what are some cultrual features in mexico?

Answer 1

Mexicans are people oriented, and they will put friends, family and relatives before work or business matters. They are not stoic when it comes to passion for the honor of their mothers, sisters, wives or daughters. Family values in Mexico were preserved, even in the era of industrialization and social change, because the traditional family serves as protection and release from the troubling outside world. Religion has been a factor in the country's high birth rate and opposition of birth control, until recently the government supported the use of birth control acceptable to a mostly Catholic society.

Social stratification and racism
Mexico boasts a wealth of regional cultures that is unique in America. Every region in the country has a distinct culture, languages, and arts that create a huge mosaic as a whole.

Traditionally, Mexicans have struggled with the creation of a united identity. The issue is the main topic of "Labyrinth of Solitude" by Mexican Nobel Prize winner Octavio Paz. Mexico is a large country, therefore having many regional cultural traits. The north of Mexico, because of its historically high proportion of non-Spanish immigrants, is the least tradionally Mexican and most cosmopolitan of them all, making it a less exciting destination for foreign travelers. Central and southern Mexico is where many well-known traditions find their origin, therefore the people from this area are in a way the most traditional, but their collective personality can't be generalized. People from Puebla, for instance, are thought to be conservative and reserved, and just a few kilometers away, the people from Veracruz have the fame of being very outgoing and liberal. The México City middle classes are believed to be arriviste and prone to debt, or crime-prone if talking about the poor. The regiomontanos (from Monterrey) are thought to be cocky regardless of their social status, due to Northern prosperity. Different accents are used in almost every state in Mexico, making it fairly easy to distinguish the origin of someone by their distinct use of language.

Pure pre-Hispanic Americans also known as "Native Americans, or Indians are likely to be perceived as inferior, even though this rarely reaches the level of aggressive racism. It's a rarity to see pre-hispanic Americans in high positions. This hidden racism is latent in the use of the word "indio" as an insult for the darker skinned, which is even used between indigeneous people to offend each other. Racism against those of African ancestry is said less prevalent than in the U.S., but some Mexicans of African descent have protested against negative racial stereotypes.

Mexicans living in the United States, legally or illegally, are looked down upon by most middle class and high class Mexicans, since they feel they are creating a bad reputation for the rest of the Mexicans. Many terms that refer to Mexicans in the U.S.A. exist, but Chicano, (a person born in the U.S.A. of Mexican descent) or Pocho ( a person born in the U.S.A. with one parent Mexican and the other Anglo-American, and those who speak broken Spanish, or "Spanglish") are the most popular. In central and southern Mexico, these terms are used as a derogatory description. The majority of Mexican men or families that pursue a life in the U.S. come from the lowest economic stratus of society in Mexico, and have created a culture unique to them.

Standard of living
The standard of living in Mexico is higher than most of other countries in Latin America drawing people from places like Argentina, Brazil or Cuba to the country in search for better opportunities. With the recent economic growth, most middle and high income families live in single houses, commonly found within a walled village, called "fraccionamiento". The reason these places are the most popular among the middle and upper classes is that they offer a sense of security, since most of them are within walls and have survelliance, and living in one also provides social status, due to the infrastructure of most of these villages. Swimming pools or golf clubs, and/or some other commodities are found in these fraccionamientos. Houses inside them tend to be of higher quality, and larger than other homes, most of them with at least three or four bedrooms and even maid quarters and laundry. However, the poorer Mexicans live a harsh life. Poverty is specially poignant in the countryside. In the larger towns, hiring housekeepers or maids is not as common as in the past, but there are still many families that are willing to pay a person, generally a middle aged woman, to come help with the house chores once or twice a week. The gender roles for women in Mexico are generally strict, although this has lessened in the country's upper-classes influenced by Anglo cultural trends and some Mexican women are challenging patriarchal societal mores where males continue to practice "machismo", a major Latin American cultural norm (yet is stereotyped) of men are strong, self-reliant and aggressive.

Leisure
Dancing and singing are commonly part of family gatherings, bringing the old and young together, no matter what kind of music is being played, like cumbia, salsa, merengue or the more Mexican banda. Dancing is a strong part of the culture, and visitors will find that even people who were thought to be unlikely to dance, do so. Singing enjoys the same popularity and Mexicans will sing when they are depressed, in a cantina to a mariachi song, or when they are very happy.

Mexicans in places like Guadalajara, Puebla, Monterrey, Mexico City, and most middle sized cities, enjoy a great variety of options for leisure. Shopping centers are a favorite among families, since there has been an increasing number of new malls that cater to people of all ages and interests. A large number of them, have multiplex cinemas, international and local restaurants, food courts, cafes, bars, bookstores and most of the international renowned clothing brands are found too. Mexicans are prone to travel within their own country, making short weekend trips to a neighbouring city or town.


Broadcast media
Two of the major television networks based in Mexico are Televisa and TV Azteca. Soap operas (telenovelas) are translated to many languages and seen all over the world with renown names like Verónica Castro, Lucía Méndez, Lucero, and Thalía. Even Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna from Y tu mamá también and current Zegna model have appeared in some of them. Some of their TV shows are modeled after American counterparts like Family Feud (100 Mexicanos Dijeron or "A hundred Mexicans said" in Spanish) and Que Dice la Gente, Big Brother, American Idol, Saturday Night Live and others. Nationwide news shows like Las Noticias por Adela on Televisa resemble a hybrid between Donahue and Nightline. Local news shows are modeled after American counterparts like the Eyewitness News and Action News formats. Border cities receive American television and radio stations, while satellite and cable subscription is common for the upper-classes in major cities, often watch American movies and TV shows.

Sports:
The favorite sport remains football (soccer), while baseball is also popular, especially in the Gulf of Mexico and the border states in the NW. The season runs from March to July with playoffs held in August. The Mexican professional league is named the Liga Mexicana de Beisbol.

Exhibitions like bull fighting are still practiced and professional wrestling as shown on shows like Lucha libre. American football is practiced at the major universities like UNAM.

Rugby is played at the amateur level throughout the country with the majority of clubs in Mexico City and others in Monterrey, Guadalajara, Celaya, Guanajuato and Oaxaca.

The national sport of Mexico is Charreria. Ancient Mexicans played a ball game which still exists in Northwest Mexico (Sinaloa, the game is called Ulama), though it is not a popular sport any more. Bullfighting is also a popular sport in the country. Almost all large cities have bullrings. La Monumental in Mexico city, has the largest bullring in the world, which seats 55,000 people.

Languages:
Compared to the other North American nations, the Mexican Constitution does not mention the existence of an "official language" just like the United States but unlike Canada, but it is mentioned in the treaty of Las Tres garantias, where Agustin de Iturbide declares the unity of all Mexicans the Spanish as the offcial language of Mexico. Although Spanish is considered to be the "common" language of the country, used in all sorts of documents and spoken by the majority of the population, about 7% of the population speak an American dialect. The government officially recognizes 62 American languages. Of these, Nahuatl and Maya are each spoken by 1.5 million, while others, such as Lacandon, are spoken by fewer than 100. The Mexican government has promoted and established bilingual education programs in indigenous rural communities. A few tribes, such as the Kickapoo and the Cherokee, came to the state of Coahuila in the 19th century to escape U.S. army raids and are said to maintain their language and culture to a certain extent.

Although Spanish is the common language of Mexico, English is widely used in business. As a result, English language skills are much in demand and can lead to an increase in the salary offered by a company. It is also spoken along the U.S.A. border, in big cities, and in beach resorts. Also, the majority of private schools in Mexico offer bilingual education, both in Spanish and English. English is the main language spoken in U.S.A. expatriate communities such as those along the coast of Baja California, Jalisco and the town of San Miguel de Allende.

With respect to other European languages brought by immigrants, the case of Chipilo, in the state of Puebla, is unique, and has been documented by several linguists such as Carolyn McKay. The immigrants that founded the city of Chipilo in 1882 came from the Veneto region in northern Italy, and thus spoke a northern variant of the Venetian dialect. While other European immigrants assimilated into the Mexican culture, the people of Chipilo retained their language. Nowadays, most of the people who live in the city of Chipilo (and many of those who have migrated to other cities) still speak the unaltered Veneto dialect spoken by their great-grandparents making the Veneto dialect an unrecognized minority language in the city of Puebla. In Huatusco and Colonia Gonzalez, Veracruz, Veneto is still heard too.

A similar case is that of the Plautdietsch language, spoken by the descendants of German and Dutch Mennonite immigrants in the states of Chihuahua and Durango. Other German communities lie in Puebla, Mexico City, Sinaloa and Chiapas, with the largest German school outside of Germany being in Mexico City (Alexander von Humboldt school), these represent the large German populations where they still try to preserve the German culture and language. Other strong German communities lie in Sinaloa (Mazatlan), Nuevo Leon, Chiapas (Tapachula) and other parts of Puebla (Nueva Necaxa) where the German culture and language have been preserved to different extents.

French is also heard in the state of Veracruz in the cities of Jicaltepec, San Rafael and Mentideros, where the architecture and food is also very French. These French immigrants came from Haute-Saône département in France, especially from Champlitte and Borgonge. Another important French group were the "Barcelonette's" from the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence département, who migrated specifically to Mexico to find jobs and work in merchandising and are well known in Mexico City, Puebla, and Veracruz. Another important French village in Mexico is Santa Rosalía in Baja California Sur, where French language and culture/architecture are still found.

Scandinavian languages and traditions can also be heard in Chihuahua, such as Swedish and Norwegian in Nueva Escandinavia and other Scandinavian colonies in the north of the country. Russian is heard in the Baja California region of Valle de Guadalupe, thanks to the immigrants from southern Russia who settled these areas. They are the Molokans or "milk eaters", and they preserve their culture in Baja California, with the architecture in their houses and museums, they produce fine wine (Along with the large Italian community that lives near them) and their language and traditions, as well as dresses and festivities. Other Russians belong to a more recent wave of immigration from mainly Russia and Poland and the Ukraine along other Eastern Europeans, who settle mainly in Mexico City and Guadalajara.

The wave of Armenians, Lebanese, Syrians and Greeks came to Mexico in the early 20th century, mainly settled in urban areas and Baja California and Sinaloa, especially Greeks in the city of Culiacan, in proximity to relatives in California, U.S. is one notable migration. The Lebanese have settled in the urban areas such as Mexico City, Guadalajara, Monterrey, and Puebla. Cornish dialect of Cornwall, England disappeared from Mexico in the state of Hidalgo in the early 20th century, especially in the cities of Pachuca and Real del Monte, but the Cornish culture still survives in the architecture, sports, food and many aspects of these cities in central Mexico.

Religion:
Mexico is predominantly Roman Catholic (about 89% of the population). It is the nation with the second largest Catholic population, behind Brazil. Also, 6% of the population adheres to various Protestant/Restoration faiths (e.g. Latter-day Saints, Pentecostal), etc. Mexico is the nation with the second largest LDS population, 1,043,718, (a little less than 1%),just behind the USA (5,690,672). The remaining 5% of the population adhere to other religions or profess no religion. Some of the country's Catholics (notably those of indigenous background) syncretize Catholicism with various elements of Aztec or Mayan religions. The Virgin of Guadalupe has long been a symbol enshrining the major aspirations of Mexican society. According to anthropologist Eric R. Wolf, the Guadalupe symbol links family, politics, and religion; the colonial past and the independent present; and the indigenous and the Mexican. [4]

Judaism has been practiced in Mexico for centuries. Many are descended of Jewish people who were converted forcibly to Catholicism in 1492 or earlier, and were forced to practice their religion in secret until the Inquisition was abolished in Mexico and they were free again to practice their ancestral faith openly. There are estimated to be more than 45,000-50,000 (some estimates say 60,000) Jews in Mexico today. [2] Islam has 318,608 adherents, according to official data, and is mostly practiced by Mexicans of Arab (mainly Syrian) and Turkish descent, though there very small percentage of the indigenous population in Chiapas state who adhere to Islam. Mexico has a very tiny Sikh population in the country of east Indian origin. The small number of Asian ethnic groups in Baja California have introduced Hinduism and Buddhism, but their members are generally small segments of Mexico's

Education:
Mexico has made impressive improvements in education in the last two decades. In 2004, the literacy rate was at 92.2%, and the youth literacy rate (ages 15-24) was 96%. Primary and secondary education (9 years) is free and mandatory. Even though different bilingual education programs have existed since the 1960s for the indigenous communities, after a constitutional reform in the late 1990s, these programs have had a new thrust, and free text books are produced in more than a dozen indigenous languages.

In the 1970's, Mexico became the first country to establish a system of "distance-learning" . Schools that use this system are known as telesecundarias in Mexico. The Mexican distance learning secondary education is also transmitted to some Central American countries and to Colombia, and it is used in some southern regions of the United States as a method of bilingual education.

The largest university in Mexico is the National Autonomous University of Mexico (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México) UNAM, founded in 1551. Most of the Mexican Presidents in the modern history and three Nobel Laureates are among its former students. UNAM conducts 50% of Mexico's scientific research. The second largest university is the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN). These institutions are not self-sufficient. Several problems have arose with their semi-socialist system mainly in the area of high rates of absence from faculty employees and constant strikes by both, students and faculty. To obtain a 4-year degree students can spend up to ten years inside classrooms without penalty. The National Autonomous University of Mexico occupies the 96th place in the Top 200 World University Ranking published by The Times Higher Educaction Supplement in 2005, making it the highest ranked Spanish-speaking university in the world as well as the first Latin American university. The most important private universities are Monterrey's Technological and Higher Education Institute (ITESM) (which has 32 secondary campuses, apart from the Monterrey Campus), Mexico's Autonomous Technological Institute (ITAM), Universidad de las Américas Puebla (UDLAP), the Ibero-American University (Universidad Iberoamericana).

Crime and poverty:
There is a great economic polarization between the rich and the poor. There are also high crime rates in some parts of the country. Mexican drug cartels deliver more than half of the methamphetamine supply into the United States. [5] The persistence of corruption at certain levels of the government and the police has prevented effective crime control efforts.

Police corruption remain as a large problem in Mexico, and are mostly fueled by the lucrative drug trade and migrant smuggling. Between January and June 2006, drug wars between cartels claimed 1,003 victims. The problem is especially dangerous in the border city of Tijuana and in the coastal city of Acapulco, which is a key link to the United States and México City. [6]

Mexico City continues to experience major crime problems, particularly with street crime and kidnappings, and also a new type of kidnapping called "Express kidnapping" usually in which the victim is carjacked and beaten. It is estimated that there are between 2000 and 3000 crimes committed on the streets of Mexico City every day. Approximately 600 are reported (2000 average). Most of these are muggings, although the breakdown of the figures runs the gamut of criminal activity. Murders are not a significant part of the problem. These average around 2.5 per day which, given the size of the population, is relatively few. To put it in context, Washington, D.C. has a murder rate per capita around 5 times higher.

Answer 2

As so stated it was posted as a joke.I live in a northern border state and a good share of those who come over illegal from Arizona end up here. I Can see why Arizona passed that law and I hope future states do the same as our federal government can't seem to handle the job.I don't have a problem with people coming here to make a new life for themselves or their families. I'll gladly welcome them with open arms but only if it is done legally. people seem to have forgotten that the meaning of illegal means against the law.Nothing against immigrants because our families all started with one once. Myself I'm third genration American. My Great Granny came through Ellis Island when she was 14.