By Deborah Van Hoewyk

When you watch Mexican television, do you look at the ads? Who do you see? Pale people. When you walk outside in Huatulco, or Santa María, or Oaxaca City, who do you see? Brown people, all the glorious shades of brown people.

Skin Color and Social Class in Mexico

It turns out that skin color is – and always has been – one of the major components of social class in Mexico. The most requested type of actor for commercial advertising is “international Latino” – dark hair and eyes are okay, but skin must be light. According to social anthropologist Juris Tipa, a professor/researcher at the Autonomous Metropolitan University-Iztapalapa, the whole notion of “international Latino” is “reinforcing the imagery of a ‘Europeanised Latin Americanity’ at the expense of the average Mexican.”

Official statistical research in Mexico is carried out by INEGI (National Institute of Statistics and Geography). Traditionally, adhering to the general notion that Mexico is a nation based on mestizaje – racial/ethnic mixing – INEGI’s surveys have not included questions on race or skin color. (A question on African ancestry started appearing in 2015; see the Chaikens’ article on slavery on page 8, as well as Julie Etra’s article on page 26.)

Given that the Conquest left Mexico with not only slavery but a caste system based entirely on racial and ethnic classifications, the ideology of mestizaje would seem to be a political fiction. Even though the War of Independence replaced the caste system with a hierarchy based on wealth and education, the preference for that pale-skinned European look persisted (President Porfirio Díaz, whose dictatorial ways led up to the Mexican Revolution, was a noted Europhile). Academic research has now begun to look into the relationship of skin color and “life outcomes,” i.e., social class.

In 2010, Andrés Villareal, then at the Population Research Center at the University of Texas, was the first investigator to look at how skin color affects an individual’s “life chances.” He found that the darker your skin, the less education you had. The darker your skin, the lower your occupational category. The darker your skin, the more likely you were to live in poverty, although this relationship was not perfect – if you had light brown skin, you could make it into a more affluent category. Remember, the richest man in Mexico, Carlos Slim, has light brown skin!

Researchers from the Department of Sociology at Princeton University followed up on Villareal’s research in 2012; their work added the finding that “class origin” – that is, the social status of your family – could moderate the effect of skin color. Interestingly, they found that high-income individuals are perceived to be white, regardless of the color of their skin. Overall, they found that skin color and class origin work together to reproduce social inequality in Mexico – and the class origin component works to set your fate even before you enter the labor market.

In 2018, using an 11-shade “palette” of skin colors, researchers at the Center for Economic Studies at the Colegio de México in Mexico City, found “profound social stratification by skin color.” The lightest-skinned people have a year and a half more schooling and more than double the hourly earnings than those with the darkest skin color. Lighter skin brings more “social mobility,” i.e., light-skinned people can move up the socio-economic ladder, while the darkest people actually dropped in socioeconomic status.

Does Skin Color = Social Class in Mexico?

Does this truly mean the caste system is alive and well? Not completely. Even though skin color can influence your access to advantages such as education, those advantages can moderate the effects of skin color. There’s education (especially whether or not you speak English), along with professional skills and background. In a 2023 study in the Middle Atlantic Review of Latin American Studies, Thomas Stringer, a professor at Tecnológico de Monterrey, argues that the intersection of skin color, English proficiency, and intergenerational wealth determines your social class in Mexico.

The Mexican Association of Marketing Research and Public Opinion Agencies, otherwise known as AMAI, has developed a seven-level system of socioeconomic status (SES); the system is based on four characteristics: (1) education (how much professional or post-graduate study), (2) living situation (vivienda – how many bedrooms and how many cars), (3) Internet connectivity, and (4) technology (how many computers). AMAI places no emphasis on skin color – like all good marketing authorities, their system seems to be based on consumption.

So … Show Me the Money!

It is interesting that Mexico does not have a standard definition of socio-economic status, and that perceptions of who is “middle” class are so fluid (see the article by Kary Vannice on page 6). Underlying all the SES measures noted above? Money. You want a nice house? You have to have the money to buy it or build it. Higher education? You have to pay tuition. Intergenerational wealth? Your family had to get it somewhere.

Money in Mexico, however, is not available to all – the World Inequality Report of 2022 ranks Mexico 12th in the world for the disparity between those at the economic top (1% of the population held almost 50% of the country’s wealth) and bottom (50% of the population held only a bit more than 9% of the wealth).

Under the 2018-24 presidency of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), however, income inequality actually decreased. AMLO shepherded successive 20% increases in the minimum wage, which sweetened union contracts as a bonus. He tightened outsourcing laws, retaining more manufacturing in Mexico – a policy that moved more than three million people into formal employment. Overall, the “multidimensional poverty rate” (income plus “social rights” – access to food, medical care, sanitation, etc.) dropped by over 5% in AMLO’s first four years, with 8.9 million people lifted out of poverty.

When millions of people escape poverty, the country benefits enormously. But escaping poverty does not necessarily change your social class, nor does it provide access to the advantages of upward mobility.