JACKSON, Wyo. — “Casa Tlaxcala Jackson Hole” recently opened inside Silicon Couloir’s co-working space in downtown Jackson, and it is the first dedicated resource center for immigrants from the Tlaxcala state of Mexico in the region.
The center will provide services to Tlaxcalans including; clarification of birth certificates, document apostille processing, which enables a document issued in one country to be recognized as valid in another country, and assistance getting documents like passports, visas and driver’s licenses. Before the resource center opened, Salt Lake City was the closest place for immigrants to get documents.
The center will also coordinate visits for family members over 65 living in Mexico with their families living in Jackson, a reunification program that has already been in place in Jackson through Tlaxcala’s immigrant assistance office. The agency pays for half of all travel costs for visits up to 30 days long.
The center will also provide resources for missing persons and repatriation services if a person dies in the U.S. and their family requests their body be returned to Tlaxcala.
The Town of Jackson and Hueyotlipan, officially became sister cities in April, further solidifying the connection between the regions.
During a Town Council meeting discussing the sister city resolution, Mayor Hailey Morton Levinson said, “Tlaxcala and Jackson are directly linked by shared cultural heritage as many Tlaxcalans have moved to, worked in and settled in Jackson over the last 30 years.”
The Jackson Hole office is the third Casa Tlaxcala resource office in the United States. Plans for the center were first announced in December 2022 but faced budget-related hurdles. The other two offices are located in New York and California.
It is estimated that about 30% of Teton County’s population of 23,000 is Latino. A reported 90% of Jackson’s Latino population have ties to the state of Tlaxcala, with many folks from San Simeón Xipetzinco and Hueyotlipan, two municipalities within Tlaxcala.
According to data from the Institute of Mexicans Abroad, a Mexican government agency, 211,661 Tlaxcalans live outside of Mexico, with 80% of those living in the U.S.
At the end of April, the Center for the Arts hosted a Tlaxcala Cultural Celebration with visiting artists, performers and government officials from Tlaxcala. The event coincided with a week-long cultural exchange, including the signing of the sister city resolution and the opening of the resource center, with Tlaxcala Governor Lorena Cuellar Cisneros, Municipal President of Hueyotlipan Luis Angel Roldan Carillo and Visual Artist and founding director of El Centro Cultural, Pedro Avelino Alcántara in attendance. Two new murals in the Skyline Ranch pathway tunnel by Alcántara and Francisco Jesús Saldaña Perez were also unveiled.
