Finding your Mexican ancestors

First, find the municipio and the state

Mexico has no single national index of old births. Civil registers were kept by each state at the level of the municipio, and parish books by each parish. You need the name of the town and of the state before you can search.

Crossing into the United States, 1903 to 1955

Most Mexican immigrants did not arrive by ship. At U.S. land ports, immigration officers filled in a card for each person instead of a passenger list. The National Archives holds these records from about 1903 to about 1955, for 24 land ports in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas, among them El Paso, Laredo, Nogales, Brownsville, Eagle Pass and San Ysidro.

• Every card gives the name, age or date of birth, sex, date of entry and nationality.
• The fuller card manifests add the place of birth, last permanent residence, occupation, physical description, destination, and the name and address of the nearest relative or friend in Mexico.
• A short index card holds less. If you find one, look for the full manifest too.

FamilySearch has a free name index, Border Crossings from Mexico to United States, 1903-1957. Not every National Archives series is on every website: some, such as Nogales and Brownsville, are on Ancestry but not on FamilySearch.

Not everyone was recorded. Before about 1930 no count was made of residents of Mexico who planned a short stay, and the rules changed several times.

For an ancestor who entered before 1 July 1924 and whose arrival cannot be found, USCIS keeps Registry Files (1929 to 1944), created when an arrival record was made later. Every noncitizen aged 14 and over also filled in an Alien Registration Form between August 1940 and March 1944.

Civil registration: from 1859

President Benito Juárez issued the Ley Orgánica del Registro Civil in Veracruz on 28 July 1859, as one of the Reform Laws that separated Church and State. An earlier law of 27 January 1857 had already set up a civil register, but it did not come into force.

The start was uneven. People were used to registering events at the parish and resisted at first. Civil registration was enforced vigorously only after the republic was restored in 1867, and an 1873 constitutional reform made the 1859 law fully workable. Start years therefore vary from town to town: in Jalisco, for example, the registers of Guadalajara filmed by FamilySearch begin in 1857, those of Mexticacán in 1868.

• Births (nacimientos): date and time of birth, the child's and parents' names, the place. Often the parents' ages and occupations and the grandparents' names. Notes in the margin may record a later marriage or death.
• Marriages (matrimonios): early entries may give little more than names and date; later ones add ages, birthplaces, occupations and parents' names.
• Deaths (defunciones): name, date, place, age, spouse or parents, residence; in later years the cause of death and the informant.

The registers are kept by the municipio in each state. In Guerrero and Oaxaca they are archived by district. FamilySearch has filmed many of them and publishes them by state, for example Mexico, Jalisco, Civil Registration, 1857-2000. FamilySearch is free with an account.

Catholic parish registers

Before 1859, and often after, the Catholic parish is the main source. Parishes recorded baptisms (bautismos), marriages (matrimonios) and burials (defunciones). The original stayed in the parish and a copy was sent to the diocesan archive.

• Baptisms: date and place, the child's name, parents, godparents, sometimes grandparents, the birth date and the parents' birthplace.
• Marriages: names, ages, residence, parents, witnesses, banns, and whether a partner was a widow or widower.
• Marriage investigations (informaciones matrimoniales): before a church wedding the couple was examined, with witness statements. They are kept in the parish archive.

FamilySearch has filmed parish registers state by state and shows them free, for example Mexico, Jalisco, Catholic Church Records, which starts in 1590. Its name indexes include Mexico Baptisms, 1560-1950, and Mexico Marriages, 1570-1950. When a name search fails, browse the images by town, parish, record type and years.

Certified copies today

Civil registration is a state matter in Mexico, so each state sets its own fees. There are three routes.

• Online: a certified birth certificate (acta de nacimiento) can be printed from gob.mx/ActaNacimiento. You pay only the fee set by the state where the birth was registered. The service works only for records already entered in the national civil registry database. If the record is not there, you must ask the civil registry office where the birth was recorded.
• At a Mexican consulate in the U.S.: a certified birth copy costs USD 18 in Los Angeles, USD 19 in El Paso and USD 20 in Austin, but the holder of the record must appear in person with ID. This route is for living people.
• By writing to the civil registry office (Oficialía del Registro Civil) of the municipio, in Spanish. In Mexico City, for example, the official fee list gives MXN 98 for a certified copy and MXN 98 for a search of the registers.

Who can ask? The Federal Civil Code (article 48) says any person may ask for a copy of a civil registry entry, and the registrars must provide it. Each state has its own civil code, so check the rules of the state concerned.

The CURP, Mexico's 18-character personal registration code, was created in 1996 and is assigned when a birth is registered. An ancestor who died before then will usually not have one, so search old records by name, date and place.

Write my letter in Spanish

Mexican immigration in numbers

U.S. statistics count people obtaining permanent residence by country of last residence. For Mexico they show a sharp rise after 1900:

U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Yearbook of Immigration Statistics 2019, Table 2.

These figures undercount the border: land arrivals were not completely counted until 1908, there are no figures for Mexico from 1886 to 1893, and many short-stay crossers were never counted. If your ancestor arrived in the 1920s, he or she belongs to the largest wave before the Second World War.

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