Twentieth-Century Spanish Expatriates in Mexico: An Urban Sub-Culture

Abstract

In a previous article (Kenny 1961 b:85-93) I described the urban field situation in regard twentieth-century Spaniards in Cuba as I found it in 1960. That the situation there has changed because of the steady flight of the Spaniards from that island since then is obvious. If, however, there was evidence at that time show that Spaniards in Cuba formed a distinctive sub-cultural group there is even more evidence show the same for twentiethcentury Spaniards in Mexico. This paper will present certain general data that effect gathered in 1960 and 1961-1962' in urban Mexico where, like Cuba, the immigration of Spaniards has been steadily declining for many years'. Compared the Argentine, Brazil and, of late, Venezuela, Mexico has never been high on the list of preferences for Spanish emigrants. Military agitation and political unrest during the first century of Mexico's independence--1810 1910--did not encourage the interest of emigrants seeking to make America. The fall of Maximilian, viewed with alarm in Europe in general, and the fact that an Indian-Juarez-governed the destinies of Mexico for nearly twenty years were other nineteenth century factors which discouraged emigrants from Spain. Moreover, unlike the case of the Argentine and Brazil, immigration has never been an important aid population growth in Mexico except perhaps for a brief period in the colonial epoch. The reasons for coming Mexico in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were much the same as those which