Russians in Mexico

There is a small Russian diaspora population in Mexico. According to the 2000 Mexican census, 1,293 Russian citizens were resident in Mexico.^[1]

Migration history

After the anti-Jewish pogroms of 1881, Mexico frequently came under consideration as a possible refuge for Russian Jews seeking to emigrate.^[2] In June 1891, Jacob Schiff, an American Jewish businessman with railroad interests in Mexico, wrote to Ernest Cassel to enquire about the possibility for settlement of Russian Jews there.^[3] However, Russian Jews would not begin to arrive in significant quantities until the 1920s.^[4]

Around 1905 or 1906, roughly fifty families of Molokans, who had originally settled in Los Angeles after emigrating from Russia, decided to seek a less urbanised location, and relocated to 13,000 acres (53 km²) of land they had purchased in Guadalupe, Baja California in Mexico.^[5] Theirs would become the most successful Molokan colony in North America. There, they build houses largely in the Russian style, but of adobe rather than wood, and grew a variety of cash crops including wheat, alfalfa, grapes, and tomatoes.^[6] Their village was originally quite isolated, reflecting their desire to withdraw from society, but in 1958, road construction in the area resulted in an influx of Mexican and other settlers; some Molokans again chose to flee encroaching urbanisation, and returned to the United States. By the 1990s, only one Molokan family remained in the area.^[7]

Notable people

• Vladislav Badiarov
• Alexander Balankin
• Arnold Belkin
• Nadia Borislova
• Arcady Boytler
• Elias Breeskin
• Ilya Salkind - Superman film executive producer
• Leon Trotsky

Notes

Sources

• Azen Krauze, Corinne; Katz de Gugenheim, Ariela (1987), Los judíos en México: una historia con énfasis especial en el período de 1857 a 1930/The Jews in Mexico: a history with special emphasis on the period 1857 to 1930, Universidad Iberoamericana, ISBN 9789688590225 
• Hardwick, Susan Wiley (1993), Russian refuge: religion, migration, and settlement on the North American Pacific rim, Geography Research Paper Series, University of Chicago Press, ISBN 9780226316116 

External Links

• Russian Embassy in Mexico
• Russian Community in Mexico
• Russian Orthodox Church in Mexico City
• Orthodox Church in Mexico
• Russian Mexican Institute "Serguéi Eisenstein".
• Russians in Mexico (In Russian)"
• SORUMEX: Consejo Coordinador de los Compatriotas Rusos en Mexico"

Further reading

• Story, Sydney Rochelle (1960), Spiritual Christians in Mexico: profile of a Russian village, Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, OCLC 17406191 
• Muranaka, Therese Adams (1988), Spirit jumpers: the Russian Molokans of Baja California, Ethnic technology notes, 21, San Diego: Museum of Man, ISBN 9780937808467, OCLC 18928066