Page:Mexico and its reconstruction.djvu/44

26 The foreigner in Mexico is not on the road to becoming a citizen, as is the case in the United States. He is a foreigner and he intends to remain one and that his son even though born in Mexico shall be one. In only about one case in 175 does he who can remain a foreigner become a Mexican. In 1910 of those enumerated who had become Mexicans, a little less than one-third were Spaniards and one-fifth were citizens of the United States. One Spaniard in every 140 became naturalized, one American in every 155. Forty-five per cent of the naturalized citizens lived in the Federal District and 32 per cent in the states along the northern frontier. Eleven per cent lived in Puebla. A naturalized citizen elsewhere in Mexico is a rara avis.

Of the 115,314 foreigners who had kept their nationality 25 per cent were Spaniards, 18 per cent were Guatemalans who had crossed the southern border chiefly to stay in the coffee districts, and almost 18 per cent were Americans. Eleven per cent were Chinese and another 11 per cent was made up of French, Germans, and Cubans. More than half of the Americans resident in Mexico were reported from the northern states, Chihuahua, Sonora, Coahuila, and Nuevo Leon, ranking in the order indicated.

No study of Mexican conditions can show the underlying causes making the republic a problem to itself and to its neighbors which overlooks the elements that have been briefly sketched in this chapter. A varied population, native, mestizo, and white, without a cultural basis