In 1909 an Italian immigrant to Mexico named Don Dante Cusi (from Brescia) founded the town of Nueva Italia (“New Italy”) in the state of Michoacan as a colony for Italian immigrants. Nueva Italia was an early success, developing the largest irrigation system in all of Latin America and becoming the leading producer of cotton, rice, melon and maize in Mexico. Dante Cusi also founded the town of Lombardia, which is today the seat of government of the municipality of Gabriel Zamora also in the state of Michoacan. Many of the Italian immigrants to these communities in Mexico came from northern Italy, many during the traumatic years of unification. Later Italian immigrants to Mexico in the late 19th and 20th Centuries would be more from the south. Most settled in central Mexico and in coastal areas. Some of the first groups came during the short-lived second Mexican Empire of Emperor Maximilian who had previously been the last Austrian Viceroy of Lombardy-Venetia. Things were often difficult for the first to settle, but over time they prospered and today Italo-Mexicans enjoy a very high status in Mexican society.
|Giuseppe Garibaldi II|