Mitt Romney, March 2010. Photo by Tim Sloan AFP/Getty Images
Buried at the bottom of an Associated Press story that ran in the El Paso Times today is a nugget that Latino tweeters have been seizing on: Mitt Romney’s dad was from Chihuahua.
This isn’t the first time the story of George Romney has come up, but it has surfaced again now that the younger Romney has announced his bid for the presidency in 2012. The elder Romney, former governor of Michigan, was born in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua in a community established in the 1880s by Mormons, who fled to Mexico from the United States to escape persecution.
There are still Romneys in Chihuahua today, distant relatives of the Republican former Massachusetts governor. And they, like other Mexicans, are dealing with the troubles affecting that part of the country. From the story in the El Paso Times:
On June 17, 2009, kidnappers released a Chihuahua rancher and Mormon leader who was a distant relative of Romney.
Meredith Romney was kidnapped June 15, 2009 near his ranch outside the town of Janos, about 140 miles southwest of Juárez.
Meredith Romney is a former president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints temple in Colonia Juárez, a Mormon colony founded by Americans in the 1880s in Casas Grandes, Chihuahua.
The Romney family has roots in Mexico. Mitt Romney’s father, former Michigan Gov. George Romney, was born in a Mormon community in the state of Chihuahua.
