>>13128493I just look like a normal mestizo. Californios are not like Neo-Mexicanos/Hispanos in Arizona who are often unmixed Spaniards. We are Spanish mixed with the Indigenous locals like most Mexicans were. I think we just tended go be wealthier than the rest of Mexico because it was way easier to obtain land here and it was so sparse, the caste system wasn't really enforced well during the Spanish era so you had mestizos and sometimes even Indios who held profitable land. Only "racial" difference is a lot of Californios get their European genetics from Basques while I think most Spanish ancestry in the Americas is from Galicia or the rest of Castilian speaking Spain. Californios sometimes have an Anglo ancestor or two way back because for a time in the 1700s to early 1800s Anglos were settling in Alta California in very small numbers and intermixing with the Mexican Californios. We're only consider a separate group these days really because we sided with the US during the Mexican American war because the Mexican government were treating us like shit and trying to get us to pay extremely high taxes to quite literally cover the personal debts of corrupt Mexican politicians.
The only cultural difference we have compared to other Mexicans is our the native component of our background comes from Calfornia natives who were boat people and pretty distinct from mainland Mexican natives. Taller too. Our Spanish was isolated so it's a little more archaic and closer to old Spanish. We still differentiate between the /b/ and /v/ sounds, have a rhotic /r/, used to have an /sh/ sound for the letter x and speak with voseo. Also we have some Tongva words for a lot of nouns like atsaranga instead of arbusto, varongurrat instead of valle, xarocuet instead of aguila etc. Californio Spanish is virtually dead though. Everyone just speaks Mexican Spanish now.
