Monday, August 10, 2009
Italians in Mexico - A History
 

As Americans we tend to view the Italian Diaspora as almost solely to the US. Rather, it wasn't that easy to immigrate to the US, and there are huge number of Citizens in Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Australia, and so many other countries of Italian Ancestry.
There an estimate of 850,000 of Italian ancestry in Mexico!!!!
 

ITALIAN MEXICAN
An 'Italian-Mexican' or 'Italo-Mexican' (Italian: ''italo-messicano'', Spanish: ''ítalo-mexicano'') is a Mexican citizen of Italian descent or origin. Most people of Italian ancestry living in Mexico arrived in the late nineteenth century, and have become generally assimilated into mainstream society.

History

Italo-Mexican identity rests on the common experience of migration from Italy in the late 1800s, a period characterized by a more general Italian diaspora to the Americas (under the pressures of economic transformation and the process of unification into a nation-state in 1871), and the establishment of communities, primarily in central and eastern Mexico. Only about 3,000 Italians emigrated to Mexico during this period, and at least half of them subsequently returned to Italy or went on to the United States[1]. Most Italians coming to Mexico were farmers or farm workers from the northern districts. Most of these immigrants were from northern Italy, especially from the north-east regions of Veneto and Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol. Others arriving in the early 19th C included many from South Italy. Significant numbers of Italian settlers arriving in the late 1800s and early 1900s received land grants from the Mexican government.
Today, many Italo-Mexicans continue to reside in towns founded by their ancestors. Among these is Chipilo, in the state of Puebla, where a derivitive of the Venetian dialect is still spoken by its residents. Other towns founded by Italian immigrants lie in the states of Veracruz (Huatusco), San Luis Potosí, and the Mexican Federal District. Smaller, but also notable numbers of Italo-Mexicans can be found in Guanajuato, Estado de Mexico, and in the towns of Nueva Italia and Lombardia in the state of Michoacán, which were founded by wealthy Italians who immigrated to Mexico after the 1880 diaspora and established large agricultural estates known as haciendas.
Society

Although many Italo-Mexicans now live in urban centres such as Mexico City and Monterrey, many others live in, and strongly identify with, one of the original or spin-off communities that are almost entirely of Italian origin. These individuals still stridently claim an Italian ethnic identity (at least to a non-Mexican outsider), but generally note that they are Mexican as well. In the late 1900s, there were an estimated 30,000 Italian Mexicans in the original eight Italian communities.[1] The total population, however, is uncertain due to the national census not gathering information on any specific ethnicity, as it is done in other countries. Despite this, Italian surnames are not uncommon in parts of Mexico.
The majority of Italian Mexicans speak Spanish, but in Italian communities derived Italian languages (usually mixed with Spanish) are used to communicate among themselves.
Derived Italian Languages

Since most Italian immigration occurred by way of the establishment of colonies, derivitives of Italian languages exist in Mexico. Besides the best known Chipilo, derivitives of the Venetian language may also exist in Huatusco and Colonia Gonzalez, Veracruz. To this we can also add other Italian immigrant languages like Trentino (like in Colonia Manuel Gonzalez, Veracruz and Tijuana, Baja California), Piedmontese (in Gutierrez Zamora, Veracruz which remains the oldest Italian colony in Mexico as such which was called the Model Colony, and in La Estanzuela, Jalisco another Italian colony), Lombard (in Sinaloa and Colonia Manuel Gonzalez too, but mainly in Nueva Italia and Colonia Lombardia in the state of Michoacan), Sicilian (mainly in Mexico City), and Lower Bellunese (in Colonia Diez Gutierrez in San Luis Potosi.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Mexican
 

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