Mexican settlement in the Philippines comprises a multilingual Filipino ethnic group composed of Philippine citizens with Mexican ancestry. The immigration of Mexicans to the Philippines dates back to the Spanish period.
Mexican immigration to the Philippines mainly occurred during the Hispanic period. Between , the Philippines were in fact administered from the Viceroyalty of New Spain 's capital, Mexico City. During this period trans-Pacific trade brought many Mexicans and Spaniards to the Philippines as sailors, crew, prisoners, slaves, adventurers and soldiers [ 4 ] in the Manila-Acapulco Galleons which was the main form of communication between the two Spanish territories.
According to Stephanie Mawson in her M. Phil thesis entitled Between Loyalty and Disobedience: The Limits of Spanish Domination in the Seventeenth Century Pacific , in the s there were thousands of Latin American settlers sent to the Philippines by the Spaniards per year and around that time frame the Spaniards had cumulatively sent 15, settlers from Peru and Mexico [ 5 ] while there were only Spaniards from Spain, [ 6 ] that supplemented a Philippine population of only , people.
Park cites "Forzados y reclutas: los criollos novohispanos en Asia " gave a higher number of later Mexican soldier-immigrants to the Philippines, pegging the number at 35, immigrants in the s, [ 2 ] in a Philippine population which was only around 1. Nevertheless, during the Mexican War of Independence Spain feared that the large Mexican population in the Philippines would incite the Filipinos to rebel, thus Spaniards direct from Spain were imported and the Latin American class in the Philippines were displaced and were forced into a lower rank of the caste system.
During the Spanish period, the islands formed part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain , along with other areas of the Pacific Ocean such as the Marianas and the Caroline Islands and during a short period in northern Taiwan. The Spaniards built trade routes from Mexico to the Philippines, primarily from their starting points of Acapulco and Puerto Vallarta , with their final destination being Manila , the current capital of the Philippines.
