Britain’s Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla, began a four-day trip to Mexico on Sunday, visiting a cemetery of English migrants on the Latin American nation’s Day of the Dead.
After a five-day tour of Colombia, the royal couple landed in Mexico City and immediately headed to the mountain town of Real del Monte in the central state of Hidalgo.
Hundreds of people lined the cobblestone streets, waving the Union Jack as the couple toured the town considered the birthplace of British-Mexican relations.
Photo: EPA
In 1825, miners from Cornwall sailed to Mexico to help revive the country’s silver industry, settling in Real del Monte and bringing soccer and their southwest English region’s pasty dish with them.
Charles and Camilla, who are also the duke and duchess of Cornwall, visited the town’s English cemetery, home to nearly 300 tombs of Cornish miners and their descendants, some dating back to 1834.
They lay a small wreath at a monument for John Vial, the only Mexican-Briton known to have fought in World War I. He died at the Battle of the Somme at age 22.
Their visit coincided with Mexico’s Day of the Dead, a two-day celebration in which people visit cemeteries to honor their fallen relatives, bringing flowers and their favorite foods in a centuries-old tradition mixing pre-Hispanic and Catholic beliefs.
The prince and duchess then visited the main square of this town of 14,000 people, where they were shown an altar to the dead bedecked with marigolds and food offerings.
Accompanied by Mexican Foreign Minister Jose Antonio Meade and Hidalgo Governor Jose Francisco Olvera Ruiz, they were later driven to Real del Monte’s Pasty Museum.
Mexicans have made pasties their own, calling them pastes and making them with local ingredients like beans or local mole sauce instead of potatoes or curry.
Townspeople said they were proud to be visited by the heir to the British throne and voiced hope it would boost the local economy, which relies on tourism.
“It is a prestigious visit for our town,” said Guillermo Rodriguez, 31, whose family runs Real del Monte’s oldest pasty restaurant, Pastes El Billar.
“It’s an English town. The climate is similar with the fog and light rain. And there’s football of course. The English brought it,” Rodriguez said.
His great-grandmother worked for English immigrants and learned to make pasties from them. The restaurant makes Cornish potato pasties spiced up with Mexican chiles.
After Hidalgo, Charles and the duchess were to visit Mexico City yesterday to meet with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto.
They were then to tour the Edzna ruins, a Mayan archeological site in the eastern state of Campeche, before heading to the industrial hub of Monterrey in the north.
The Latin American tour was made at the request of the British government, following invitations from the presidents of Mexico and Colombia to boost relations with the two nations.
It is the prince’s fifth visit to Mexico since 1966.
Elsewhere in Mexico, seven soldiers being held in the June killings of 22 suspected criminals will be tried by a civilian judge, three of them for homicide, federal justice officials said on Sunday.
The troops were ordered arrested on Friday by a Mexico state judge for dereliction of duty in the June 30 incident. Three of them are charged with aggravated homicide, and one of them with allowing a crime to take place.
For now, the soldiers are jailed in a military detention center.
In September, a witness said the gun battle itself had left only one dead, and the other 21 were killed in cold blood by the soldiers — including her 15-year-old daughter.
The case adds to the shock surrounding a more recent case of 43 students who went missing in the southern town of Iguala in late September. They were allegedly taken away and killed by police linked to a drug cartel.
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