Migrating with a Millstone around the Neck: Italian-Mexicans

Well, not around the neck but from the village in Italy, on to the ship, off load and reload in railroad cars, and then off load and slog up the mountain trails with a mule train.

This object, in the central highland of Veracruz, Mexico (near Huatusco)is, believe it or not, a mill for grinding maize into meal for making polenta, the Italian maize porridge.

This isn’t my photo or my story. Both the photo and the story I owe immediately to David Skerrit of the University of Veracruz who was doing field work in the region and ultimately to Diana Buja who gave me the lead to David.

Of course the combination of millstones and Italian migrants was just too good to pass up. Mexico was not a major destination for Italians in the late nineteenth century but some did come.

To quote David “In February 1882, the Messico unloaded some 1500 colonists, due to be distributed among several endeavors. 700 of these were children. However, their baggage weighed 250 tons: ie. over 160 kilos per capita. This can only mean that they traveled with everything including the kitchen sink. The papers reported the huge amounts of labor required to unload and get things onto the train. Then from the train to Huatusco needed several mule trains.”

The mind just boggles. And that they brought millstones so they could make polenta sounds a bit like coals to Newcastle (or as the Mexicans say, cajeta to Celaya) given that not only are there simple grindstones in every household in Mexico but that rotary grinding was well known as well.

David thinks they came from the Véneto or the Trent regions. Their transit costs were covered by an entrepreneur. So clearly they thought they would move their cuisine lock, stock, and barrel (or grindstones) with them. Presumably they had very little idea of what they would encounter.

Did they bring seeds with them? It seems likely if they went to the trouble to bring a mill. An interesting reverse route for the plant. Are there any odd strains of maize still in the region? Did they have a miller among them who could dress the stones from time to time? Or did they rely on those Mexicans who knew about rotary mills? What was the motive force for this mill? David doesn’t mention it being near a river but if they did actually use it it must have been with water power I would have thought. Or did they perhaps just pay Mexican women to grind the grain on the metate? David seems to think that it was actually used.

How long did they continue to make polenta? What was their cuisine like? 1882 is pretty early and I’d guess they knew little or nothing of fresh pasta (for the wealthy) or dried pasta (only just coming into production). And they wouldn’t have had lots of later migrants to bring in new products.

Just a whole slew of questions that some of you who’ve been looking at Italian cuisine in the US might have more answers to than me. But here’s another question.

While we’re talking about Italians in Mexico, any one want to take a guess at which regional Mexican product, much favored now across Mexico, was in fact introduced by Italians in the 1950s?

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