentrated in its origins from a few of those southern states on Mexico’s southern Pacific coast:

Mexican Texans, by contrast, include many more immigrants from the northeast of Mexico closer to the Texas border:

That’s a region of Mexico with a lot more ranchers and a culture whose roots are more similar to the self-reliant frontier ethos of Texas than is true of southern Mexico, with its history of pastoral, indigenous peasant culture. Comparing other states shows different patterns of migration, such as New Mexico drawing a disproportionate share of its Mexican immigrants from neighboring Chihuahua:

Sources and Methods

The Mexican Migration Project drew its data largely from Mexican-government sources. The Mexican government commonly issues matricula consular identifications to Mexican citizens who move to the United States. That includes identifications issued to those who come here illegally, because from the Mexican perspective they are still legal citizens of Mexico who can remit funds back to their home country and (if they choose) vote in its elections.

The Mexican state data aren’t perfect, and because they trace first-generation immigrants to the United States, they don’t capture the origins of Mexican-American families that have been here long enough that the immigrant generation has died off. Texas in particular has many Mexican families who can trace their lineage back to when Texas was part of Mexico. (General Ignacio Zaragoza, the hero of Cinco de Mayo, was born in what is now Goliad, Texas). Still, distinct patterns of new immigration are also often driven by the existing immigrant population: “Go live with your uncle in Los Angeles” is the sort of thing that has always helped new arrivals from any foreign land decide where to settle in this country.

The data are also more robust for American states with large Mexican-immigrant populations, such as California, Texas, and New Mexico. Small sample sizes skew the data in, say, Vermont or Hawaii.

Still, cultural heritage is a real thing, and understanding it has implications not only for partisan politics but for a broad array of disciplines. Treviño tells me that he hopes this will be, not the final answer to his original question, but the beginning of a more serious examination of one of the peoples of North America — north and south of the Rio Grande.