This here is Yalitza Aparicio. She's from southern Mexico, I want you to take a good look and understand that this is what a "Native Mexican" from that area looks like when there's little to no Euro in it.

Note things like the rib cage. No amount of starving herself will shrink it or make her taller. It is what it is. (Though that doesn't stop people like
the Demon of Miami from trying to pathologize it and get women with this body type to mutilate their ribs.)



They are a "sturdy" people, that's the explanation for why the fat sits where it is.
As for
why the fat exists, there are a lot of elements there. Part of it is a similar phenomenon to what happened to the Italian Americans who came over and then suddenly had access to ingredients that were once luxuries and used them to create new things that weren't "authentically Italian" but reflected the flavor preferences of the Italian people.