CHAPTER II
THE POPULATION OF MEXICO
One of the most easily understood errors into which we fall is to suppose that political boundaries coincide with those of race and culture. Before the World War how many could have named the lesser peoples who, in the course of the conflict, raised their claims to the right of self-determination and political independence? Few indeed.
When we think of Mexico, we fall into the same error. There have been no important population movements within the territory of the greatest of the Latin republics in North America since the region has been known to Western civilization. There has been no immigration from abroad that has brought in an element that puts forth a claim for a government independent of the rest of the republic. There have been no racial or social barriers which had to be broken down to allow Mexico to become a unit in fact as well as in name. Nevertheless there is to-day no Mexican people, though we speak of one. There never has been one. The feeling of nationality is here one of those artificially created phenomena, the strength of which so often proves out of all proportion to that of the base upon which they rest.
The description of the ideal state conceived by some theorists, "an ethnic unity living within a geographic unity" is fully applicable to but few, if any, nations. It is far from describing the population of Mexico. The
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