While the census of 1930 counted nearly a million and a half Mexicans in the United States, it is probable that the number has since then diminished, and it is of highest importance that it should not be allowed to increase. The Mexican Indian has no racial qualities to contribute to the United States population that are now needed, and if he has any cultural contribution to make it will not be made by the immigration of hundreds of thousands of illiterate and destitute laborers.
Guatemala. More than half of the population of Guatemala is still pure Indian, and the half breed class which plays such an important part in Mexico and other countries is relatively less conspicuous there. The inconsiderable white population is made up in part of the descendants of old Spanish families and in part from more recent immigrants, especially Germans.
The proportion of Teutonic names among the rulers of Guatemala during the last generation has been growing steadily. With two million population Guatemala is the most powerful of the Central American countries, but the Indians tend to be little more than a subject race exploited by others, and the general progress of the country is therefore in some ways slow.
Honduras suffers partly from its tropical situation but still more from the mixture of races, and the large amount of Negro blood in the population of the lowlands. By contrast with Guatemala the Indian element is here unimportant, and the people are Negroes and half-breeds, or a little of each. With its 600,000 population largely of mongrel origin, the Republic has been a backward member of the Central American group throughout most of its history. British Honduras is an unimportant area with much the same characteristics. The so-called Caribs along the coast are now scarcely distinguishable from pure Negroes.
Salvador. Smaller than the State of New Jersey, Salvador has an importance out of proportion to its size because of the dense population and large amount of cultivable land together with a smaller amount of Negro mixture than in the adjoining Republics. With a population estimated at a million and a half (such a thing as a real census is almost unknown in Latin American countries), its people are largely of mixed blood with the Indian predominating, but the number of pure-blooded Indians is not large compared with Guatemala.
Nicaragua, a synonym for turbulence in the minds of Americans, has also a population of highly mixed character. The Indians did not remain a distinct group as in Guatemala, nor were they largely exterminated as in Costa Rica. They were absorbed into a half-breed population of more than 600,000 which has also in the lowlands a large Negro admixture.