Chipilo was founded on October 2, 1882, by immigrants from the northern Italian region of Veneto. Most came from the town of Segusino and other surrounding towns in the province of Treviso. These immigrants arrived in Mexico in search of fertile land, leaving behind the poverty that was plaguing Veneto at that time. Most of them took up cattle raising, and the dairy products of Chipilo became famous in Puebla and other regions in central Mexico. Some maintain a derived Venetian dialect. They fiercely defended themselves from the attack of Mexican revolutionaries in 1917. Although the city of Puebla has grown so far as to almost absorb it, the town of Chipilo remained isolated for much of the 20th century. Thus, the "Chipileños", unlike other Italian immigrants that came to Mexico, did not blend into the Mexican culture and retained most of their traditions and their language. To this day, most of the people in Chipilo speak the Venet or Venetian dialect of their great-grandparents. The variant of the Venetian dialect spoken by the Chipileños is the 'northern Feltrino-Bellunese'. Surprisingly, it has been barely altered by Spanish, as compared to how the dialect of the northern region of Veneto has been altered by Italian. Given the number of speakers of Venetian, and even though the state government has not done so, the Venetian dialect can be considered a minority language in the conurbation of Puebla. In 1982, the townspeople of Chipilo celebrated the 100th anniversary of the foundation of the city along with visitors from the Veneto region. In this celebration the city of Segusino, Italy, was declared Chipilo's Twin city.
Culture
Chipilo was founded on October 2, 1882 by Italian immigrants from the northern region of Veneto, although there were some people from Piedmont and Lombardy among the founders. They maintained their northern Italian culture. Most of them came from Segusino and surrounding villages in the provinces of Treviso and Belluno, like Quero, Valdobbiadene, Feltre and Maser. In this sense, the Italian immigration to Chipilo differs from elsewhere in Latin America, but it resembles the agricultural regions of Argentina, areas where most immigrants come from the regions of Central-Southern Italy.
