Spaniards and other Europeans began arriving in Mexico during the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire and continued immigrating to the country during colonial and independent Mexico. According to 20th and 21st century academics, large scale intermixing between the European immigrants and the native Indigenous peoples would produce a Mestizo group which would become the overwhelming majority of Mexico's population by the time of the Mexican revolution. However, according to church registers from the colonial times, the majority (73%) of Spanish men married with Spanish women. Said registers also put in question other narratives held by contemporary academics, such as European immigrants who arrived to Mexico being almost exclusively men or that "pure Spanish" people were all part of a small powerful elite as Spaniards were often the most numerous ethnic group in the colonial cities as there were menial workers and people in poverty who were of complete Spanish origin. For the aforementioned ideology of "Mestizaje", the concept of "White Mexicans" is considered inflammatory and divisive in Mexico and the vast majority of phenotypically white Mexicans will typically identify with the official "mestizo" national identity.