Español Mexicano
Mexican Spanish
Elm ParkYC's Mexican population tripled in the 1990s, with the largest numbers arriving from Puebla and later Guerrero, south-central states with large Indigenous communities, though today there are more from the Mexico City area and the entire country. One informal survey found that up to 17 percent of Mexican New Yorkers may speak an Indigenous language, with Mixtec and Nahuatl varieties the most widely spoken, possibly by tens of thousands—some of whom learn Spanish in New York. Mexicans have largely settled throughout the metro area, usually in Spanish-speaking neighborhoods first settled by Puerto Ricans and Dominicans, but there are signs now of distinctly Mexican areas and a host of institutions created by the community.