is Consanguinity common in mexico? (live, food, horse, to relocate)
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i'm not sure if this is in the right category or not, but if not, feel free to move this or lock this thread, admins.
i noticed that when i was doing my mom's family tree(my mom is a 1st generation mexican american), i noticed that marriage between cousins(epsecially between second cousins, but first cousins and third cousins too) was common with her ancestors (on her father's side of the family), and their siblings. not everyone in her family married their cosuins (my mom and dad aren't related nor are her parents)
also sometimes these cousins who got married were also related to each other in multiple ways. for example her paternal grandparents were second cousins through one side of the family, and third cousins through another. her paternal grandma's parents were first cousins, once removed. it gets all the more confusing from there. i'm not gonna list anymore examples right now, since there's just too many.
because of this observation, i'm wondering if this tradition is common in mexico or not.
if not, then that just makes her side of the family oddballs of the bunch.
Historical Mexican migration to the U.S. came from what I call the "Mexican Bible Belt", places like Jalisco, Zacatecas, Guanajuato, Aguascalientes... places that were strongly catholic and purpousely ignored by the anti-church PRI party that ruled Mexico following the Mexican revolution at the turn of the 20th century. A lot of these places were plagued by extreme poverty, geographic isolation, and high illiteracy... the same conditions that existed in Appalachia that contributed to high consaguinity rates there, the same connection could be made.
Consagunitiy is not more accepted in Mexico at large than it is in the United States.
My family came to North America before there was a U.S. and either in England it began to control property or in the New World because the White population was so small, I think in my family tree there were many cousin marriages. This did of course produce the best and the worst meaning some very bright people and some slight bad genetic hereditary problems that are thankfully mild. In closed areas it was common for cousins other than first cousins to marry which produces people who have recognizable similar characteristics in an area.
Cleopatra was a product of generations of brother sister marriages. She was brilliant and her brother, her husband, was slow.
A lot of these places were plagued by extreme poverty, geographic isolation, and high illiteracy... the same conditions that existed in Appalachia that contributed to high consaguinity rates there, the same connection could be made.
I disagree that consanguinity is a product of poverty, et al. That's a bankrupt stereotype. Otherwise, how could you possibly explain all the intermarriage within European royalty lines over the centuries?
In fact cousin marriage was quite common across all the agrarian cultures of early America, from colonial days forward. Marriage within a family not only served to consolidate wealth and property, but also to encourage valued family traits to be strengthened in the same way that the breeding of farm animals was improved. Seriously.
And bucking the stereotypes, in 26 states today cousin marriage is quite legal.
my ancestors on my maternal grandpa's side of the family largely came from either colotlan, huejucar, and jerez(the 1st 2 cities mentioned are in jalisco, and the 3rd one is in zacatecas). many of my ancestors were self-sufficient farmers who owned land. i'm not sure what social class they were in but i do know that they were able to feed their families and then enough leftover food to sell to the market.
my ancestors on my maternal grandpa's side of the family largely came from either colotlan, huejucar, and jerez(the 1st 2 cities mentioned are in jalisco, and the 3rd one is in zacatecas). many of my ancestors were self-sufficient farmers who owned land. i'm not sure what social class they were in but i do know that they were able to feed their families and then enough leftover food to sell to the market.
When you look at small village life, especially in small rural farming villages and people didn't have cars and didn't travel far, the chances of meeting someone with some of the same ancestors as you are much higher, the chances of meeting completely unrelated people are much smaller.
The smaller the village, the more this is true. If you live in a small village of 3000, pretty much everyone would be related and if you didn't have cars or a lot of money to travel around, how were you going to meet anyone else?
oh ok, yeah the town they came from was really small(they live in the outskirts of a city called huejucar(the name of the that section of town was called las bocas) , which is near the border between jalisco and zacatecas), and located in the hills. in the few cases on marrying non-relatives, they married someone who came from another town such as colotlan, tepetongo, or jerez.
i also forgot to mention that if couple happened to not be related, usually their kids ended up marrying cousins too.
oh ok, yeah the town they came from was really small(they live in the outskirts of a city called huejucar(the name of the that section of town was called las bocas) , which is near the border between jalisco and zacatecas), and located in the hills. in the few cases on marrying non-relatives, they married someone who came from another town such as colotlan, tepetongo, or jerez.
i also forgot to mention that if couple happened to not be related, usually their kids ended up marrying cousins too.
I know a guy who came from one of those very small isolated areas - he lived in an ejido -- his family had a small ranch or farm and no one had cars when and where he grew up. He talks of riding a horse to go to dances in a neighboring little village. And he grew up in the 1960s and 1970s.
When you consider that isolated was how these people have always lived, it's not so odd that you'd have family trees like that. I don't think in some of the more mountainous remote areas it was all that common for outsiders to move in, certainly not in very large numbers. It would have been difficult to travel even 50 miles away from your village on a regular basis. And people from the big cities didn't tend to relocate often to the isolated mountainous regions to intermarry with the locals of the tiny villages.
I know a guy who came from one of those very small isolated areas - he lived in an ejido -- his family had a small ranch or farm and no one had cars when and where he grew up. He talks of riding a horse to go to dances in a neighboring little village. And he grew up in the 1960s and 1970s.
When you consider that isolated was how these people have always lived, it's not so odd that you'd have family trees like that. I don't think in some of the more mountainous remote areas it was all that common for outsiders to move in, certainly not in very large numbers. It would have been difficult to travel even 50 miles away from your village on a regular basis. And people from the big cities didn't tend to relocate often to the isolated mountainous regions to intermarry with the locals of the tiny villages.
oh ok, thanks for telling me that. your answer was the best one yet. a couple others here's answers were decent also
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