Talk:Mexico

Battle of El Álamo Image Caption

The caption for the "Battle of El Álamo" image should be updated to read "Battle of the Alamo," the name by which this battle is generally referred to in English. I believe this was overlooked when the previous discussion on this topic was archived. Jbt89 (talk) 23:46, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

Seems exceedingly unnecessary. While WP:COMMONNAME would generally apply here, it makes sense that in different historiographical contexts different names for events may be preferred. Remsense ‥ 论 23:52, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

There is no mainstream context in which the name "Battle of El Álamo" is commonly used in English. WP:COMMONNAME applies here as everywhere else on this site and that's the end of it. Jbt89 (talk) 07:30, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 1 January 2025

Add page numen for citation 115. 45.49.246.117 (talk) 14:01, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. What is the page number to be added? LizardJr8 (talk) 21:34, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

It seems clear to me. It's "Change the citation template for the reference that's currently numbered 115 so it reads as it does now except that a page parameter has been added." The only obstacle is a lack of knowledge as to what page that is. Largoplazo (talk) 23:15, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 28 January 2025

Change "The country borders the United States to the north, as well as Guatemala and Belize to the southeast" to "The country has borders with the United States to the north, as well as Guatemala and Belize to the southeast". Sporadic one (talk) 05:56, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

 Not done: The original sentence is correct. (3OpenEyes' communication receptacle) | (PS: Have a good day) (acer was here) 15:44, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

Sources of available on race

Let's compile all the sources we have and see what we can muster up.

Moxy🍁 03:16, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

Here's a good one [1], it states in the page 3 that "Mexicans that do not have physical features like those of people from European and North American countries make up 64.8% of the population, thus Whites are around 34%-35%, which is not very different of What Encyclopedia Brittanica states (you acknoledged yourself 30%[2]-31%[3] two days ago) I propose to leave the article as 32%, it said that for some time already. Pob3qu3 (talk) 04:03, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

Can you please double check that document and page number you just provided, as it does not seem to support what you are alleging here. TiggerJay (talk) 04:57, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

The page 3 claims that 64% of the population are "morenos" after that it claims that such group "besides being the majority... it does not have the characteristics/physical features that are more related to Europe or North America" actually a more literal translation suggest it more directly than the one I was previously using. Pob3qu3 (talk) 05:04, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

@Moxy just so you know that fourth reference is to Mexico, Missouri, not the country. TiggerJay (talk) 05:30, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

It doesn't not make sense to carry on this conversation in two different venues, let's just continue on the NORN page please. TiggerJay (talk) 05:23, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

pls remove an sources tht are junk or not relevant. Was sent a nice source Telles, Edward; Torche, Florencia (2019-06-01). "Varieties of Indigeneity in the Americas". Social Forces. 97 (4). s, University of California, Stanford University: 1543–1570. doi:10.1093/sf/soy091. ISSN 0037-7732. Retrieved 2025-02-05. Moxy🍁 06:15, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

Irrelevant source was removed in a prior edit but I neglected to mention in the discussion itself. TiggerJay (talk) 16:33, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

We'll start reviewing genetic stuff next week. Moxy🍁 21:13, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

I think is better to settle the race sources discussion before getting into genetics, a factor that contributed to make this entire situation so complex was that the discussion was jumping from one issue to another before resolving each. There's still much sources on this topic that haven't been properly reviewed on this topic (for example, I just asked you your opinion on a source in the section below, I hope you can reply, is not the first time I ask you about that particular source.) Pob3qu3 (talk) 22:50, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

• I think indigenousmexico.org is just a blog. The website's about page is interesting, but it never gets around to indicating anything about editing or oversight or fact-checking. I think many or most of the blog posts there are text versions of monthly presentations given by the website's owner to the Society of Hispanic Historical and Ancestral Research. I don't think that organization is inherently reliable, either. The blog is useful in at least one way. The sources which it cites may, themselves, be useful. Grayfell (talk) 23:56, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

References

Contentious

Two recent edits by Pob3qu3 (diff) were reverted by Tiggerjay (diff) as "Highly contentious". @Tiggerjay: Would you please briefly outline why you regard the edits as contentious. Please be specific but concise. If I need more, I'll ask. I ask this as an uninvolved administrator after seeing the ANI report. I know the answer will be somewhere but please start again. Johnuniq (talk) 09:01, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

@Johnuniq, over the course of the last several months Pob3qu3 has been attempting to insert a statistic of 32% of Mexico's population are "White Mexicans" (or some variation thereof). This statistic has been contested on their talk page[4] and then another editor brought it up over at NORN[5] several weeks ago. In the most recent reverted diff, Pob3qu3 has cited britannica.com: (1) you can see yourself that their citation does not establish the 32% figure, and (2) that source has been discussed at length at NORN, and several of us are claiming WP:SYNTH. This was considered "contentious" because they knowingly re-added information they clearly know is disputed. The qualifier of "high" is because this is disputed by multiple editors and spanning multiple months with an ongoing NORN discussion. For further details, you can read their talk page or the more lengthy NORN discussion, or feel free to ping me. TiggerJay (talk) 15:24, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

TiggerJay you say again that the "citation does not establish the 32% figure" yet there's a pie chart in the source that says that "other" amounts for 31% of the country's population and the entry states: "Mexicans of European heritage (“whites”) are a significant component of the other ethnic groups who constitute the remainder of the population" It seems rather clear to me that the 31% figure are ethnic groups who are White or significantly White. Johnuniq, another observation I have to make is that I'm not trying to insert a figure. Actually the figure has been used on the estable versions of multiple articles for months, its TigerJay and company the ones who are trying to remove it. Pob3qu3 (talk) 17:36, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

As has already been explained to Pob3qu3, the pie chart doesn't say that 32% are "White", nor "European" so this is original research. At one point I changed it to say 'one-third' (either here, or some neighboring articles) to avoid false precision. I misread the sources. It doesn't support this, even as an approximation. We shouldn't be adding our best-guesses, and original research about who is and is not "White" enough to be counted isn't appropriate in any article for a lot of reasons.

As for being in the article for 'many months' it was added] by Pob3qu3 in December. This was added after some of Pob3qu3's changes to that section had been reverted. Grayfell (talk) 23:31, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

Grayfell the 30%-31% or similar figure from Encyclopedia Brittanica has been present in multiple articles since months ago, check this diff of the article Mexicans from July 29th[6] (in the White mexicans section, Demographics of Mexico from September 2[7](White Mexicans section) and the White Mexicans article from July 9[8](second paragraph of the introduction). Pob3qu3 (talk) 01:00, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

I fail to see your point. The Britannica source doesn't support it. The history of how this OR got stuck in multiple articles is tedious. I'm not interested in assigning blame I'm interested in fixing these articles. Grayfell (talk) 01:06, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

Grayfell If you are truly interested on fixing these articles why don't you start re-adding Brittanica to this one? after all you keep Brittanica on the European Emigration article (the disagrement in there is on the form of how we present the info regarding White Mexicans, not about Brittanicas inclusion, we can work that out on the next days). Pob3qu3 (talk) 01:57, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

Stop pestering me about this with pings. When the dust has settled I hope I will be able to help clean up a lot of these articles. That's going to involve a lot more than just the Britannica source. Since you are apparently dead-set on restoring your preferred version, there's not much point in making these changes now, is there? Your comment seems like you're still trying to turn this into a 'gotcha' instead of addressing the issue. Grayfell (talk) 02:31, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

Your comment seems like you're still trying to turn this into a 'gotcha' instead of addressing the issue Grayfell the issue to my understanding is the serious impasse on which we've been on and I'm trying my best to resolve it by finding a common ground, I think we all can agree that Encyclopedia Brittanica is a very reliable source and there's no reason to keep it removed from this article, you in fact rephrassed it and have it included in the Mexico section of the article of European Emigration so why don't you add it here too?. Pob3qu3 (talk) 03:33, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

I specifically asked you to stop pinging me. Do not ping me again.

All sources are judged in context. The specific numbers you have added are not supported by that source, so they do not belong. Using other sources to synthesis a specific definition to be able to interpret the source to say "32%" is not appropriate. Grayfell (talk) 04:03, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

I'm an uninvolved editor who got here from Pob3qu3's reply to Liz on ANI. I'm going to make a single attempt to shed light on this issue.

• First, Pob3qu3, you're hung up on values that other people have put in the article in the past. The percentage of whites in Mexico does not depend on what WP editors put in the article in the past. For this discussion to go forward you need to just let that go. Clearly those editors no longer espouse those numbers.
• Second, let's talk math. And don't worry for a minute about WP definitions like OR, SYNTH, and CALC. Let's just look at what we can really learn about percentage of whites in Mexico based on Brittanica. Your quote of Brittanica is what brought me here. The data you provided Liz, if I understand right, is this:
  • Less than 10% indigenous
  • About 60% mestizo
  • "whites" are a significant component of the "other" ethnic groups who constitute the remainder of the population
  • The pie chart has about 31% "other"

So with that data let's establish an upper bound and lower bound on the white percentage. I think we can all agree that an upper bound would about 31%, i.e., all but one person in the whole "other" category may be white, and this rounds up to 31%.

The only constraint we have on the lower bound is that they are a "significant component" of "other". What is a "significant component"? We have no further information from Brittanica on the meaning of that phrase, so we have to evaluate it for ourselves. It could mean "the majority", i.e. 50+% of "other". That would be a total white percentage of at least 15.5%. It could mean "a plurality", which means that white is the biggest of all components of other, but still not a majority. For example, if there were five races in "other", then by the pigeonhole principle at least one of them has to be at least 1/5 of the 31%, or > 6.2%. But the article doesn't even say that white is the MOST significant component of "other" (though it probably is). For example, if Asian is the most significant and accounts for 30%, white could be under 1% and still be a "significant component" of "other".

So these three interpretations of "significant component" lead to three different lower bounds, and we don't know which is meant. But even if we magically knew that Brittanica meant "the majority", that still gives a lower bound of only 15.5%. The article doesn't say "vast majority" or "nearly all" of "other". So we can't concretely say that it's anything above 15.5%, even if we knew that it was "the majority", which we don't.

So because the Brittanica article wording allows for ranges anywhere from 31% down to less than 1%, picking a number within that range would be going beyond what the source says and is not ok. Davemc0 (talk) 15:09, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

When Brittanica says "Mexicans of European heritage (“whites”) are a significant component of the other ethnic groups who constitute the remainder of the population" It means that the other ethnic groups are White/significantly White. Similarly to your reply below [9] you are using hypoteticals such as if there were five races in "other" & if Asian is the most significant and accounts for 30%..." but those are simply not true, Asians and other races exist on way too reduced numbers in Mexico for those hypoteticals to work (also they are not "significantly White" so they cannot be in the "other" section to begin with). Pob3qu3 (talk) 18:57, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

My reading of WP:BRITANNICA is that EB is not a desirable reference. At any rate, if it is the only source available, the information cannot be considered WP:DUE. I can't see a way to link to a particular chart in the EB reference, but at the moment I am looking at one saying "Mexico ethnic composition" for 2012 and 2000. Under 2000, a pie chart seems to say that 15.0% are "Mexican white". I do not see mention of that figure above which demonstrates the degree of confusion surrounding the topic. It is definitely not satisfactory to use the "significant component of the other ethnic groups" extract above for anything other than "significant" which is too meaningless for Wikipedia. My comments are not advice regarding what proportion of Mexicans are "white". I am just outlining standard procedure. If I have missed something, please tell me. At the moment, I believe that it is clear that continued pursuit of the text described above would be disruptive and resolution is simple. @Pob3qu3: I will indefinitely block you from any article where you add statistics about Mexican ethnic composition unless there is prior consensus on the associated article talk page. Other people do not need to convince Pob3qu3—just indicate whether you agree or disagree with a proposed change, and briefly why. Do not talk about the past and who did what. Focus on sources and what they say. There is no need to repeat yourself. Johnuniq (talk) 04:48, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

Johnuniq there are more sources that give similar percentages, such as this one I presented before [10], it states in the page 3 that "64% of Mexico's population do not have the characteristics/physical features that are more related to Europe or North America" thus Whites are around 34%-35%, which is not very different of What Encyclopedia Brittanica states what do you think about this one?. Pob3qu3 (talk) 05:00, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

I have had my say. If you have a proposal for text to be included in the article, please start a new section and show the proposed text together with the proposed source. Do not edit the article with anything concerning Mexican ethnic composition unless there is a positive prior consensus. Johnuniq (talk) 05:36, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

Johnuniq You said that "if it is the only source available, the information cannot be considered WP:DUE" so I showed you that other source (whose results are somewhat similar to what Encyclopedia Brittanica says) to see if you changed your mind about it not being WP:DUE, are you not actually interested on mediating this anymore?. Pob3qu3 (talk) 06:00, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

General lack of understanding of the sources. Any further edit should be suggested and reviewed by others from now on. Moxy🍁 21:08, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

Moxy what does the source[11] say according to yourself? thinking about it, I've showed you this source and asked you this question various times but you've never replied to it before. Pob3qu3 (talk) 22:43, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

I've explaining I do not read Spanish. Moxy🍁 00:03, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

Moxy do you understand that this may be a problem as the content conflict of the last days, on which you've been a prominent part of is about Mexico-related articles, a subject on which a lot of sources, specially recent ones are on Spanish? Not to mention that on numerous occasions you've replied to my arguments just telling me that I "do not understand the sources" or similar. Pob3qu3 (talk) 02:38, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

An article talk page should be used to focus on proposed text and sources. Someone wanting a change needs to justify their proposal. That would involve explaining what proposed text is wanted, and why a source verifies that proposal. Use another website to talk about other editors or what happened in the past. Johnuniq (talk) 02:46, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

Agree 100% that this is a problem that many of us don't read Spanish...... we have many edits to review and we are going to have to incorporate people with better understanding of the language because thus far there's a serious problem just with the English ones. Moxy🍁 02:58, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

I do read Spanish, and also had Google Translate translate the paragraph from the PDF about African racism in Mexico:

64.6 percent of people in Mexico consider themselves to be brown; however, 54.8 percent say that people are insulted for their skin color and 15 percent have felt that their rights have not been respected for this very reason. (ENADIS 2010)

I also read math. So let's look at the math of this. It's true that 100% - 64.6% = 35.4%. That gives us a useful upper bound of no more than 35.4% are white. Fine. But what is the lower bound? As with Brittanica, the article does not say, and we cannot make a simple inference from this source to get a lower bound.

@Pob3qu3, this is the problem. You need to respect what these sources are NOT telling us, which is lower bounds. For example, this article would still be 100% correct in what it said if the reality was that there were one white European in Mexico and the rest of the 35.4% of the country were Asians who do not "consider themselves to be brown". (Apologies, but I'm going to use the word "brown" because that's what Google Translate handed me. In Spanish it was "moreno".)

Do you see the problem? Do you see how the conclusion that Mexico is 35.4% white requires an assumption by you that there are only two kinds of people in Mexico - those who "consider themselves to be brown" and whites? We are not allowed to make such assumptions when using sources. That's bad WP:SYNTH and bad WP:CALC. It's also bad black and white thinking. Excuse the pun, and no offense intended. Davemc0 (talk) 17:06, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

The document not only says that 64% consider themselves "morenos" (dark skinned) it also states on the page 3 that people on such group does not have "...characteristics/physical features that are more related to Europe or North America" so we know that the other group are people with North American/European physical characteristics or Whites, there are other light skinned groups in Mexico, like as you say Asians, but they are too reduced in number to consider that they are inflating the White/European physical characteristics group. Also not sure why you mention the figures about people being insulted by their skin color in this discussion, Grayfell did that too some days ago [12] and I think by doing that we are deviating of the point of the discussion. Pob3qu3 (talk) 18:39, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

Are many of these Mexican reports based on the pseudoscience of Physiognomy? Is this something still used in modern statistics by the country? Moxy🍁 19:00, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

Here's the translation from page 3. And like the prior quote, I'm doing the whole paragraph so people can see for themselves that the rest is irrelevant, rather than wondering.

Also considering that, according to the results of this survey, our country is made up of 64 percent of people who consider themselves dark-skinned, the data in the graph above gives us elements to conclude that in our country a sector of the population is rejected and marginalized, which, in addition to being the majority, does not have the physical characteristics of population groups that, in any case, would be more related to European or North American characteristics.

So from the language on page 1 and 3, there are logically four groups:

• 64.6% who DO consider themselves to be brown and who DO NOT have the (white) characteristics
• X% who DO consider themselves to be brown and who DO have the (white) characteristics
• Y% who DO NOT consider themselves to be brown and who DO NOT have the (white) characteristics
• Z% who DO NOT consider themselves to be brown and who DO have the (white) characteristics

Your conclusion is that because the 64% majority does not have the European / North American characteristics (white), that implies that ALL of the 35.4% minority DOES have the (white) characteristics. In other words, that Z = 35.4%. But that's an invalid inference. It ignores groups X and Y. There's no way that not a single person in Mexico who does not personally consider themself to be brown has the characteristics of being white. And for good measure, I'll point out that the article itself is flawed in that it implies that X = 0% - that no people consider themselves to be brown while in fact having (white) characteristics. There's no way that not a single person is in that category either.

So your implications are too simplistic. Your black and white thinking is causing you to ignore two of the four logical groups implied by the source. This is the whole reason we don't do WP:SYNTH on WP; we're not good enough at it.

I'll post some proposed wording when I get a minute. Davemc0 (talk) 20:57, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

As a follow on to Johnuniq, may I suggest that anyone suggesting any number for White Mexicans post exactly that number and ALL reliable sources they believe support that figure, so that they can all be evaluated at one go around. Ideally listing them in order from strongest to weakest support would be most helpful. The hisotrical situation of progressive revelation is needly delay of process. TiggerJay (talk) 06:09, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

Not sure about this idea, I think it does not adress the issue from the right perspective, as rather than a matter of seeing which number is repeated the most this must be a matter of the quality of sources. Encyclopedia Brittanica for example is a far more reputable source than any other source you can find on the internet, only data from the Mexican government could be considered more reliable than it really (seems like Johnuniq does not like Brittanica though, which honestly confuses me). Pob3qu3 (talk) 07:31, 13 February 2025 (UTC)