How Do I Reconnect With Someone In Mexico?

By now you should be armed with plenty of information about the person you are looking for and you are now ready to hit the ground running. This post will show you what to do so you will be able to move forward faster in your search. You could, realistically, be talking to that person within the next couple of weeks.

How To Get Started Finding Someone in Mexico

Start by organizing your work. A great way to stay organized is to take notes while you are talking to people about the person you are looking for. Write down everything you’ve heard because you do not know where this information could lead you. You want to be able to remember it later.

Get organized by focusing on finding the two key pieces of information that were presented in Challenge #2. Think outside the box. Think like a detective. Where did this person go? Retrace their steps. That is how you are going to find the information you need. What else could you use to get started?

Key information on family genealogy can be found in birth records, marriage certificates, and death certificates. If you have someone’s birth certificate, you then have their complete name. You also have the complete name of the person’s parents. You have the city and state where this person was born. This is a great place to start. If you know nothing about this person, you can start your research right there. We get emails all the time from people saying that all they have is a birth certificate. They have no idea how close they are to finding the person they are looking for because they do have that birth certificate.

Marriage licenses work the same way. These will give you information on people who were witnesses including the name of the church and the presiding priest or minister.

How about a death certificate? Obviously not the death certificate of the person you are trying to find, because your focus is on people who are currently alive and living in Mexico, but if you have a death certificate of one of their parents you also now know the city and the state. It is a great starting point and an incredible source of data for doing family genealogy.

Look at documents that you might have gathered in your genealogy research. Look at old post cards. Look at letters. Where are these written from? All of those are possible sources of genealogy information that you can use to find this person.


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Richard Villasana
The Mexico Guru
Family & Friends Found!


Want to have revealing information on finding someone in Mexico come directly to your Inbox? Subscribe now at Find Relatives In Mexico.

Finding Someone In Mexico - Get the City and State

Another key piece of information that you need when trying to find someone living in Mexico is to have the city and the state of where they are or where they were living.

Finding out where they did live can be helpful if you do not know where they are living right now. Family genealogist know that having the city and state are two critical pieces of information needed to locate someone and learn more about them. Family genealogy research also includes looking at where a people is from to help identify other relatives who may still be living in the same city.

If someone has lived in Guadalajara and they came to the United States for, say, ten years, there is a very good possibility they may be going back to Guadalajara at some point. Also finding where they did live is very helpful because their family and friends may still be there.

Why do you need to know the city and state? If you tried to go to an Internet search engine site, maybe one that specialized in genealogy research and put in only a person’s name without the city and state you are not going to get any information. Why? Even in the United States you have to tell the site where this person is living. If you do not have that basic information, you are not going to get an answer. It is virtually impossible to locate a person if you do not have the city and the state where they are living.

Next week, we'll organize all our findings.

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Richard Villasana
The Mexico Guru
Expert on 1st 100 years of Mexico Family History


Want to have revealing information on finding someone in Mexico come directly to your Inbox? Subscribe now at Find Relatives In Mexico.

Finding Someone In Mexico - Through Story Telling

Story telling is an incredible tool to get people to tell you the information you want. It will also give you an idea of who this person was and what they were doing and may lead you to other ideas.

A great way to get information is to get a person to tell you stories using questions like, “So how did you and my father meet?” or “What did he/she like to do during the weekends?” Engaging the people that you talk to in your family and circle of friends in stories is a great way to jog their memory. Sometimes with story telling they remember something they may have otherwise forgotten.

Here is a key. Talk to every relative you have. There is always someone in every family who knows a little bit about everyone. And it does not matter if they are your third cousin or they are four times removed. They could be an ex-husband, an ex-uncle. It does not matter. You would be amazed at how much information other people in the family have about your side of the family. You may think that your immediate family should know everything about the family, but that is not always true. I urge you to go talk to every possible relative.

Maybe they talked to someone from another group, such as a priest or teacher. Go after as many leads as you can. You are going to have to interview several people to get all the facts.

Ths and next weeks post are two key pieces of information that will go far in helping with your search.

Find out what the five top challenges stopping people from finding someone living in Mexico. Subscribe to get our FREE Special Report.

Richard Villasana
The Mexico Guru
Family & Friends Found!

Want to have revealing information on finding someone in Mexico come directly to your In box? Subscribe now at Find Relatives In Mexico.

#3 Want to find family in Mexico? What you need to get started

A challenge that people experience in trying to find someone living in Mexico is just not having enough information or not knowing where to get started gathering information. This post will give you the fundamentals you will need to gather information to find people in Mexico.

You've probably already done a lot of Mexico genealogy research. I’m sure you've tried many ways to find the information you need to find someone in Mexico, from searching the Internet to speaking to friends and family. You may have been searching online for hours and hours. You may have talked to relatives or friends of the person you are searching for, but you just have not gotten the information you need and are not able to find this person living in Mexico.

Let’s start with the fundamentals of what information you should be searching for.

Your first goal should be to have the complete name of the person you are looking for. Let’s use the name Juan Carlos Garcia Gonzalez as an example.

If you have a friend who has a name like Juan Carlos, that is his name. In English we might separate out two names. Someone named Billy Bob may also be called Bob or Billy. However, in Mexico Juan Carlos is this person’s name. It’s not correct to call him Juan or to him Carlos. His name is Juan Carlos. Be aware of this because having the complete and full name is very important in your search and will help you to more quickly locate this person.

The complete name is not only their first name(s) but also both of their last names. In Spanish a person has two last names. The first last name in Spanish is the name of the father (for example: Garcia). Gonzalez is the second last name and this is the equivalent of our mother’s maiden name. By putting the two together and you have a complete name. Doing Mexico genealogy can often be easier because the two last names minimize the chance of accidentally researching someone else's family lineage.

You can also discover this information by talking to every relative this person has. Ask questions such as where did this person come from. Ask how they ended up in the United States. Ask where they went to school or where they vacationed as they were growing up. Different questions can help trigger memories and details that will help you find the information and the person you are looking for.

Saludos,




Richard Villasana
The Mexico Guru
Find Relatives In Mexico

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