Have you ever even Mexicaned?

Chipotle

La Fiesta

Taco Bell

Qdoba

Chili's

Baja Fresh
On the Border

You've probably heard of at least one, if not all, of these names before. Most Americans could confidently identify the list of names as a range of Mexican restaurants in the United States. And most have probably also eaten from at least one of these restaurants. For example, considering that Taco Bell serves over two billion customers each year with almost 7,000 restaurants just in the United States, it would not be hard to find a local citizen who has chowed down at the place.

However, most Americans are plainly aware that the food served at fast-food chain restaurants such as Taco Bell is not authentic* Mexican food. One look at the waffle taco on their breakfast menu (or even just a mentioning of the name itself) and it is quite obvious the restaurant attempts to mash together Mexican cuisine with very American foods. Whether or not someone likes to eat there, they know that Taco Bell specifically caters to American tastes.

It is fair to say that most people know Taco Bell does not serve "real Mexican food." We can consider the food from Taco Bell and other similar restaurants to be quite far down the American side of the U.S. Mexican food spectrum. In the U.S., there exists a plethora of less obvious, but nevertheless Americanized dishes, from both chain and local restaurants that the populace has trouble differentiating from authentic Mexican food.

In fact, a weighty majority of what Americans do consider authentic still turns out not to be very Mexican after all. The northern border of Mexico draws a sharp line in terms of food: most of the "Mexican food" above the border is actually Tex-Mex, a distinctly different cuisine from what is eaten in Mexico. Tex-Mex is actually a hybrid cuisine native to the states that contains features from many other food cultures.

Moral of the story is...You may think it's Mexican, you may argue that it's Mexican because you can the difference between Taco Bell and your local that makes "the real food," but if it's in America, then it's probably still not Mexican. It's Tex-Mex.
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*There is some leeway as to what is considered "authentic," but here it is used in the general sense that the food directly emulates the food from the native country (Mexico in our case).