Italians settled in the community of La Puerta de Chipilo and produced delicious cheeses like those from Chipilo, a town in Puebla where families from Italy came to live a long time ago.
According to the 2020 census of the National Institute of Statistics and Geography ( Inegi ), 6,619 Italians live in Mexico, they are descendants of migrants who arrived in the country in 1882 and settled in various parts of the national territory and founded that year the town of Chipilo located in the state of Puebla where they dedicated themselves to livestock and started the cheese and dairy industry.
Between 1881 and 1882, dozens of Italian families arrived in Mexico at the Port of Veracruz (around 3,000 people) and settled in various places in the country of these families, some emigrated to Guanajuato and settled in places such as Irapuato and San Miguel de Allende.
As in the town of Chipilo, in Puebla, the Italians who settled in San Miguel de Allende formed the town of La Perla de Chipilo where they dedicated themselves to the production of delicious “non-expensive” cheeses like those produced in the Puebla community.
The family of Italians who came to this community from Guanajuato produce various kinds of cheese such as Queso Asadero, panela, and cottage cheese.
Among the Italian surnames of the families that settled in the Chipilo community are: Martini, Sago, Precoma, Galeazzi, Sanella, Portolotti, Melo, Merlo, and Minutti.
The La Perla de Chipilo community is located in the municipality of San Miguel de Allende, near San José Iturbide.
It is located 149 kilometers from the city of León, Guanajuato; it’s a 2-and-a-half-hour drive.
This is how you get to La Perla de Chipilo, the community located between San Miguel de Allende and San José Iturbide where the first Chipilo settlers of this area arrived.
The name Chipilo (place of little ones) comes from the Nahuatl word chipilli (“little son”).
Most of the Italian migrants who arrived in Mexico in 1882 came from the northern region of Veneto (a region of northeastern Italy that extends from the Dolomite Mountains to the Adriatic Sea), although there were also some Piedmontese and Lombards among the founders of Chipilo.
Most of them came from Segusino (an Italian town in the province of Treviso, Veneto region) and the surrounding towns in the provinces of Treviso and Belluno, such as Quero, Valdobbiadene, Feltre, and Maser.
Many stayed in the community of Chipilo and others settled in other parts of Mexico such as Quintana Roo and Guanajuato.
San Miguel Times
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