Russian Immigration To Mexico - Migration History

Migration History

After the anti-Jewish pogroms of 1881, Mexico frequently came under consideration as a possible refuge for Russian Jews seeking to emigrate. 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. However, Russian Jews would not begin to arrive in significant quantities until the 1920s. 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. 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. 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.