Mark 200 years of Cornish and Mexican links with special events across the Duchy

The legacy of the first Cornish communities to emigrate to Latin America will be celebrated across special events to mark 200 years of links between the Duchy and Mexico.

Cornish miners first arrived in the Pachuca-Real del Monte area of Hidalgo, central Mexico, in 1824, hoping to use their expertise and technology to find gold and silver and thousands eventually emigrated there.

This has led to close ties between Cornwall and Mexico, with the two communities bound together.

There was a long history of mining in Mexico but the Cornish introduced the machinery of the industrial revolution to the country in the form of high-pressure steam engines. They also started cricket and football leagues, spread their Methodist faith, eventually married into local families and helped to popularise the Cornish pasty.

Today in Mexico there are still Cornish-style engine houses, Methodist chapels, and graveyards mark out the historical and continuing heritage between Cornwall and Mexico.

During September there will be free events to mark these connections across the Atlantic at Kresen Kernow, the Royal Cornwall Museum, the University of Exeter’s Penryn campus and at the Redruth International Mining and Pasty Festival.

There will be tours of the archives at Kresen Kernow, including material related to the Cornish-Mexican links, on Saturday 7, Tuesday 10, Wednesday 11 and Saturday 14 September.

There will be celebrations of the shared cultural heritage between the two countries at the University of Exeter’s Institute of Cornish Studies, at the Penryn Campus, on Thursday 12 September from 3 to 6pm. The afternoon of events. Designed to be a vibrant homage to the enduring legacy of this historic migration, will include a roundtable event.

Redruth’s International Mining and Pasty Festival, on Friday 20 and Saturday 21 September, will feature activities about the Mexican connection, Cornwall’s mining heritage and thriving industry today and the love of Cornish Pasties.

Dr Sharron Schwartz will give a talk about Mexico’s ‘Little Cornwall’ at the Royal Cornwall Museum on Thursday, 19 September.

In the 1820s Cornwall was known for its sophisticated mining industry powered by high-pressure steam engines. Silver and gold mines in Mexico were in a state of dereliction because of the country’s Civil War.

Many of the first Cornish miners in Mexico found themselves in the State of Hidalgo and the municipalities of Pachuca and Real del Monte, known as ‘Mexico’s Little Cornwall’.

They had brought their heavy engine equipment with them across the Atlantic and struggled against torrential rain and floods, whilst struck down by swamp fever, to build roads to transport it to the mines and it took a year to travel the 250 miles to Real del Monte.

Far fewer people migrated to Mexico than to the USA, South Australia, England and Wales or South Africa, but the mines of Latin America were among the first to attract significant Cornish labour outside the British Isles and continued to recruit Cornish labour right into the 1930s.

Dr Schwartz is from Redruth and received her doctorate at the University of Exeter on the Cornish in Latin America. She set up the Cornish Global Migration Programme in the late-1990s, was the documentary researcher for the Cornish Mining World Heritage Site Bid and Leverhulme Research Fellow in Migration Studies at the Institute of Cornish Studies. She is the author of Mining a Shared Heritage: Mexico’s ‘Little Cornwall’ (2011), and The Cornish in Latin America: Cousin Jack and the New World (2016). She has visited various mine sites in Mexico and is a founder member of the Cornish Mexican Cultural Society.

Members of The Redruth Real del Monte Twinning Association have organised hospitality, concerts and cultural trips. Association members have included several Redruth Town Councillors, including founding member Ian Thomas, Debrorah Reeve, Colin Garrick and Henry and Alison Biscoe.

The equivalent Mexico organisation, Consejo Regulador del Patrimonio Cultural Real del Monte – Cornwall A.C, set up the World’s First Pasty Museum. They also organise the three day Paste Festival each October and host visitors from Cornwall. This includes Marion Symonds, from Portreath Bakery, who has visited several times and advised on the complex problem of the pasty, earning her the nickname “mother of the pasty”.

Researchers in Mexico and Cornwall continue to unearth more information of the history of the Cornish in Mexico. This includes Katy Humberstone, from the University of Exeter, who is completing a PhD on the contemporary Cornish-Mexican connection.