Their settlements were first established in the 1920s.[7] In 1922, 3,000 Mennonites from the Canadian province of Manitoba established in Chihuahua.[8] By 1927, Mennonites reached 10,000 and they were established in Chihuahua, Durango and Guanajuato.[8]
Worsening poverty, water shortages and drug-related violence across northern Mexico have provoked significant numbers of Mennonites living in Durango and Chihuahua to relocate abroad in recent years, especially to Canada, and to other regions of the Americas. Between 2012 and 2017 alone, it is estimated that at least 30,000 Mexican Mennonites emigrated to Canada.[9]
History
Background
The ancestors of the vast majority of Mexican Mennonites settled in the Russian Empire in the late 18th and 19th centuries, coming from the Vistula delta in West Prussia. Even though these Mennonites are Dutch and Prussian by ancestry, language and custom, they are generally called Russian Mennonites, Russland-Mennoniten in German. In the years after 1873, some 7,000 left the Russian Empire and settled in Canada. In the period leading up to and during World War I, governments in the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan passed laws requiring public schools to fly the Union flag, required compulsory attendance, and created public schools in areas of Mennonite settlement. In response, the more conservative Mennonites sent out delegates to a number of countries to seek out a new land for settlement. They finally settled in a tract of land in Northern Mexico after negotiating certain privileges with Mexican President Álvaro Obregón. Approximately 6,000 of the most conservative Mennonites eventually left Manitoba and Saskatchewan for Mexico. The first train left Plum Coulee, Manitoba, on March 1, 1922.
Migration
Between 1922 and 1925, some 3,200 members of the Reinlaender Gemeinde in Manitoba and 1,200 from the Swift Current area left Canada to settle in Northern Mexico on approximately 230,000 acres (930km2) of land in the Bustillos Valley near present-day Cuauhtémoc, Chihuahua. The Manitoba and Swift Current area groups settled the Manitoba and Swift Colonies in Chihuahua, while about 950 Mennonites from the Hague-Osler settlement in Saskatchewan settled on 35,000 acres (140km2) in Durango near Nuevo Ideal.[10][11][12] In 1927 some 7,000 Mennonites from Canada lived in Mexico.[13]
After 1924, another 200 Mennonite families (some 1,000 persons) from Soviet Russia, tried to settle in Mexico. But in the end only 6 out of the 200 families from Russia remained in Mexico. Between 1948 and 1952, some 595 persons of the Kleine Gemeinde in Manitoba bought and settled the Quellenkolonie. They were joined by 246 Old Colony settlers from Manitoba and Saskatchewan, but most of these settlers either soon returned to Canada or left the colony.[14]
Settlements
The Mennonites established farms, machine shops and motorized vehicles for transporting produce (although automobiles were forbidden for common use). Canadian oats, beans and corn were the main produce.[citation needed] The villages followed Mennonite architectural styles existent in Russia and Canada and the names were based in some cases on former names in Prussia but in most cases from names of villages in Russia and Canada such as Rosenort, Steinbach and Schönwiese. The colonies were based on former Mennonite social structures in terms of education, similar prayer houses and unsalaried ministers. Conservative dress and traditional roles for women were the norm.
Starting with the first 3,000 Mennonite colonists in 1922,[8] the community's population grew exponentially and in just 100 years it reached 100,000, or a growth of over 3000%.
Present
In Chihuahua, Mennonites continue their lifestyle with several reforms, such as the use of automobiles. They coexist, learning Spanish, and English, alongside their Plautdietsch language, living side by side with the castizos in the hill country of the state. During the harvest season they employ a considerable number of Tarahumara people from the nearby Copper Canyon area. About 50,000 Mennonites reside near the city of Cuauhtémoc in Chihuahua. In Durango, there are 32 Mennonite communities (30 in Nuevo Ideal Municipality and 2 in Santiago Papasquiaro Municipality). Mennonites in Durango number reached a top of 8,000 in 2011, now they are 6,500; most of them live in Nuevo Ideal. Nuevo Ideal's lies around 77 miles (124km) north of the city of Durango. Once in Nuevo Ideal, it becomes central transit point where the main roads that communicate Northwest and Northeast Durango separate (the road going northwest to Santa Catarina de Tepehuanes is paved while the one going to Escobedo, Durango towards the northeast, is a dirt road). Mennonites benefit from this transit point since many travelers and truck drivers stop in Nuevo Ideal in search of Menonita Cheese.
The largest denomination as of 2006 is Old Colony Mennonite Church with 17,200 members, Kleingemeinde in Mexiko has 2,150 members, Sommerfelder Mennonitengemeinde has 2,043 members, Reinländer-Gemeinde has 1,350 members, and Evangelical Mennonite Mission Conference has 97 members[15]
Mennonite Cultural Center and Museum in Cuauhtémoc, Chihuahua.
The community of Chihuahua separates themselves into "conservative" and "liberal", with the liberal faction accounting for 20% of the population.[16] This group is more open to outsiders and as such, more likely to marry outside of the community than their conservative peers.[16] It is also more common for this group to adopt Tarahumara and Mestizo children.[16] These children grow up as any other Mennonite would, learning German in school and helping out in the community.[16]
Since the start of the Mexican Drug War, many Mennonite colonies in Chihuahua have suffered the impact of the drug-related violence. The location of the colonies and the economic success of the Mennonites are the reasons why the community has been affected. The economic achievements have attracted the attention of organized criminal gangs, putting Mennonites at risk of armed robbery, kidnap and extortion. These factors have led Mennonites from northern Mexico to emigrate to other Mennonite settlements in Alberta, Canada, Belize and Paraguay to escape the violence. Thousands have moved and settled in more secure Mexican states like Campeche, or moved to other South American countries like Argentina and Bolivia.[17]
Some Mennonites were, in fact, convicted of drug running in the 1990s.[18] There have been fresh accusations more recently.[19][20] In 2014, Abraham Friesen-Remple was one of six members of the Northern Mexico's Mennonite community who were indicted and accused of smuggling marijuana in the gas tanks of cars and inside farm equipment.[21]
During 2007, the colony of Salamanca (a Mennonite settlement with a population of 800 spread over 4,900 acres (2,000ha) in the state of Quintana Roo) was completely destroyed due to the landfall of Hurricane Dean.[22] As of 2008, Salamanca had a population of 862.[23]
A number of congregations of Conservative Mennonites have been established throughout Mexico including La Esperanza and Pedernales in Chihuahua, La Honda, Zacatecas, and more recently Oaxaca.
In addition to escalating drug-related violence and worsening poverty in Mexico, Mennonites living in Chihuahua and Durango have had to contend with extended periods of droughts as well as tensions with non-Mennonite farmers over access to water. The combination of these factors has provoked significant numbers of Mennonites in the region to emigrate abroad, especially to Canada and South America, in recent years. From 2012 to 2017 alone, it is estimated that 30,000 Mexican Mennonites relocated to Canada.[24] A 2020 survey found that there are more than 200 Mennonite colonies in nine Latin American countries, with 66 in Mexico.[25]
Harry Leonard Sawatzky: They Sought a Country: Mennonite Colonization in Mexico, Berkeley, CA et al. 1971.
Harry Leonard Sawatzky: Sie suchten eine Heimat: deutsch-mennonitische Kolonisierung in Mexiko, 1922 - 1984, Marburg 1986. (Not just a translation of the English book, but a distinct publication)
Walter Schmiedehaus: Die Altkolonier-Mennoniten in Mexiko, Winnipeg 1982
Related Research Articles
Mennonites are a group of Anabaptist Christian church communities tracing their roots to the Radical Reformation. The name is derived from one of the early prominent leaders of the Anabaptist movement, Menno Simons (1496–1561). Through his writings about Reformed Christianity during the Radical Reformation, Simons articulated and formalized the teachings of earlier Swiss founders, with the early teachings of the Mennonites founded on the belief in both the mission and ministry of Jesus, which the original Anabaptist followers held with great conviction, despite persecution by various Roman Catholic and Mainline Protestant states. Formal Mennonite beliefs were codified in the Dordrecht Confession of Faith in 1632, which affirmed "the baptism of believers only, the washing of the feet as a symbol of servanthood, church discipline, the shunning of the excommunicated, the non-swearing of oaths, marriage within the same church", strict pacifistic physical nonresistance, anti-Catholicism and in general, more emphasis on "true Christianity" involving "being Christian and obeying Christ" as they interpret it from the Holy Bible.
The Russian Mennonites are a group of Mennonites who are the descendants of Dutch and North German Anabaptists who settled in the Vistula delta in West Prussia for about 250 years and established colonies in the Russian Empire beginning in 1789. Since the late 19th century, many of them have emigrated to countries which are located throughout the Western Hemisphere. The rest of them were forcibly relocated, so very few of their descendants currently live in the locations of the original colonies. Russian Mennonites are traditionally multilingual but Plautdietsch is their first language as well as their lingua franca. In 2014, there were several hundred thousand Russian Mennonites: about 200,000 live in Germany, 74,122 live in Mexico, 150,000 in Bolivia, 40,000 live in Paraguay, 10,000 live in Belize, tens of thousands of them live in Canada and the US, and a few thousand live in Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil.
German Mexicans are Mexican citizens of German origin. Most documented ethnic Germans arrived in Mexico during the mid-to-late 19th century and were spurred by government policies of Porfirio Díaz. Many of them took advantage of the liberal policies in Mexico at the time and went into merchant, industrial, and educational ventures. However, others arrived without any or much capital as employees or farmers. Most settled in Mexico City and the surrounding states of Puebla and Veracruz as well as the northern states of Sonora, Sinaloa, Jalisco, and Chihuahua. Later settlers headed south towards the Yucatán Peninsula. Significant numbers of German immigrants also arrived during and after both World Wars. The historic strength of German-Mexican relations has contributed to Mexico having the fourth largest German population in all Latin America behind Brazil, Argentina and Chile.
Cuauhtémoc is a city located in the west-central part of the Mexican state of Chihuahua. It serves as the seat of the municipality of Cuauhtémoc. The city lies 103 km (64 mi) west of the state capital of Chihuahua. As of 2015, the city of Cuauhtémoc had a population of 168,482. 3 languages are recognized as official in the city: Spanish, English, and Plautdietsch.
Mennonites in Belize form different religious bodies and come from different ethnic backgrounds. There are groups of Mennonites living in Belize who are quite traditional and conservative, while others have modernized to various degrees.
The Mennonites in Bolivia are among the most traditional and conservative of all Mennonite denominations in South America. They are mostly Russian Mennonites of Frisian, Flemish, and Prussian descent. As of 2013, there were about 70,000 Mennonites living in Bolivia, that population has grown to around 150,000 as of 2023.
Most Mexican states do not have an official flag. For these states, a de facto flag is used for civil and state purposes. State flags of Mexico have a 4:7 ratio and typically consist of a white background charged with the state's coat of arms.
Televisa Regional is a unit of Grupo Televisa which owns and operates television stations across Mexico. The stations rebroadcast programming from its subsidiary TelevisaUnivision's other networks, and they engage in the local production of newscasts and other programs. Televisa Regional stations all have their own distinct branding, except for those that are Nu9ve affiliates and brand as "Nu9ve <city/state name>".
Manitoba Colony is an ultraconservative Mennonite community in the Santa Cruz Department or eastern lowlands of Bolivia. Conservative plain dress Old Colony Mennonites from Mexico and Canada began moving to Bolivia in the 1960s. Manitoba Colony, one of dozens of Mennonite colonies in Bolivia, was founded in 1991, named after a much larger colony in Mexico, which, in turn, has its origins in the Canadian province of Manitoba. The colony has a population of approximately 2,000. Members of the colony speak Plautdietsch, dress plainly, and do not use electricity or automobiles.
Manitoba Colony is a large community of Plautdietsch-speaking Mennonites mostly north of Ciudad Cuauhtémoc in the state of Chihuahua in Mexico. It was founded in 1922 by Old Colony Mennonites from Manitoba, Canada and consisted originally of 47 villages. It is the largest and oldest Mennonite colony in Mexico.
The name Old Colony Mennonites is used to describe that part of the Russian Mennonite movement that is descended from colonists who migrated from the Chortitza Colony in modern Ukraine near Zaporizhia to settlements in Canada. Theologically, Old Colony Mennonites are largely Conservative Mennonites.
Mennonites in Argentina belong to two quite different groups: conservative and very conservative Plautdietsch-speaking group of Russian Mennonites who are descendants of Frisian, Flemish and Prussian people, and converts to the Mennonite faith from the general Argentinian population. The Russian Mennonites are the third largest community of Mennonites in South America, with six colonies in Argentina. While Russian Mennonites have their own language and customs and live in colonies, converts to the Mennonite faith normally live in cities and speak Spanish and do not differ much from other Protestants in Argentina. Conservative ethnic Mennonites normally do not engage in missionary activities but look for a quiet and remote place where they can live according to their tradition. More liberal Mennonites are engaged in worldwide missionary work like other North American Protestant denominations. About one third of Mennonites in Argentina are conservative ethnic Mennonites who belong to the Altkolonier branch.
Canadian Mexicans are Mexican citizens with Canadian ancestry or immigrants from Canada.
The following television stations broadcast on digital channel 25 in Mexico:
The following television stations broadcast on digital channel 29 in Mexico:
The following television stations broadcast on digital or analog channel 32 in Mexico:
The following television stations broadcast on digital channel 27 in Mexico:
Mennonites in Colombia were until 2016 almost only converts from the general and indigenous Colombian population to the Mennonite faith. Since then conservative Plautdietsch-speaking ethnic Mennonites, who belong to the so-called Russian Mennonites, started to immigrate to Colombia.
Nehrungisch is a subdialect of Low Prussian, belonging to the Low German language variety. It was spoken in East Prussia and West Prussia, in the region around the Vistula Spit near Danzig. The easternmost locality where this variety was spoken was Narmeln, and it was spoken from Narmeln to Krakau (Krakowiec).
References
1 2 3 Cascante, Manuel M. (8 August 2012). "Los menonitas dejan México". ABC (in Spanish). Retrieved 19 February 2013. Los cien mil miembros de esta comunidad anabaptista, establecida en Chihuahua desde 1922, se plantean emigrar a la república rusa de Tartaristán, que se ofrece a acogerlos
1 2 Fierro, Luis (23 September 2012), Comunidad menonita planea migrar del país (in Spanish), El Universal, archived from the original on 27 September 2012, retrieved 20 September 2013, (...) El gobierno de Chihuahua informó que desconoce los planes de los menonitas, cuya población se estima en alrededor de 90 mil personas en el estado, y sostuvo que las condiciones económicas actuales no son un factor que obligue a ningún productor local a abandonar la región. (...)
1 2 Ramírez, Laura (14 March 2012). "Se van mil 500 menonitas por sequía e inseguridad". El Siglo de Durango (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 21 September 2013. Retrieved 5 March 2013. Desalentados por la inseguridad y la falta de producción por la sequía de 2011, en los 12 meses recientes, cerca de mil 500 menonitas de una población total de ocho mil de las colonias de Nuevo Ideal y Santiago Papasquiaro emigraron a Canadá y otras entidades del país como Campeche y Chihuahua, donde se emplean en el campo o en talleres mecánicos. (...)
Mexicoportal 1 Jews and Romani originate in the Middle East and South Asia respectively, with most arriving to Mexico via Europe · 2 Primarily arrived via Canada · 3 Originated in what is now the United States
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