A view of street in Cuernavaca, the capitol of Morelos

Minneapolis and Cuernavaca have a longstanding bond.

Minneapolis recently entered into a “sister city” agreement with Cuernavaca, the capital of Morelos, a small Mexican state that is the homeland to nearly 30,000 immigrants who have resettled in the area. That pre-existing relationship, which is unusual for sister cities, was cemented in a signing ceremony in Minneapolis on Sept. 13.

Ricardo Hernandez, who heads the Mexican Consulate in St. Paul, explained that the trend began years ago, sort of informally, with people who trickled in gradually at first and then called for their family members and friends to join them. After that, the next generation comes. “That’s a pretty common way for an entire village to move,” he said, terming it an “immigration shift.”

Part of the reason for coming to Minnesota as opposed to places that are closer to the nation’s border is that immigrants have been “pushed to move somewhere else, where labor is needed and immigration isn’t so aggressive,” Hernandez explained. Here, there’s a good standard of living and a sense of community among the immigrants and “everyone knows each other.”

Over the past 50 years, more and more arrivals from Cuernavaca and its neighboring areas have landed in Minneapolis, with a marked influx just in the last 15 years or so, while the city’s overall Hispanic population more than doubled from 1990 to 2000. (They set up shop, for instance on Lake Street, where the word “Morelos” appears in business names such as in Morelos Taxi, Video Morelos and others.)

It’s part of a larger movement of immigrants flooding into Minneapolis from Laos, Cambodia, Latin America, Somalia, Eritrea, Liberia and other places, in contrast to the wave of northern European immigrants that redefined the city’s demographics at the turn of the 20th century, a city staff report states.

Currently, Minneapolis’ social network includes eight other cities. Some of those are Eldoret, Kenya; Uppsala, Sweden; Kuopio, Finland; and Ibaraki, Japan. Its first sister city was Santiago, Chile; that connection was established in 1961 (it’s no longer active). The Cold War-era program, which is administered by the Washington, D.C.-based Sister City International, started out as a government-aided initiative to promote peaceful international relations with elementary school students who corresponded with overseas pen pals. The program fosters “educational exchanges, tourism, arts and culture, and economic development,” according to a city report.

City Council member Gary Schiff, who has been leading the charge along with Mayor R.T. Rybak, summed up: “We consciously chose [Cuernavaca] based on immigration. I hope it sets a framework with regions of the world where the people have already chosen us … I hope it raises awareness about where people come from and that we’ll learn about our future.”