Mexico City's ancestry story goes far beyond a simple European–Indigenous mix.

In 138,511 participants from Coyoacán and Iztapalapa, researchers estimated an average of 66% Indigenous Mexican, 31.1% European and 2.9% African ancestry. These are results for this two-district sample, not a national Mexican average.

The Indigenous component was strongly regional: central Mexican references accounted for 35.6% of total ancestry, southern references 15.9%, and southeastern references 11.8%. Northern and northwestern references contributed 1.6% and 1.1%. These are model estimates of genetic similarity to reference groups—not exact percentages from named ethnic peoples such as the Aztecs or Maya.

The DNA also carries a sex-biased history. Indigenous ancestry was higher on the X chromosome than on the autosomes, consistent with more Indigenous female and European male contributions to the ancestral mixture. A simplified model estimated that women accounted for 71.3% of the Indigenous contribution but 7.5% of the European contribution. Those are modeled historical contributions, not percentages of today's men or women.

Later migration helped shape the city again. The paper describes major arrivals from central, southern and southeastern Mexico during the 1950s–1970s, especially into Iztapalapa. Participants in neighboring Coyoacán had more European ancestry on average.

Among 3,595 inferred parent couples, partners' ancestry was correlated. That does not tell us why they paired up. And throughout the cohort, ancestry varied widely from person to person: one city average could never describe everyone.

📚 Source: Ziyatdinov et al. (2023), Nature
Genotyping, sequencing and analysis of 140,000 adults from Mexico City

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