Ciro Peralto Urbano’s bakery is filled with all things football – and all things Cornish.
In the Mexican hilltop town of Mineral del Monte, Ciro has been serving traditional Cornish pasties – meat-filled pastries – since 1975, preserving a recipe brought here by English miners more than 200 years ago.
In the corner of his shop, a television shows England’s 2-1 victory over DR Congo on July 3, the result that booked the Three Lions a place in the World Cup last 16 – and a return to Mexico on July 6 (England beat Mexico 3-2).
For Ciro, the connection runs far deeper than that fixture. The English miners who arrived in these mountains in the 19th century did not just leave behind the Cornish pasty. They also brought organised football, helping sow the seeds of what would become Mexico’s national sport.
"The connection with football comes from the English,” Ciro said. "The football tradition should be preserved, together with the tradition of pasties.”
Cornish miners first arrived in Mexico in 1824, travelling inland to Mineral del Monte, also known as Real del Monte, where they brought both the pasty and football. As more English families settled in the mining town, the game took root.
"They brought football in an increasingly organised form,” said Wilfrido Soto Jarillo, a former chairman of a Cornish cultural heritage group. Amateur matches were played in the yard of the Dolores mine, he said, on ground now occupied by a parking lot.
The mine has long since fallen silent, but the Cornish pasty remains a local staple, its original recipe adapted over generations. Mexican chilli and spices have been added to the traditional potato, onion, and meat, while the game introduced by the miners grew into the country’s favourite sport.
"That is the wonderful legacy they left us, gastronomy and sport," Soto Jarillo said.
Just 18km down the road in Pachuca stands Hidalgo Stadium, home of C.F. Pachuca, widely regarded as Mexico’s oldest football club. Founded in 1892 and believed to have been established by Cornish miner Francis Rule, the club traces its roots directly to the English community that settled in the region.
Echoes of that heritage remain across the city. Pachuca’s Monumental Clock, the Reloj Monumental, has elements resembling London’s Big Ben and features a similar steel structure and clock mechanism, according to Club Pachuca tour manager Brasil Ordaz.
"Part of our culture is closely connected to England. The heart that stands in Pachuca also has something of England in it,” Ordaz said.
"All of this comes together in Pachuca; today Mexico is doing well in football and people gather around that great emblem."
At the nearby University of Futbal, C.F. Pachuca’s under-21 side trained beneath grey skies and steady rain in conditions that would have felt familiar to the Cornish miners who first brought the game here.
Ordaz said the English influence was still recognised, even if the game had long since become unmistakably Mexican.
"From the youngest children to the oldest generations, we feel very proud of what Pachuca is today,” he said. – Reuters
