The Amish, the Mennonites and the Hutterites
- Thread starter Petr
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Petr
Administrator
It takes some firm religious faith, not just a momentary fad, to make these kinds of experiments work:
German-speaking Covid denialists seek to build paradise in Paraguay
A group of German, Austrian and Swiss immigrants has implanted an ideologically driven settlement in one of the country’s poorest regions
www.theguardian.com
German-speaking Covid denialists seek to build paradise in Paraguay
A group of German, Austrian and Swiss immigrants has implanted an ideologically driven settlement in one of the country’s poorest regions
www.theguardian.com
German-speaking Covid denialists seek to build paradise in Paraguay
The entrance to El Paraíso Verde, 12km from the town of Caazapá. Photograph: William Costa
A group of German, Austrian and Swiss immigrants has implanted an ideologically driven settlement in one of the country’s poorest regions
William Costa in Caazapá
Thu 27 Jan 2022 10.30 GMT
A 1,600-hectare (4,000-acre) gated community, dubbed El Paraíso Verde, or the Green Paradise, is being carved out of the fertile red earth of Caazapá, one of Paraguay’s poorest regions.
The community’s population – consisting mainly of German, Austrian and Swiss immigrants – will eventually swell from 150 to 3,000, according to the owners.
The project’s website bills it as “by far the largest urbanization and settlement project in South America”, describing the colony as a refuge from “socialist trends of current economic and political situations worldwide” – as well as “5G, chemtrails, fluoridated water, mandatory vaccinations and healthcare mandates”.
Immigration to the colony has stepped up since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, with residents interviewed on its YouTube channel attributing their move to scepticism about the virus and vaccines.
Caazapá, a rural region dominated by cattle ranching in the heart of lush eastern Paraguay, saw a jump from four new German residents in 2019 to 101 in 2021, according to official figures. “Anti-vaxxer” immigrants have also been reported settling in other parts of Paraguay.
One German citizen who lives nearby and who does business with Paraíso Verde, cited discredited conspiracy theories about coronavirus vaccines to explain the surge. They claimed that Paraguay’s accommodating immigration laws have proved attractive to Germans who want to “escape the matrix” and flee the “deep state and one world order”.
The entrance to Caazapá regional hospital, which has no ICU beds and only one ambulance. The pandemic has been devastating for the region. Photograph: William Costa
“Many older people are coming. They understand that many people are dying in care homes [after vaccination],” said the German, who asked not to be named. “And the others, in their 40s, are trying to bring their children over here to escape.”
But the appearance of an insular colony of Europeans has been watched with concern by some in the nearby the regional capital, also named Caazapá.
“Why are they here? We don’t know, but we want to find out,” said Rodney Mereles, a former municipal councillor.
On its YouTube channel, Paraíso Verde shares videos describing the pandemic which has killed some 5.5 million people as “non-existent”, promoting false, dangerous Covid “miracle cures”, and advertising Paraguay as a country without pandemic restrictions – despite the government’s clear health protocols.
Even as Paraguay recorded the world’s highest Covid death rate per capita in June 2021, the colony shared videos of large parties in violation of restrictions.
In Germany, sections of society radicalised by the refugee crisis of 2015 have proved a fertile ground for disinformation and conspiracy theories about the pandemic. The far-right Alternative für Deutschland party has tried to revive its waning electoral fortunes by railing against lockdown measures, mask mandates and vaccines.
And a small minority of those sceptics have decided to head abroad, with Bulgaria reported as another popular destination.
The presence in Caazapá of a large group of Covid skeptics worries local health authorities. Dr Nadia Riveros, Caazapá’s head of public health, said the pandemic had been devastating for the region, which has no ICU beds and only one fully equipped ambulance.
“We don’t want to go through that again. I think foreigners, wherever they’re from, should have to get vaccinated before entering the country,” she said.
And as Paraguay faces a quickly escalating third wave of Covid while struggling to improve on the second-lowest vaccination rate in South America, the health ministry announced this month that non-resident foreigners entering the country must now present vaccination certificates.
At least six German nationals without vaccination certificates have been refused entry since this new regulation came into force.
Paraguay has a long and sometimes troubled history of inward-looking immigrant colonies driven by ideological and religious zeal. Settlement projects by Mennonites, Australian socialists and the Unification church among others have all left marks on the country.
European immigrants in the centre of the town of Caazapá. Photograph: William Costa
Paraguay’s most notorious settlement was Nueva Germania, the proto-fascist colony set up in 1886 by Elizabeth Nietzsche – the philosopher’s sister – and her husband Bernhard Förster. Förster died, probably by suicide, as Nueva Germania sank under the weight of financial problems, internal conflict and settlers’ lack of agricultural knowledge.
While Nietzsche and Förster envisioned an Aryan colony untouched by Jewish influence, El Paraíso Verde’s founder and leader Erwin Annau has spoken of preserving Germanic peoples from the presence of Islam and – on a website that was recently taken offline – questioned the blame allocated to Germany for the second world war.
In a 2017 speech given before members of the Paraguayan government, Annau said: “Islam is not part of Germany. We are enlightened Christians, and we are concerned about our daughters. We see the Qur’an as [containing] an ideology of political domination, which is not compatible with democratic and Christian values.”
Paraguay itself has a small but well-established Muslim community in several major cities. Abdun Nur Baten, missionary for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community of Paraguay, highlighted the apparent contradiction in Annau’s comments.
“They say Muslim immigrants don’t integrate, that they don’t adopt German culture or German norms, that they’re not assimilating. So it’s very hypocritical to go to another land and do exactly what you are accusing Muslims of doing: it’s beyond funny how hypocritical it is,” Nur Baten said. He said his community would welcome peaceful dialogue with Paraíso Verde.
But despite concerns in the local community, Paraíso Verde is backed by increasing political and economic power.
The group has frequently met with local and national officials, and claims to have held meetings with Paraguayan health authorities to lobby against tighter Covid regulations.
The entrance to El Paraíso Verde, which is also the base for the community’s company Reljuv, a major local employer. Photograph: William Costa
Gladys Rojas, a former president of Caazapá town council, claimed that Paraíso Verde was protected by links to the political faction of the former Paraguayan president Horacio Cartes. Cartes is a controversial businessman who has repeatedly contested allegations he is linked to cigarette smuggling, but is considered Paraguay’s richest and most powerful person.
Two members of the Cartes family have been board members of Reljuv, a company owned by Paraíso Verde, and in recent municipal elections, the company’s president, Juan Buker, was heavily involved in election campaigns for candidates backed by Cartes.
“They’ve got politicians and money on their side,” said Rojas, adding that many in Caazapá, the region with the highest rate of extreme poverty in Paraguay, were reluctant to ask questions as the colony has become the area’s biggest employer.
Rojas currently faces trespass charges over protests to protect Isla Susu, a nature reserve that experienced heavy environmental damage during construction works at Paraíso Verde. The settlement later paid a fine for the damage.
On a recent afternoon, the Guardian travelled along the dirt road from the town of Caazapá to Paraíso Verde. Close to the long perimeter fence, groups of residents strolled along the track in the slowly softening sun.
At the entrance gate, a Reljuv employee emerged, flanked by guards armed with long guns.
After rejecting the possibility of entry or an interview, the employee aggressively demanded to examine identity documents of all present, even as the reporter attempted to leave.
“You know what to do,” the employee repeated, confusingly. Paraíso Verde did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
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Petr
Administrator
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Not to promote shitlib "fact checking", but I suspected there was something fishy about that image of the "Amish convoy" accompanying the Gab post and it turns out I was right: https://leadstories.com/hoax-alert/...ch-but-hutterites-did-cook-convoy-dinner.html
Petr
Administrator
Campeche Mennonite Community still resists the Covid-19 vaccine - The Yucatan Times
This group continues to affirm that since there are no cases of Covid-19 in their communities, vaccinations are not necessary. (CAMPECHE - TYT).- While the Vaccination campaign continues to advance in Campehce and that the third booster dose has already started for several population groups...
www.theyucatantimes.com
Campeche Mennonite Community still resists the Covid-19 vaccine
By Yucatan Times on February 14, 2022
(Photo: Yucatan a la mano)
(CAMPECHE – TYT) While the Vaccination campaign continues to advance in Campeche and that the third booster dose has already started for several population groups, there are small communities, among which the Mennonites stand out, who remain skeptical about the anticovid vaccines.
This has been confirmed by health authorities, who although they recognized that only some received the dose, there are those who do not have the first or second injection of any drug, this could also cause a high risk of contagion since it is already very common to see these residents wandering around the city without a mask and without respecting sanitary measures.
So far there are no cases of Covid-19 in the Mennonite camps of El Temporal and Nuevo Progreso, in Campeche, so Mennonites expressed that they do not know if any member of those populations has been infected with coronavirus, and warned that they do not have vaccinated against Covid-19, and they will not do so, according to their uses and customs, and their religion.
Petr
Administrator
This piece, about the Mennonites who settled in the Peruvian Amazon, is an English automatic-translation version of this Spanish-language article:
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elcomercio.pe
For some, they are the moral reserve of a planet drowned in consumerism. For others, characters suspected of racism, because they avoid mixing with the people of the countries where they live.
They arrived in Peru in 2014, from Bolivia, with the idea of finding new territories where they could lead their lifestyle, oblivious to the inventions of the modern world.
Nevertheless, for four years they have been investigated for the deforestation of large areas of the Amazon in Loreto and Ucayali.
When I visited them for the first time, at the end of 2015, they asked the government for autonomy to educate their children under their Christian standards. The request included exempting their young men from military service. At Mennonite school, children learn to sing and memorize passages from the Bible and, on blackboards with chalk, to master basic mathematics. When they reach puberty, they leave school to dedicate themselves to agricultural and timber production, if they are boys; and to the duties of the home and the field, if they are women.
The Mennonites travel twelve hours by river to market their products in Pucallpa (one of the main ones, fresh cheese). Nor do they employ anyone to cultivate their land. This brought disappointment to the residents, who thought that their arrival would multiply employment.
Thanks to Analí Lavado Agnini and the Cuarto Poder program, I was able to enter two Mennonite colonies in Ucayali and the Huánuco Amazon (the third Mennonite important remains in Father Márquez, in Loreto). That year, the towns of Vanderland and Usterreich looked like recently set up camps, in the middle of large agricultural areas reclaimed from the jungle.
A biblical air blew through those villages built of wood and metal plates, where a child played on stilts and the women sewed in silence. Peace dominated those extensions where the neighbor’s house could be seen five blocks or a kilometer away.
Getting to these towns was not easy, since they were far from Pucallpa and the Mennonites they did not allow the entry of anyone other than local collaborators: truck owners who helped them get their products out.
Mennonite education is the key to its idiosyncrasy or the perpetuity of its traditions. Male and female roles are very different.
Spending a couple of days with them was like witnessing an episode of The Ingalls Family, the 1970s series starring and directed by Michael Landon. And I said it in the report that followed that visit. Only here there was no Laura or Mary Ingalls, but industrious women who only understood the archaic German language that a modern German could not understand.
The Mennonites and the Amish have the same origin, but the former are not as radical as the latter. The followers of Menno Simons accept some technological advances in their daily life, such as tractors and agricultural machinery in general, as well as an extemporaneous type of fuel-powered clothes washers.
Their way of life prevents them from using mechanical vehicles to move around, except when working in the fields. In the photo appears one of the ministers or priests of the community. Everyone in this community carries an immigration card (most have religious immigration status).
They do not tolerate television, radios and much less cell phones. Neither do cars or electricity. His hand-cranked calculators look like something out of a Far West movie.
But, unlike the Amish, they do not isolate themselves from the outside world. They just walk away. They did not accept the covid vaccination because only God could decide on their destinies.
The Mennonites arriving in Peru, they were born in a South American country, and yet only the village chiefs knew how to communicate in broken Spanish. A smaller number of them come from Belize.
Despite the Amazonian heat, they never showed signs of being overwhelmed, buttoned up to their Adam’s apple. The same with them, always sheathed in dresses of simple and dark fabrics.
For all their stoicism and radicalism, these uniformed men in overalls and plaid shirts were kind and sweet.
A quick search on the Internet brings to light dishonorable crimes carried out by a group of them in Manitoba, Bolivia. Young Mennonites they can only form a family with women from the same religious group. Whoever succumbs to the love of any other woman must leave the village.
The modern world and its complex dynamics surround these beings who live under the mandate of a sacred mission, according to them.
An average family at lunch. That day there was chicken broth, fried chicken, fried plantains, and camu camu soda.
This year we visited them again (12 hours by river, from Pucallpa), but for different reasons: the Mennonite colonies of Tierra Blanca in Loreto and Masisea in Ucayali were fined millions of dollars. Christians are supposed to have cut down our primary forests without having the respective permits.
They and their lawyers argue that they are only taking advantage of forests previously exploited by loggers. Satellite images show accelerated forest activity in their domains. The Specialized Prosecutor for Environmental Matters continues to collect information.
A parallel investigation tries to reveal an irregular titling system promoted by state agencies in the properties that today are occupied by the “holy” neighborhoods. Were they cheated by land traffickers?
Similar accusations persecute this group in Mexico and Bolivia. Their children form families, their colonies grow and their fields grow too.
For some, they took the biblical phrase “populate the earth abundantly and multiply in it” to the extreme. For the law, they must reforest the lost paradise.
Un recorrido por las colonias menonitas en Ucayali y Loreto y su impacto en esas regiones | CRÓNICA
Los menonitas no dejan indiferente a nadie. Hay quienes los quieren, defienden y valoran su estoico apego al trabajo. Y quienes los catalogan de fanáticos y anacrónicos. Ingresamos a las colonias de Ucayali y Loreto. Esta es la historia.
elcomercio.pe
A tour of the Mennonite colonies in Ucayali and Loreto and their impact on those regions
For some, they are the moral reserve of a planet drowned in consumerism. For others, characters suspected of racism, because they avoid mixing with the people of the countries where they live.
They arrived in Peru in 2014, from Bolivia, with the idea of finding new territories where they could lead their lifestyle, oblivious to the inventions of the modern world.
Nevertheless, for four years they have been investigated for the deforestation of large areas of the Amazon in Loreto and Ucayali.
When I visited them for the first time, at the end of 2015, they asked the government for autonomy to educate their children under their Christian standards. The request included exempting their young men from military service. At Mennonite school, children learn to sing and memorize passages from the Bible and, on blackboards with chalk, to master basic mathematics. When they reach puberty, they leave school to dedicate themselves to agricultural and timber production, if they are boys; and to the duties of the home and the field, if they are women.
The Mennonites travel twelve hours by river to market their products in Pucallpa (one of the main ones, fresh cheese). Nor do they employ anyone to cultivate their land. This brought disappointment to the residents, who thought that their arrival would multiply employment.
Thanks to Analí Lavado Agnini and the Cuarto Poder program, I was able to enter two Mennonite colonies in Ucayali and the Huánuco Amazon (the third Mennonite important remains in Father Márquez, in Loreto). That year, the towns of Vanderland and Usterreich looked like recently set up camps, in the middle of large agricultural areas reclaimed from the jungle.
A biblical air blew through those villages built of wood and metal plates, where a child played on stilts and the women sewed in silence. Peace dominated those extensions where the neighbor’s house could be seen five blocks or a kilometer away.
Getting to these towns was not easy, since they were far from Pucallpa and the Mennonites they did not allow the entry of anyone other than local collaborators: truck owners who helped them get their products out.
Mennonite education is the key to its idiosyncrasy or the perpetuity of its traditions. Male and female roles are very different.
Spending a couple of days with them was like witnessing an episode of The Ingalls Family, the 1970s series starring and directed by Michael Landon. And I said it in the report that followed that visit. Only here there was no Laura or Mary Ingalls, but industrious women who only understood the archaic German language that a modern German could not understand.
The Mennonites and the Amish have the same origin, but the former are not as radical as the latter. The followers of Menno Simons accept some technological advances in their daily life, such as tractors and agricultural machinery in general, as well as an extemporaneous type of fuel-powered clothes washers.
Their way of life prevents them from using mechanical vehicles to move around, except when working in the fields. In the photo appears one of the ministers or priests of the community. Everyone in this community carries an immigration card (most have religious immigration status).
They do not tolerate television, radios and much less cell phones. Neither do cars or electricity. His hand-cranked calculators look like something out of a Far West movie.
But, unlike the Amish, they do not isolate themselves from the outside world. They just walk away. They did not accept the covid vaccination because only God could decide on their destinies.
The Mennonites arriving in Peru, they were born in a South American country, and yet only the village chiefs knew how to communicate in broken Spanish. A smaller number of them come from Belize.
Despite the Amazonian heat, they never showed signs of being overwhelmed, buttoned up to their Adam’s apple. The same with them, always sheathed in dresses of simple and dark fabrics.
For all their stoicism and radicalism, these uniformed men in overalls and plaid shirts were kind and sweet.
A quick search on the Internet brings to light dishonorable crimes carried out by a group of them in Manitoba, Bolivia. Young Mennonites they can only form a family with women from the same religious group. Whoever succumbs to the love of any other woman must leave the village.
The modern world and its complex dynamics surround these beings who live under the mandate of a sacred mission, according to them.
An average family at lunch. That day there was chicken broth, fried chicken, fried plantains, and camu camu soda.
This year we visited them again (12 hours by river, from Pucallpa), but for different reasons: the Mennonite colonies of Tierra Blanca in Loreto and Masisea in Ucayali were fined millions of dollars. Christians are supposed to have cut down our primary forests without having the respective permits.
They and their lawyers argue that they are only taking advantage of forests previously exploited by loggers. Satellite images show accelerated forest activity in their domains. The Specialized Prosecutor for Environmental Matters continues to collect information.
A parallel investigation tries to reveal an irregular titling system promoted by state agencies in the properties that today are occupied by the “holy” neighborhoods. Were they cheated by land traffickers?
Similar accusations persecute this group in Mexico and Bolivia. Their children form families, their colonies grow and their fields grow too.
For some, they took the biblical phrase “populate the earth abundantly and multiply in it” to the extreme. For the law, they must reforest the lost paradise.
Petr
Administrator
The question of ethnic dominance can touch even such quaint issues as ostrich farming - some people in Belize feel their country is already too dependent on the Mennonites for the food production (and on the Chinese as merchant middlemen):
Diverging Views on Mennonites And Ostriches
June 1, 2022
And last night, you heard the BAHA chairman, Hugh O'Brien, say that he doesn't think the Mennonite community should get into the ostrich industry, considering that they monopolise the poultry and dairy industries. While Marin agreed with him, the minister isn't too keen on leaving any farmer behind.
Hon. Kareem Musa, Minister of Home Affairs & New Growth Industries
"We are an open and free market and so any group of people, any farmer that's interest in this particular industry can explore and venture and invest in this industry. There's no restriction on who can invest in it, I think what we have to look at is not giving any particular group any incentives or additional concession more than others, it has to be across the board opportunities for all Belizeans, not just a specific group."
Nancy Marin, Ostrich Farmer
"I was also happy to note, I saw you guys interview Mr O'Brien, the new chairman for BAHA, he is fully onboard and I was very happy for his last statement requesting that the Mennonites step back off of this industry because my fight for seven years was not just to bring an animal into Belize, or a new species into Belize. My fight is that the farmer of Belize have been left out, we have given up our food sovereignty to the Mennonites and with groceries to the Chinese, but in this case we're focusing on the Mennonites and it is time that local farmers have something for ourselves and this is ostrich."
Courtney Menzies:
"How difficult is it to rear ostriches and do you feel like Belizeans will make the effort, Belizean farmers?"
Nancy Marin, Ostrich Farmer
"You know, I grew up in a cattle ranch so I'm used to livestock, and I will tell you that it is a lot easier, it is a lot easier than rearing cows. So I have gotten interest, we have at least 16 local farmers that are interested, people are texting, saying, I have ten acres, I have fifty acres, how many ostriches could I rear with this amount of land. We can actually rear are ostriches than we can livestock in the amount of land small farmers have. So it's going to be very easy as long as we follow procedures and we keep the health and sanitary confinement of the animals is what is important but as long as we get through that, it will be easy. I think we will have management plan that will be very easy for farmers to follow and we will follow all of the procedures and requirements that both BAHA and Forestry have to give us but we will do that under a very organised structure, we are forming the Association of Ostrich Livestock in Belize."
And according to Marin, the association will be the only organisation that will be allowed to buy ostriches, meaning that individual farmers - or even residents - won't be able to purchase them on their own.
Diverging Views on Mennonites And Ostriches
June 1, 2022
And last night, you heard the BAHA chairman, Hugh O'Brien, say that he doesn't think the Mennonite community should get into the ostrich industry, considering that they monopolise the poultry and dairy industries. While Marin agreed with him, the minister isn't too keen on leaving any farmer behind.
"We are an open and free market and so any group of people, any farmer that's interest in this particular industry can explore and venture and invest in this industry. There's no restriction on who can invest in it, I think what we have to look at is not giving any particular group any incentives or additional concession more than others, it has to be across the board opportunities for all Belizeans, not just a specific group."
Nancy Marin, Ostrich Farmer
"I was also happy to note, I saw you guys interview Mr O'Brien, the new chairman for BAHA, he is fully onboard and I was very happy for his last statement requesting that the Mennonites step back off of this industry because my fight for seven years was not just to bring an animal into Belize, or a new species into Belize. My fight is that the farmer of Belize have been left out, we have given up our food sovereignty to the Mennonites and with groceries to the Chinese, but in this case we're focusing on the Mennonites and it is time that local farmers have something for ourselves and this is ostrich."
Courtney Menzies:
"How difficult is it to rear ostriches and do you feel like Belizeans will make the effort, Belizean farmers?"
Nancy Marin, Ostrich Farmer
"You know, I grew up in a cattle ranch so I'm used to livestock, and I will tell you that it is a lot easier, it is a lot easier than rearing cows. So I have gotten interest, we have at least 16 local farmers that are interested, people are texting, saying, I have ten acres, I have fifty acres, how many ostriches could I rear with this amount of land. We can actually rear are ostriches than we can livestock in the amount of land small farmers have. So it's going to be very easy as long as we follow procedures and we keep the health and sanitary confinement of the animals is what is important but as long as we get through that, it will be easy. I think we will have management plan that will be very easy for farmers to follow and we will follow all of the procedures and requirements that both BAHA and Forestry have to give us but we will do that under a very organised structure, we are forming the Association of Ostrich Livestock in Belize."
And according to Marin, the association will be the only organisation that will be allowed to buy ostriches, meaning that individual farmers - or even residents - won't be able to purchase them on their own.
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Petr
Administrator
It seems that the globo-media makes these kind of attack pieces on the Mennonites on a regular basis:
www.reuters.com
Visuals by Jose Luis Gonzalez
Reporting by Cassandra Garrison
Filed: July 12, 2022, 12 p.m. GMT
The largest tropical forest in North America yields to perfect rows of corn and soy. Light-haired women with blue eyes in wide-brimmed hats bump down a dirt road in a horse and buggy, past simple brick homes and a whitewashed schoolhouse: A Mennonite community in southern Mexico.
Here, in the state of Campeche on the Yucatan Peninsula at the northern edge of the Maya Forest, the Mennonites say they live to traditional pacifist values and that expanding farms to provide a simple life for their families is the will of God.
In the eyes of ecologists and now the Mexican government, which once welcomed their agricultural prowess, the Mennonites' ranches are an environmental disaster rapidly razing the jungle, one of the continent's biggest carbon sinks and a home to endangered jaguars.
Juan Neudorf throws a rope towards his horses in the Mennonite community of Valle Nuevo, Campeche state, Mexico, April 28, 2021. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez.
Smaller only than the Amazon, the Maya Forest is shrinking annually by an area the size of Dallas, according to Global Forest Watch, a non-profit organisation that monitors deforestation.
The government of President Andres Manuel Lopez is now pressuring the Mennonites to shift to more sustainable practices, but despite a deal between some Mennonite settlements and the government, ongoing land clearance was visible in two villages visited by Reuters in February and May.
A young man cuts tree branches in the Mennonite community of Chavi, Hecelchakan, Campeche state, Mexico, May 11, 2022. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez.
Farmers such as Isaak Dyck Thiessen, a leader in the Mennonite settlement of Chavi, are finding it hard to adjust.
"Our people just want to be left in peace," he said, standing on a shaded doorstep to escape the unforgiving afternoon sun. Beyond his neat farm rose the green wall of the rainforest.
In search of land and isolation, Mennonites – for whom agricultural toil is a core tenet of their Christian faith – grew in numbers and expanded into remote parts of Mexico after first arriving from Canada in the early 20th Century.
Despite shunning electricity and other modern amenities away from work, their farming has evolved to include bulldozers and chainsaws as well as tractors and harvesters.
In Campeche, where Mennonites arrived in the 1980s, around 8,000 sq km of forest, nearly a fifth of the state's tree cover, has been lost in the last 20 years, with 2020 the worst on record, according to Global Forest Watch.
Groups including palm oil farmers and cattle ranchers also engage in widespread land clearance. Data on how much deforestation is driven by Mennonite settlers and how much by other groups is not readily available.
One 2017 study, led by Mexico's Universidad Veracruzana, found that property owned by Mennonites in Campeche had rates of deforestation four times higher than non-Mennonite properties.
The clearance contrasts with the traditions of indigenous farmers who have rotated corn and harvested forest products such as honey and natural rubber since Maya cities dominated the jungle from the Yucatan to El Salvador.
Itself under international pressure to pursue a greener agenda, in August the government persuaded some Campeche Mennonite settlements to sign an agreement to stop deforesting land.
Not all the communities signed up.
FIRE AND SAWS
On the edge of the remote village of Valle Nuevo, Reuters journalists witnessed farmers clearing jungle and setting fires to prepare for planting.
Jacob Harder, Jr., a Mennonite school teacher in Valle Nuevo said the agreement had not made an impact on how Valle Nuevo approaches agriculture.
"We haven't changed anything," Harder said.
Leader Dyck Thiessen and a lawyer representing some communities and farmers said Mennonites, who take a pacifist approach to conflict, felt attacked and scapegoated by the government's efforts.
Jose Uriel Reyna Tecua, the lawyer, said they were unfairly blamed while the government pays less attention to others that deforest.
Enrique Friesen, 17, (R) carries a plastic bag of sorghum for quality testing before his family's harvest is sold, in the Mennonite community of Valle Nuevo, Campeche state, Mexico, February 28, 2022. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez.
At one meeting last year, Agustin Avila, a senior official at the federal environment ministry, warned villagers the military could be brought to the area to prevent deforestation if the communities did not change their ways, Reyna Tecua said.
"That was the direct threat," Reyna Tecua said.
In response to a Reuters question about Avila's alleged comments, the environment ministry denied any mention of using the military, saying the government operated on the basis of dialogue.
Carlos Tucuch, head of the Campeche office of Mexico's National Forestry Commission (CONAFOR), told Reuters the government was not singling out the Mennonites and was also working to tackle other causes of deforestation.
THE MOVE SOUTH
Mennonites trace their roots to a group of Christian radicals in 16th century Germany and surrounding areas that emerged in opposition to both Roman Catholic doctrine and mainstream Protestant faiths during the Reformation.
In the 1920s, a group of about 6,000 moved to northern Mexico and established themselves as important crop producers.
Still speaking Plautdietsch - a blend of Low German, Prussian dialects and Dutch - a few thousand moved to the forests of Campeche in the 1980s. They bought and leased tracts of jungle, some from local Maya indigenous communities. More arrived in recent years as climate change worsened drought in the north.
In 1992, legislation made it easier to develop, rent or sell previously protected forest, increasing deforestation and the number of farms in the state.
When Mexico opened up the use of genetically modified soy in the 2000s, Mennonites in Campeche embraced the crop and the use of the glyphosate weedkiller Roundup, designed to work alongside GMO crops, according to Edward Ellis, a researcher at Universidad Veracruzana.
The higher yields means more income to support large families - 10 children is not unusual - and live a simple life supported by the land, said historian Royden Loewen, explaining that settlements often invest as much as 90% of profits to buy land.
At least five Mennonites who spoke to Reuters said they wanted to acquire more land for their families.
While most Mexican Mennonites remain in the north, there are now between 14,000 and 15,000 in Campeche spread over about 20 settlements.
"If God grants you, then you grow," said Dyck Thiessen, who has attended government meetings but did not sign the agreement.
FOREST TOLL
The Mennonites largely maintain a tense peace with local indigenous communities who serve as guardians to the surrounding forest but also rent equipment from their new neighbors for their own land.
"With them, we began to have access to machinery. We see that it gives us results," said Wilfredo Chicav, 56, a Maya farmer.
Such advances in agricultural efficiency has taken its toll on the Maya Forest, home to fauna that includes up to 400 species of birds.
Its 100 species of mammal include the jaguar, at risk of extinction in Mexico if its habitat shrinks, said the forestry commission's Tucuch.
Between 2001 and 2018, the three states that comprise the forest in Mexico lost about 15,000 sq km of tree cover, an area that would cover much of El Salvador.
This is driving a shorter rainy season. Farmers used to schedule planting for the first of May, now they often wait until July as less forest implies less rainfall capture, leading to a drop in moisture uptake in the air and a decrease in rain, Tucuch said.
Campeche's Environment Secretary, Sandra Laffon, said the Mennonites in the state did not always have the right paperwork to turn the forest into farmland.
Reyna Tecua acknowledged problems with land purchases. Families sometimes fall victim to deals based on a handshake and verbal word, and sellers can take advantage by promising land that is not up for legal sale in the first place, he said.
The agreement signed last year created a permanent working group between the government and Mennonite communities to try to resolve permitting, land ownership and administrative and criminal complaints against them from local people including for illegal logging.
Laffon said there were signs the agreement is having an impact. Global Forest Watch data showed a decrease in deforestation in Campeche in 2021, but said that could be the result of factors including a lack of remaining land suitable for agriculture and government incentive programs, which include a nationwide scheme popular with Maya indigenous farmers that rewards tree planting.
The Harder family pray before having breakfast, after they moved from the Mennonite community of El Sabinal, Chihuahua, to the Mennonite community of Valle Nuevo, Campeche state, Mexico April 29, 2021. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez.
Mennonite leaders are seeking a proposal from the government that won't cut their production dramatically, Reyna Tecua said. A government plan to phase out glyphosate by 2024 is the biggest worry for many, he said.
However, Leal said lower production may be a price farmers, including Mennonites, have to pay to protect the environment, Laffon said.
"We are at the point of having to sacrifice our position" as Mexico's second largest grain producer "for a healthier Campeche," she said.
Lifting his cap to wipe sweat from his brow, Dyck Thiessen, the Mennonite leader, doubted organic methods proposed by the government would be successful. Tension with officials has stalled his plans to acquire more land, he said.
Still, he has faith.
"If the government shuts us down," he says, "God will open for us."
God's will or ecological disaster? Mennonite deforestation in Mexico
The largest tropical forest in North America yields to perfect rows of corn and soy. Light-haired women with blue eyes in wide-brimmed hats bump down a dirt road in a horse and buggy, past simple brick homes and a whitewashed schoolhouse: A Mennonite community in southern Mexico.
God's will or ecological disaster? Mexico takes aim at Mennonite deforestation
Visuals by Jose Luis Gonzalez
Reporting by Cassandra Garrison
Filed: July 12, 2022, 12 p.m. GMT
The largest tropical forest in North America yields to perfect rows of corn and soy. Light-haired women with blue eyes in wide-brimmed hats bump down a dirt road in a horse and buggy, past simple brick homes and a whitewashed schoolhouse: A Mennonite community in southern Mexico.
Here, in the state of Campeche on the Yucatan Peninsula at the northern edge of the Maya Forest, the Mennonites say they live to traditional pacifist values and that expanding farms to provide a simple life for their families is the will of God.
In the eyes of ecologists and now the Mexican government, which once welcomed their agricultural prowess, the Mennonites' ranches are an environmental disaster rapidly razing the jungle, one of the continent's biggest carbon sinks and a home to endangered jaguars.
Juan Neudorf throws a rope towards his horses in the Mennonite community of Valle Nuevo, Campeche state, Mexico, April 28, 2021. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez.
Smaller only than the Amazon, the Maya Forest is shrinking annually by an area the size of Dallas, according to Global Forest Watch, a non-profit organisation that monitors deforestation.
The government of President Andres Manuel Lopez is now pressuring the Mennonites to shift to more sustainable practices, but despite a deal between some Mennonite settlements and the government, ongoing land clearance was visible in two villages visited by Reuters in February and May.
A young man cuts tree branches in the Mennonite community of Chavi, Hecelchakan, Campeche state, Mexico, May 11, 2022. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez.
Farmers such as Isaak Dyck Thiessen, a leader in the Mennonite settlement of Chavi, are finding it hard to adjust.
"Our people just want to be left in peace," he said, standing on a shaded doorstep to escape the unforgiving afternoon sun. Beyond his neat farm rose the green wall of the rainforest.
In search of land and isolation, Mennonites – for whom agricultural toil is a core tenet of their Christian faith – grew in numbers and expanded into remote parts of Mexico after first arriving from Canada in the early 20th Century.
Despite shunning electricity and other modern amenities away from work, their farming has evolved to include bulldozers and chainsaws as well as tractors and harvesters.
In Campeche, where Mennonites arrived in the 1980s, around 8,000 sq km of forest, nearly a fifth of the state's tree cover, has been lost in the last 20 years, with 2020 the worst on record, according to Global Forest Watch.
Groups including palm oil farmers and cattle ranchers also engage in widespread land clearance. Data on how much deforestation is driven by Mennonite settlers and how much by other groups is not readily available.
One 2017 study, led by Mexico's Universidad Veracruzana, found that property owned by Mennonites in Campeche had rates of deforestation four times higher than non-Mennonite properties.
The clearance contrasts with the traditions of indigenous farmers who have rotated corn and harvested forest products such as honey and natural rubber since Maya cities dominated the jungle from the Yucatan to El Salvador.
Itself under international pressure to pursue a greener agenda, in August the government persuaded some Campeche Mennonite settlements to sign an agreement to stop deforesting land.
Not all the communities signed up.
FIRE AND SAWS
On the edge of the remote village of Valle Nuevo, Reuters journalists witnessed farmers clearing jungle and setting fires to prepare for planting.
Jacob Harder, Jr., a Mennonite school teacher in Valle Nuevo said the agreement had not made an impact on how Valle Nuevo approaches agriculture.
"We haven't changed anything," Harder said.
Leader Dyck Thiessen and a lawyer representing some communities and farmers said Mennonites, who take a pacifist approach to conflict, felt attacked and scapegoated by the government's efforts.
Jose Uriel Reyna Tecua, the lawyer, said they were unfairly blamed while the government pays less attention to others that deforest.
Enrique Friesen, 17, (R) carries a plastic bag of sorghum for quality testing before his family's harvest is sold, in the Mennonite community of Valle Nuevo, Campeche state, Mexico, February 28, 2022. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez.
At one meeting last year, Agustin Avila, a senior official at the federal environment ministry, warned villagers the military could be brought to the area to prevent deforestation if the communities did not change their ways, Reyna Tecua said.
"That was the direct threat," Reyna Tecua said.
In response to a Reuters question about Avila's alleged comments, the environment ministry denied any mention of using the military, saying the government operated on the basis of dialogue.
Carlos Tucuch, head of the Campeche office of Mexico's National Forestry Commission (CONAFOR), told Reuters the government was not singling out the Mennonites and was also working to tackle other causes of deforestation.
THE MOVE SOUTH
Mennonites trace their roots to a group of Christian radicals in 16th century Germany and surrounding areas that emerged in opposition to both Roman Catholic doctrine and mainstream Protestant faiths during the Reformation.
In the 1920s, a group of about 6,000 moved to northern Mexico and established themselves as important crop producers.
Still speaking Plautdietsch - a blend of Low German, Prussian dialects and Dutch - a few thousand moved to the forests of Campeche in the 1980s. They bought and leased tracts of jungle, some from local Maya indigenous communities. More arrived in recent years as climate change worsened drought in the north.
In 1992, legislation made it easier to develop, rent or sell previously protected forest, increasing deforestation and the number of farms in the state.
When Mexico opened up the use of genetically modified soy in the 2000s, Mennonites in Campeche embraced the crop and the use of the glyphosate weedkiller Roundup, designed to work alongside GMO crops, according to Edward Ellis, a researcher at Universidad Veracruzana.
The higher yields means more income to support large families - 10 children is not unusual - and live a simple life supported by the land, said historian Royden Loewen, explaining that settlements often invest as much as 90% of profits to buy land.
At least five Mennonites who spoke to Reuters said they wanted to acquire more land for their families.
While most Mexican Mennonites remain in the north, there are now between 14,000 and 15,000 in Campeche spread over about 20 settlements.
"If God grants you, then you grow," said Dyck Thiessen, who has attended government meetings but did not sign the agreement.
FOREST TOLL
The Mennonites largely maintain a tense peace with local indigenous communities who serve as guardians to the surrounding forest but also rent equipment from their new neighbors for their own land.
"With them, we began to have access to machinery. We see that it gives us results," said Wilfredo Chicav, 56, a Maya farmer.
Such advances in agricultural efficiency has taken its toll on the Maya Forest, home to fauna that includes up to 400 species of birds.
Its 100 species of mammal include the jaguar, at risk of extinction in Mexico if its habitat shrinks, said the forestry commission's Tucuch.
Between 2001 and 2018, the three states that comprise the forest in Mexico lost about 15,000 sq km of tree cover, an area that would cover much of El Salvador.
This is driving a shorter rainy season. Farmers used to schedule planting for the first of May, now they often wait until July as less forest implies less rainfall capture, leading to a drop in moisture uptake in the air and a decrease in rain, Tucuch said.
Campeche's Environment Secretary, Sandra Laffon, said the Mennonites in the state did not always have the right paperwork to turn the forest into farmland.
Reyna Tecua acknowledged problems with land purchases. Families sometimes fall victim to deals based on a handshake and verbal word, and sellers can take advantage by promising land that is not up for legal sale in the first place, he said.
The agreement signed last year created a permanent working group between the government and Mennonite communities to try to resolve permitting, land ownership and administrative and criminal complaints against them from local people including for illegal logging.
Laffon said there were signs the agreement is having an impact. Global Forest Watch data showed a decrease in deforestation in Campeche in 2021, but said that could be the result of factors including a lack of remaining land suitable for agriculture and government incentive programs, which include a nationwide scheme popular with Maya indigenous farmers that rewards tree planting.
The Harder family pray before having breakfast, after they moved from the Mennonite community of El Sabinal, Chihuahua, to the Mennonite community of Valle Nuevo, Campeche state, Mexico April 29, 2021. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez.
Mennonite leaders are seeking a proposal from the government that won't cut their production dramatically, Reyna Tecua said. A government plan to phase out glyphosate by 2024 is the biggest worry for many, he said.
However, Leal said lower production may be a price farmers, including Mennonites, have to pay to protect the environment, Laffon said.
"We are at the point of having to sacrifice our position" as Mexico's second largest grain producer "for a healthier Campeche," she said.
Lifting his cap to wipe sweat from his brow, Dyck Thiessen, the Mennonite leader, doubted organic methods proposed by the government would be successful. Tension with officials has stalled his plans to acquire more land, he said.
Still, he has faith.
"If the government shuts us down," he says, "God will open for us."
Petr
Administrator
A dry but detailed academic article:
Figure 2. Map of Latin America Mennonite colonies.
Pious pioneers: the expansion of Mennonite colonies in Latin America
Nearly one hundred years ago, a group of Mennonites left the prairies of Manitoba for the deserts of Northern Mexico. Since then, Mennonites have created over two hundred agricultural colonies acro...
www.tandfonline.com
Before we proceed, a few words about the nature of these colonies are in order. Mennonite colonies in Latin America are distinct from other settlements in their morphology and organization. Centered around a church and school, they typically take the form of one or several ‘street-villages’ or Straßendörfer, consisting of a row of farmhouses evenly spaced on either side of a road, each housing one family (Figure 4). Life revolves around mixed farming, the main livelihood for the large majority of the Mennonite population. Each village is headed by an elected leader called Dorfschulze (Village leader) who manages local affairs, while the colony is represented by one or more Vorsteher (Colony leader). Religious leaders called Prediger, Diakone, and Ältester (Preacher, Deacon, and Elder or Bishop), elected for life, exert important influence on colony affairs. Small colonies may have as few as a dozen families organized along a single village, while larger colonies can reach several thousands of individuals in dozens of villages, with multiple schools, churches, and Vorsteher. Numerous colonies reject some modern technologies, which are seen as corrupting influences. The most conservative colonies reject the use of rubber tires on tractors and of telephones and the connection of houses to the electricity grid, among other things. Members of more progressive colonies find it normal to own smartphones or pick-up trucks and have TV. Diversity does not stop at technology adoption: colonies (and sometimes, villages within colonies) further differ in their positions towards education, labour, language, and more generally, relationships to the outside world.
Figure 2. Map of Latin America Mennonite colonies.
Petr
Administrator
Yet another Mennonite-bashing article from the Guardian:
www.theguardian.com
Mennonite men in Wanderland, Loreto region, in the Peruvian Amazon. Photograph: Dan Collyns/The Guardian
Dan Collyns in Wanderland
Sun 11 Sep 2022 00.00 BST
Were it not for the ebullient fecundity of the Amazon rainforest surrounding it, Wanderland could almost be a stretch of Dutch farmland from the 19th century; a straight muddy track bisects rows of neatly spaced farmyards with perpendicular houses and barns.
A typical morning begins as horse-drawn buggies driven by smiling blond-haired, blue-eyed boys collect shiny churns of fresh milk from farm gates to be made into cheese. The name given to this pastoral idyll carved out of thick foliage of the jungle seems to need little translation, even from Plautdietsch, the mixture of Low German and Dutch spoken by its inhabitants.
But there is unease in this rustic paradise. It is one of three Mennonite communities being investigated by Peruvian prosecutors over accusations of illegally deforesting more than 3,440 hectares (34 sq km) of tropical rainforest in the past five years. The brush with the law has alarmed the community of about 100 families who fear they could lose the land which they have made their home.
...
Mennonite boys carry out chores on the farm from a young age. By the age of 13 they are working full-time. Photograph: The Guardian
...
The remote tract of jungle suited the Mennonites’ preference for being left alone. The Guardian travelled for 14 hours by boat down the Ucayali river and drove for another hour along a muddy track to visit the community which sits about halfway between Pucallpa and Iquitos, the largest city in the world accessible only by boat or plane.
The nearest settlement to the new Mennonite colonies, Tierra Blanca, is a poor riverside outpost which suffers occasional outbursts of violence as it sits on a cocaine trafficking route. There the local people welcome the dungaree-clad settlers and the womenfolk in long cape dresses with curious amusement. Old-timers say decades of logging has stripped any valuable tropical hardwoods from the forest where the communities now live.
“It was secondary [forest] because the loggers had already used all the wood,” said Thiesen. “We don’t work wood. We prefer the soil, to work the land, he added, although he admitted the leftover timber was used to build “houses, schools, churches, bridges, some little things”.
Legally, it is an important distinction. Secondary forest is one step closer to purma, the scrub which grows after tree felling. Purma can be legally transitioned to agricultural use while felling primary rainforest is illegal.
Matt Finer, a senior research specialist at NGO Amazon Conservation, disagrees with Thiesen’s assertion. “The area was selectively logged, as is much of the Amazon but it’s still primary forest,” he said.
Mennonite settlements had become the “new leading cause of large-scale deforestation in Peru”, he said. “In total, we have now documented the deforestation of 3,968 hectares across four new colonies established in the Peruvian Amazon since 2017,” he added. Three out of those four colonies are in Tierra Blanca.
Environmentalists worry this could just be the beginning of the Mennonite invasion in Peru. Satellite images show land clearing for another settlement, also in Loreto, a vast Amazon region the size of Germany. A 2021 study in the Journal of Land Use Science says Mennonites have 200 settlements across seven countries in Latin America and collectively occupy more land than the Netherlands.
Peru lost a record 2,032 sq km of Amazon to deforestation in 2020, a figure almost four times the 548 sq km it lost in 2019, according to its environment ministry.
The Mennonites may be easy targets for environmental prosecutors but their neighbours have jumped to their defence.
“The Mennonite colony has changed the face of this village,” said Medelú Saldaña, the former mayor of Tierra Blanca. “We are blessed to be able to learn from this orderly agriculture.”
The Mennonites sell their cheese and other dairy products locally and as experts in growing soya, sorghum and rice, their farming knowhow is valued by the locals.
“[They] have come to invigorate the economy of our district, where the state neither makes an appearance nor invests,” Saldaña added.
Prohibited by their beliefs from using modern technology, the Christian group do not drive any vehicles except for tractors so they rely on local transportation for journeys to and from their communities, as well as longer journeys by river to sell their products at market.
The Mennonites being accused of deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon
A brush with the law has alarmed the community of about 100 families who fear losing the land they have made their home
www.theguardian.com
The Mennonites being accused of deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon
Mennonite men in Wanderland, Loreto region, in the Peruvian Amazon. Photograph: Dan Collyns/The Guardian
Dan Collyns in Wanderland
Sun 11 Sep 2022 00.00 BST
Were it not for the ebullient fecundity of the Amazon rainforest surrounding it, Wanderland could almost be a stretch of Dutch farmland from the 19th century; a straight muddy track bisects rows of neatly spaced farmyards with perpendicular houses and barns.
A typical morning begins as horse-drawn buggies driven by smiling blond-haired, blue-eyed boys collect shiny churns of fresh milk from farm gates to be made into cheese. The name given to this pastoral idyll carved out of thick foliage of the jungle seems to need little translation, even from Plautdietsch, the mixture of Low German and Dutch spoken by its inhabitants.
But there is unease in this rustic paradise. It is one of three Mennonite communities being investigated by Peruvian prosecutors over accusations of illegally deforesting more than 3,440 hectares (34 sq km) of tropical rainforest in the past five years. The brush with the law has alarmed the community of about 100 families who fear they could lose the land which they have made their home.
...
Mennonite boys carry out chores on the farm from a young age. By the age of 13 they are working full-time. Photograph: The Guardian
...
The remote tract of jungle suited the Mennonites’ preference for being left alone. The Guardian travelled for 14 hours by boat down the Ucayali river and drove for another hour along a muddy track to visit the community which sits about halfway between Pucallpa and Iquitos, the largest city in the world accessible only by boat or plane.
The nearest settlement to the new Mennonite colonies, Tierra Blanca, is a poor riverside outpost which suffers occasional outbursts of violence as it sits on a cocaine trafficking route. There the local people welcome the dungaree-clad settlers and the womenfolk in long cape dresses with curious amusement. Old-timers say decades of logging has stripped any valuable tropical hardwoods from the forest where the communities now live.
“It was secondary [forest] because the loggers had already used all the wood,” said Thiesen. “We don’t work wood. We prefer the soil, to work the land, he added, although he admitted the leftover timber was used to build “houses, schools, churches, bridges, some little things”.
Legally, it is an important distinction. Secondary forest is one step closer to purma, the scrub which grows after tree felling. Purma can be legally transitioned to agricultural use while felling primary rainforest is illegal.
Matt Finer, a senior research specialist at NGO Amazon Conservation, disagrees with Thiesen’s assertion. “The area was selectively logged, as is much of the Amazon but it’s still primary forest,” he said.
Mennonite settlements had become the “new leading cause of large-scale deforestation in Peru”, he said. “In total, we have now documented the deforestation of 3,968 hectares across four new colonies established in the Peruvian Amazon since 2017,” he added. Three out of those four colonies are in Tierra Blanca.
Environmentalists worry this could just be the beginning of the Mennonite invasion in Peru. Satellite images show land clearing for another settlement, also in Loreto, a vast Amazon region the size of Germany. A 2021 study in the Journal of Land Use Science says Mennonites have 200 settlements across seven countries in Latin America and collectively occupy more land than the Netherlands.
Peru lost a record 2,032 sq km of Amazon to deforestation in 2020, a figure almost four times the 548 sq km it lost in 2019, according to its environment ministry.
The Mennonites may be easy targets for environmental prosecutors but their neighbours have jumped to their defence.
“The Mennonite colony has changed the face of this village,” said Medelú Saldaña, the former mayor of Tierra Blanca. “We are blessed to be able to learn from this orderly agriculture.”
The Mennonites sell their cheese and other dairy products locally and as experts in growing soya, sorghum and rice, their farming knowhow is valued by the locals.
“[They] have come to invigorate the economy of our district, where the state neither makes an appearance nor invests,” Saldaña added.
Prohibited by their beliefs from using modern technology, the Christian group do not drive any vehicles except for tractors so they rely on local transportation for journeys to and from their communities, as well as longer journeys by river to sell their products at market.
Macrobius
Megaphoron
Plenty of Amish and Mennonites in Indiana. My maternal family (not either sect) is from Porter Co. in the NW part of the State, and I lived for many years in Bloomington, downstate not far from Beanblossom 
orangebeanindiana.com
Indiana’s Amish & Mennonite Communities - OrangeBean Indiana
By Mary Giorgio Indiana is home to thousands of Amish and Mennonite residents. People tend to confuse the two groups because they share many similarities. However, Amish and Mennonites are distinct groups that practice their religious traditions in unique ways. Both Amish and Mennonite religions...
orangebeanindiana.com
Petr
Administrator
Excavations at Maya Settlement in Belize Tell Story of Maya Golden Age
Representatives of the Belize Institute of Archaeology have been working with graduate students from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign on a series of excavations in Central America.
www.ancient-origins.net
UPDATED 13 SEPTEMBER, 2022 - 22:57
NATHAN FALDE
Excavations at Maya Settlement in Belize Tell Story of Maya Golden Age
Representatives of the Belize Institute of Archaeology have been working with graduate students from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign on a series of excavations in Central America. During a recent dig, the team of established and aspiring scholars was delighted to find a shallowly buried ancient Maya settlement, on a site that had long ago been converted into an agricultural field by a Mennonite farming community.
At the Spanish Lookout Mennonite community in Central Belize, the archaeologists and graduate students were given access to a large, open, heavily plowed field. They knew this was the perfect place to look for an ancient Maya settlement, since the upper part of the settlement ruins could be seen by the naked eye.
“White mounds, the remnants of these houses, pock the landscape as far as the eye can see, a stark reminder of what existed more than 1,000 years ago,” anthropology graduate students Rachel Gill and Yifan Wang wrote in a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign press release announcing the unearthing of the Maya settlement in Belize. The white mounds were easily visible in aerial photographs, which are often used by archaeologists looking for hidden ruins to excavate.
Anthropology graduate students Rachel Gill and Yifan Wang are studying the remains of an ancient Maya settlement in Belize. This is an aerial photo of the archaeological site facing east. The white smudges are ancestral Maya mounds. (©2022 VOPA and Belize Institute of Archaeology, NICH / University of Illinois )
Plowing Didn’t Destroy Much of the Maya Settlement
While the plowing has caused some diminishment of the upper level of the ruins, a surprisingly large treasure of artifacts and structural elements have been recovered during the ongoing excavations. Especially revealing have been the ceramic sherds that were recovered in abundance, which the archaeologists used to date the site to the Maya Classical Period. This era lasted from 250 to 900 AD and is recognized as the Golden Age of the prosperous and powerful Maya Empire, which at its peak spread far and wide across the lands of modern-day southern Mexico and northern Central America.The researchers were able to narrow down the time frame of this particular Maya settlement to the 250 to 600 AD time frame, which is considered the Early Classic Period. This is when the Maya launched many of their most ambitious monumental construction projects , and it is also the time when the greatest cities of the Maya Empire were constructed.
Petr
Administrator
Here are some more modern-looking Mennonites - I wonder if they are Trump supporters, with those red hats:
mexiconewsdaily.com
The young men with a butcher shop in Cuauhtémoc grilled meat over a pothole on the Manitoba Commercial Corridor highway and then offered commuters tacos. CARNES HILDEBRANDT/INSTAGRAM
In an attempt to shame local authorities about the state of the Manitoba Commercial Corridor in Cuauhtémoc, Chihuahua, two butchers whose business sits along the stretch of road decided to host a barbecue.
Two young men with Carnes Hildebrand, part of the local Mennonite business community, filled one of the highway’s giant potholes with charcoal, placed a grill on top to cook meat and warm tortillas and proceeded to give away tacos to passersby.
After they uploaded a video of the stunt to their Instagram account, it went viral on the internet.
While not explicitly stated as such in the video’s description on Instagram, the video appears to have been a sarcastic attempt to get the attention of local authorities about the road’s condition. The local Mennonite community that makes up the majority of people in the area says the government has not done its part to maintain the corridor, which is the most visited place in Cuauhtémoc.
The pothole grill in Cuauhtémoc. FRANCES WIELER
The strip of highway is lined on either side with hundreds of warehouse-like stores selling farm equipment, industrial materials, clothing, even local Mennonite cheese, famous in this part of Mexico. There is also a Mennonite museum and several Mennonite suburbs and farms along the roadway.
Despite the road’s popularity, this particular stretch of paved highway is currently little more than a dirt road, as is apparent in the video, where one can see cars passing at highway speed near the young men as they prepare their barbecue.
In May, local officials announced a mobility plan with participation from Mennonite community leaders to rehabilitate and renovate the Manitoba Commercial Corridor after several fatal accidents took the lives of community members. That plan includes creating new crossings, more roundabouts and repaving various kilometers of the highway at a cost of almost 2 billion pesos (US $1.5 million).
A pothole in Chihuahua proves perfect for grilling some meat
Apparently meant to shame local officials into action, a pair of meat vendors offered up tacos cooked over one of a local road's many holes.
mexiconewsdaily.com
The young men with a butcher shop in Cuauhtémoc grilled meat over a pothole on the Manitoba Commercial Corridor highway and then offered commuters tacos. CARNES HILDEBRANDT/INSTAGRAM
A pothole in Chihuahua proves perfect for grilling some meat
The 'pothole barbecue' seems to have been intended to shame local officials about poor road conditions
Published on Wednesday, August 24, 2022In an attempt to shame local authorities about the state of the Manitoba Commercial Corridor in Cuauhtémoc, Chihuahua, two butchers whose business sits along the stretch of road decided to host a barbecue.
Two young men with Carnes Hildebrand, part of the local Mennonite business community, filled one of the highway’s giant potholes with charcoal, placed a grill on top to cook meat and warm tortillas and proceeded to give away tacos to passersby.
After they uploaded a video of the stunt to their Instagram account, it went viral on the internet.
While not explicitly stated as such in the video’s description on Instagram, the video appears to have been a sarcastic attempt to get the attention of local authorities about the road’s condition. The local Mennonite community that makes up the majority of people in the area says the government has not done its part to maintain the corridor, which is the most visited place in Cuauhtémoc.
The pothole grill in Cuauhtémoc. FRANCES WIELER
The strip of highway is lined on either side with hundreds of warehouse-like stores selling farm equipment, industrial materials, clothing, even local Mennonite cheese, famous in this part of Mexico. There is also a Mennonite museum and several Mennonite suburbs and farms along the roadway.
Despite the road’s popularity, this particular stretch of paved highway is currently little more than a dirt road, as is apparent in the video, where one can see cars passing at highway speed near the young men as they prepare their barbecue.
In May, local officials announced a mobility plan with participation from Mennonite community leaders to rehabilitate and renovate the Manitoba Commercial Corridor after several fatal accidents took the lives of community members. That plan includes creating new crossings, more roundabouts and repaving various kilometers of the highway at a cost of almost 2 billion pesos (US $1.5 million).
Lord Osmund de Ixabert
I X A B E R T.com
The Doukhobors of Canada are in abundant proliferation in my vicinity. My interactions with their male constituents form a part of my daily existence. They are all, Intriguingly, conversant in Russian in this region, with a substantial number among them utilising English as well, howbeit marked by a noticeable Russian accent. It has been communicated to me that their variant of Russian retains a certain archaic quality, a linguistic facet that I aim to assimilate, intending to augment my Russian language proficiency through their tutelage, thus allowing me to mirror the vernacular of classical Russian literature.
The Doukhobors continue to adhere strictly to Christian shariah law, with their women donning hijabs & maintaining silence within the church premises. Not once have I observed any among them wearing protective masks during the entire course of the 'Covid19' charade. Their culture is undeniably steeped in Russian traditions & they bear their ethnic identity with pride. However, their detestation for Putin seems to match their aversion for the Czar & the Soviet Union, with political affiliations otherwise largely absent.
A striking attribute of the Doukhobors residing here is their non-compliance with tax regulations. They forego government-issued identification, driver's licenses, & social security numbers, thus liberating themselves from the confines of the system. Instead of purchasing land like the majority of the populace, they appropriate it, thus positioning themselves outside the societal norms to a degree that may see them endure beyond a system collapse.
Their resistance to assimilation is noteworthy, given their Aryan origins & resemblance, & their residence within a majority Aryan nation. Unlike the Jews, who possess the leverage of distinguishing themselves based on their religious beliefs, the Doukhobors, being Protestants residing within Christian communities & countries, could have easily assimilated into the mainstream. My personal observations, however, indicate their thriving existence, with their population appearing to surpass the official estimates, a fact tacitly acknowledged within the official Canadian statistical data.
A significant portion of the Doukhobors I encounter are of a younger demographic, tending to marry & procreate during their early years, mirroring the natural human tendency for women to bear children between the ages of 13 to 18. Observing them in larger congregations or in public marketplaces, one cannot help but notice the relatively high proportion of young women, invariably adorned in hijabs, who already have three or four offspring despite their young age, a stark contrast to mainstream society where women typically embark on motherhood at a later age.
From a demographic standpoint, & in the context of cultural preservation, it is decidedly worthwhile to study this people's ways & other similar communities, as well as Islamic societies & their laws & Koran. The mechanisms that promote the preservation, growth, & expansion of their communities are indeed worthy of replication by any community with similar aspirations for self-perpetuation, regardless of their religious orientation.
The Doukhobors continue to adhere strictly to Christian shariah law, with their women donning hijabs & maintaining silence within the church premises. Not once have I observed any among them wearing protective masks during the entire course of the 'Covid19' charade. Their culture is undeniably steeped in Russian traditions & they bear their ethnic identity with pride. However, their detestation for Putin seems to match their aversion for the Czar & the Soviet Union, with political affiliations otherwise largely absent.
A striking attribute of the Doukhobors residing here is their non-compliance with tax regulations. They forego government-issued identification, driver's licenses, & social security numbers, thus liberating themselves from the confines of the system. Instead of purchasing land like the majority of the populace, they appropriate it, thus positioning themselves outside the societal norms to a degree that may see them endure beyond a system collapse.
Their resistance to assimilation is noteworthy, given their Aryan origins & resemblance, & their residence within a majority Aryan nation. Unlike the Jews, who possess the leverage of distinguishing themselves based on their religious beliefs, the Doukhobors, being Protestants residing within Christian communities & countries, could have easily assimilated into the mainstream. My personal observations, however, indicate their thriving existence, with their population appearing to surpass the official estimates, a fact tacitly acknowledged within the official Canadian statistical data.
A significant portion of the Doukhobors I encounter are of a younger demographic, tending to marry & procreate during their early years, mirroring the natural human tendency for women to bear children between the ages of 13 to 18. Observing them in larger congregations or in public marketplaces, one cannot help but notice the relatively high proportion of young women, invariably adorned in hijabs, who already have three or four offspring despite their young age, a stark contrast to mainstream society where women typically embark on motherhood at a later age.
From a demographic standpoint, & in the context of cultural preservation, it is decidedly worthwhile to study this people's ways & other similar communities, as well as Islamic societies & their laws & Koran. The mechanisms that promote the preservation, growth, & expansion of their communities are indeed worthy of replication by any community with similar aspirations for self-perpetuation, regardless of their religious orientation.
All factors particular to their society that contribute to their thriving fertility rates & the perpetuation of their culture throughout the ages must be diligently studied, with the goal of implementing these factors systematically within our own emerging communities.
Some of the factors which aid the Doukhabours, Amish, Mennonites, Mormons, & a smattering of other minority Christian communities around the world, include the following:
- The adherence of women to Christian Sharia law: their customary donning of the hijab, their reticence within the church, & the absence of female leaders.
- The clear distinction in labour division among the sexes.
- A preference for rural settings over urban locales.
- A tendency towards early marriage & associated heightened fertility rates, with ages between 12 & 16 seeming to be the demographic sweet spot.
- A general disdain towards contraception, abortion, masturbation, & sexual promiscuity.
- A proclivity towards undersexualisation as opposed to hypersexualisation.
- The avoidance of vaccinations seems to be linked with higher fertility rates.
- Any linguistic or dialectic barriers that differentiate them from the general population essentially serve as a buffer against external propaganda & immorality.
- Insulation from the outside world, both geographically & in terms of lifestyle choices.
- Pacifism: Despite my personal nonpacifist stance, most of the successful communities have adopted pacifist tendencies. This often manifests as a façade of pacifism, which effectively keeps government interference at bay—a pressing concern considering their noncompliance with taxes & govt. identificaiton, & their intent to create a parallel society & economy to outlive the prevailing régime.
- Whether polygamy or monogamy results in a higher fertility rate & which of the two has a more eugenic effect should be studie
I maintain an interest in any additional factors that may provide these communities with a demographic advantage. These factors could include specific religious beliefs conducive to demographic growth, the unique manner of women & children's education, exposure to pollutants affecting fertility, inter alia. Surely a plethora of factors warrant our attention.
We must enumerate & meticulously examine as many such factors as possible, adopting an objective & scientific lens, untainted by our personal religious convictions. Subsequently, we need to devise methods of amalgamating these elements into a cohesive system & propagate this within Aryan communities as the new cultural standard.
We need to design this new culture in as strategic a manner as possible, for attempting to replicate the status quo will inevitably lead to our downfall. It is our collective responsibility to construct a path towards our preservation & advancement.
We must enumerate & meticulously examine as many such factors as possible, adopting an objective & scientific lens, untainted by our personal religious convictions. Subsequently, we need to devise methods of amalgamating these elements into a cohesive system & propagate this within Aryan communities as the new cultural standard.
We need to design this new culture in as strategic a manner as possible, for attempting to replicate the status quo will inevitably lead to our downfall. It is our collective responsibility to construct a path towards our preservation & advancement.
Last edited:
Petr
Administrator
How a Precedent Won for the Amish Could Protect Chasidic Jews
Amish children, accompanied by an adult, on their way to school at Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, in 2007. AP/Matt Rourke
THE NEW YORK SUN
Saturday, September 17, 2022
09:13:57 am
The chasidic community in New York is weighing its options in the wake of the decision of the state Regents to try to enforce in even the most fundamentalist of the state’s yeshivas rules requiring them to teach profane subjects. That’s the word from Assemblyman Simcha Eichenstein, who scooped the New York Times on its own investigation of the yeshivas. The Regents just voted unanimously to move against the schools.
We don’t mind saying that we look forward to the prospect of a constitutional struggle. The Regents board is trying to represent that its enforcement efforts will target all private schools, regardless of their religion. That, in our opinion, is poppycock. This is a campaign intended to regulate the religious free exercise of the chasidic yeshivas and establish that the state education mandates outrank America’s Bill of Rights.
This is a most meaningful moment to mull a case known as Wisconsin v. Yoder,* which the Supreme Court decided in 1972. It centered on the Amish practice of removing children from public education at age 14, in defiance of Wisconsin law. So God-fearing are the Amish that they refuse to fight even in court. Their cause, though, was taken up by a Lutheran clergyman,** who gained a unanimous victory from the Nine.***
It appears, at least to us, that when Chief Justice Burger wrote the — again, unanimous — opinion, he dipped his quill in a well still filled with the ink of the Founders. He scrawled out a clarion call in defense of the liberty of a religious minority group. He wrote that the Amish parents believed “that their children’s attendance at high school, public or private, was contrary to the Amish religion and way of life.”
Burger concluded that the Amish feared high school would “endanger their own salvation and that of their children.” They feared God. Burger pointed to Amish beliefs “deemphasizing material success, rejecting the competitive spirit, and seeking to insulate themselves from the modern world.” He marked their view that “salvation requires life in a church community separate and apart from the world and worldly influence.”
The Amish “objection to formal education,” Burger decided, “is firmly grounded in these central religious concepts.” Which meant that Wisconsin’s law was invalid under the Constitution because it forced the Amish “to perform acts undeniably at odds with fundamental tenets of their religious beliefs.” That is, the religious free exercise rights of the Amish trumped the desire of the state to require a high school education.
What, though, of the state’s argument that, pace Jefferson and as Burger put it, “some degree of education is necessary to prepare citizens to participate effectively and intelligently in our open political system”? This resonates today in New York, as William Galston notes in the Wall Street Journal. Yoder concedes that regulations “may be necessary” if the “goal is the preparation of the child for life in modern society as the majority live.”
We’d be wary of relying on that. For it is decidedly not the goal of the Amish — or the chasids — to prepare their children for life as the majority live. Burger may have noted that the Amish are “productive and very law-abiding members of society; they reject public welfare in any of its usual modern forms.” Yet he also noted that different standards apply if the goal is preparing a child for life in a separate religious community.
In short, the freedom that the Supreme Court vouchsafed for the Amish of Wisconsin arises from facts that are analogous to those of the fundamentalist chasidic community the Regents of New York find so offensive. The First Amendment just does not say that Congress may pass no law abridging the freedom of religion — unless it’s okay with the Board of Regents of the State of New York.
_______________
* Jonas Yoder, one of three students on whose behalf the case was brought.
* * The Reverend William Lindholm, who formed the National Committee for Amish Religious Freedom.
* * * The vote was seven to zero, Justices Wm. Rehnquist and Lewis Powell having recused themselves. Justice Wm. Douglas dissented on one aspect of the case but sided with the court on Yoder’s claims.
Amish children, accompanied by an adult, on their way to school at Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, in 2007. AP/Matt Rourke
THE NEW YORK SUN
Saturday, September 17, 2022
09:13:57 am
The chasidic community in New York is weighing its options in the wake of the decision of the state Regents to try to enforce in even the most fundamentalist of the state’s yeshivas rules requiring them to teach profane subjects. That’s the word from Assemblyman Simcha Eichenstein, who scooped the New York Times on its own investigation of the yeshivas. The Regents just voted unanimously to move against the schools.
We don’t mind saying that we look forward to the prospect of a constitutional struggle. The Regents board is trying to represent that its enforcement efforts will target all private schools, regardless of their religion. That, in our opinion, is poppycock. This is a campaign intended to regulate the religious free exercise of the chasidic yeshivas and establish that the state education mandates outrank America’s Bill of Rights.
This is a most meaningful moment to mull a case known as Wisconsin v. Yoder,* which the Supreme Court decided in 1972. It centered on the Amish practice of removing children from public education at age 14, in defiance of Wisconsin law. So God-fearing are the Amish that they refuse to fight even in court. Their cause, though, was taken up by a Lutheran clergyman,** who gained a unanimous victory from the Nine.***
It appears, at least to us, that when Chief Justice Burger wrote the — again, unanimous — opinion, he dipped his quill in a well still filled with the ink of the Founders. He scrawled out a clarion call in defense of the liberty of a religious minority group. He wrote that the Amish parents believed “that their children’s attendance at high school, public or private, was contrary to the Amish religion and way of life.”
Burger concluded that the Amish feared high school would “endanger their own salvation and that of their children.” They feared God. Burger pointed to Amish beliefs “deemphasizing material success, rejecting the competitive spirit, and seeking to insulate themselves from the modern world.” He marked their view that “salvation requires life in a church community separate and apart from the world and worldly influence.”
The Amish “objection to formal education,” Burger decided, “is firmly grounded in these central religious concepts.” Which meant that Wisconsin’s law was invalid under the Constitution because it forced the Amish “to perform acts undeniably at odds with fundamental tenets of their religious beliefs.” That is, the religious free exercise rights of the Amish trumped the desire of the state to require a high school education.
What, though, of the state’s argument that, pace Jefferson and as Burger put it, “some degree of education is necessary to prepare citizens to participate effectively and intelligently in our open political system”? This resonates today in New York, as William Galston notes in the Wall Street Journal. Yoder concedes that regulations “may be necessary” if the “goal is the preparation of the child for life in modern society as the majority live.”
We’d be wary of relying on that. For it is decidedly not the goal of the Amish — or the chasids — to prepare their children for life as the majority live. Burger may have noted that the Amish are “productive and very law-abiding members of society; they reject public welfare in any of its usual modern forms.” Yet he also noted that different standards apply if the goal is preparing a child for life in a separate religious community.
In short, the freedom that the Supreme Court vouchsafed for the Amish of Wisconsin arises from facts that are analogous to those of the fundamentalist chasidic community the Regents of New York find so offensive. The First Amendment just does not say that Congress may pass no law abridging the freedom of religion — unless it’s okay with the Board of Regents of the State of New York.
_______________
* Jonas Yoder, one of three students on whose behalf the case was brought.
* * The Reverend William Lindholm, who formed the National Committee for Amish Religious Freedom.
* * * The vote was seven to zero, Justices Wm. Rehnquist and Lewis Powell having recused themselves. Justice Wm. Douglas dissented on one aspect of the case but sided with the court on Yoder’s claims.
Petr
Administrator
Things You Will Not Find in a Mennonite Colony
October 10, 2022
You can find peace and quiet in a Mennonite farming community; you can find a thriving colony of a people that appear to be living in the 18th century, or head to the progressive ones and find modern technology at work side by side with plainly dressed people. You can find the best cheeses in the country or the freshest milk. But there are some things you will not find in a Mennonite colony. See below for the list.
- Saloons/bars, nightclubs are not seen in their colonies. This doesn't mean certain Mennonites don't visit these places, they're just not allowed inside their colony. Some sly non-Mennonites know this very well, and consequently set up their saloons right next to the border line so that the black sheep can quench their thirst with ice cold beer on Saturday nights and hot Sunday afternoons.
- Gaming rooms, scratch & win vendors. You won't find them inside their colonies.
- Public libraries. There are a few small private libraries in Spanish Lookout that open a few hours a day but deal only with storybook rentals, not the whole setup with study rooms, research material, online book catalog, etc.
- Chinese take out food. Those clever Chinese have wedged themselves into nearly every corner of Belize but so far their restaurants have not been able to penetrate the Mennonite colonies.
- Alcoholic drinks and cigarettes for sale in the stores. Yet certain 'fridges' in some individual's houses would tell you a far different story as they are usually kept well-stocked with neat rows of dark bottles.
- Homeless Mennonites living on the streets; mentally challenged ones roaming the countryside; Mennonite beggars on street corners asking "fi wa lee donation" or outrightly demanding "gimme one dalla". You will indeed see such individuals in the Mennonite communities, I am not denying the fact, but they are not residents of the colony. Rather, they are Creole and Mestizos from the surrounding villages hoping that the rich menonas will have a bit of charity to hand out. Charity in the form of money, which is a complicated and sticky subject for the Mennonites and therefore not so easily handed out to beggars.
- Media houses in the modern colonies. Most Mennonites are quick to point out whatever they deem "fake news" whenever they see it so in order to avoid such a public sin themselves, they would much rather depend and believe on their own grapevine than have crews of reporters or official news channel. Stories shared via the grapevine are much more difficult to track and keeps you away from the cameras, hence nobody can point fingers and cry out: "fake news!" Spanish Lookout and Shipyard have Mennonite-owned radio ministries run by churches but not with a ground crew collecting data, a TV channel, or full-time journalists.
- Tombs above the ground. Graves are marked with a plain low slab of concrete or a simple white cross inserted on the ground. For some reason the departed ones are not interested in fancy bright-colored tombs with mosaic tiles on the surface.
Mennonite boys and locals enjoy a game of pool
Petr
Administrator
This is a clunky automatic translation:
bolivianthoughts.com
Mongabay Latam – Ivan Alejandro Paredes, El Deber:
Bolivia: indigenous territories cornered by the agricultural expansion of a Mennonite community
In “Chihuahua” life has its own rhythm and that mixture of the modern with some Mennonite traditions is appreciated: to one side horse-drawn carts arrive at a farm in the middle of the plain. Ahead, an almost modern vehicle pulls up to a chalet-style dwelling. This is life in this neighborhood located in the municipality of Cuatro Cañadas in the eastern region of Bolivia. Its 280 families are called rebels from this long tradition of life based on the strict application of religion. But that doesn’t seem to matter to them.
They dominate the agro industry business and are experts in soy cultivation. In its streets, guarded as if it were a military barracks, there is luxury heavy machinery. This is how they live, with cell phones in hand and many no longer opt for their traditional clothing. And so they are also expanding and buying land to enlarge their agricultural frontier, leaving fallen trees as if they were domino pieces.
Mongabay Latam reached the Chihuahua colony. This Mennonite space –founded in 1989 and with 33 years of existence- is located 132 kilometers from the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra. There is strict control at each entry. Metal railings prevent normal circulation. There is state-of-the-art technology. Surveillance cameras, immediate communication and security guards are at each entrance gate. This colony looks like a gated community.
...
San Miguelito has even lost its name: the new Mennonite colony installed inside now uses it. In a tour of the community we confirmed that there are very few houses left and that these lands are nothing more than the continuation of the Chihuahua Mennonite colony. More Mennonite families and ranchers will soon settle there. While we were in the community, the machinery never stopped operating and clearing the field for agriculture.
What is worrying is that this deforestation is dangerously close to the Community Territory of Origin (TCO) of San Antonio de Lomerío, the first autonomous indigenous municipality in Bolivia. The TCOs in Bolivia are the spaces in which the indigenous peoples and communities have traditionally had access with their economic, social and cultural organization. They are inalienable, indivisible, irreversible, collective, unattachable and imprescriptible. Even so, the machinery is getting closer, while it continues devouring trees without mercy.
...
Colque details that in some Mennonite colonies there is an overpopulation of inhabitants, so they decide to expand: they buy land and immediately install harvesters, tractors and seeders, a whole mechanized process from land preparation to harvest. That is what is happening in San Miguelito.
There, the vegetation will be replaced by extensions of soybeans, sorghum, corn and sunflower, which are the main crops of the Mennonites. And to this agricultural activity we must add the livestock that focuses on the production of milk and its derivatives. In the surroundings of San Miguelito deforestation is immense.
Mongabay Latam tried to talk with the representatives of the Chihuahua colony, but they refused to talk and sent negative messages to two members of the community.
Their arrival in Bolivia
The Mennonites have been in Bolivia since 1954. Since then their main settlements have been consolidated and scattered throughout the area of expansion in Santa Cruz; that is to say, in the Bolivian region that concentrates more than two thirds of cultivated land and where the large-scale agro-industrial model oriented to production for export predominates.
Two conflicting currents of opinion qualify the nearly 120,000 Mennonites in Bolivia. On the one hand, the peasant unions and some environmental institutions accuse them of being foreign land grabbers, which by right would belong to indigenous and peasant communities.
They also believe that they are responsible for the massive deforestation - especially in the department of Santa Cruz - and other environmental damage. On the other hand, businessmen, local governments, the transportation sector and some local communities come out in defense of the existing colonies in the country.
The greatest expansion of the Mennonites in Bolivia began in 1990, taking advantage of a program to expand colonization financed by the World Bank. Some 10,000 of them settled near the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, where they initially acquired some 70,000 hectares from ranchers and small landowners.
This nucleus rapidly expanded and multiplied in the department of Santa Cruz and, to a much lesser extent, in other regions, such as Beni and Tarija. In 2008 it was estimated that the Mennonite population reached 57,375 inhabitants. As of 2015, there were 57 Mennonite colonies or enterprises in the country, according to a study by researcher Adalberto Kopp that was published by Fundación Tierra in 2015.
Today around 150,000 Mennonites live in Bolivia in at least 120 colonies, many of them with the same rigid religious and traditions, according to a work by William Kehler, a Mennonite who has lived in the country for 30 years. According to a study carried out by the researcher Alle Rechte in 2019, until that year the colonies reached 106.
“There is no agrarian or rural development policy that says how many Mennonites there are, where they are and what type of property they should have,” Colque remarks. According to Kopp’s research, more than 90 percent of the Mennonite colonies, in terms of area and population, are concentrated in the department of Santa Cruz. These groups are in the six municipalities of the three regions with the greatest expansion dynamics of the Santa Cruz agricultural frontier: Pailón and San José de la Chiquitania; San Julián and Cuatro Cañadas in the north; and Cabezas and Charagua in the Bolivian Chaco.
After the Bolivians and the Brazilians, the Mennonites of Santa Cruz are the ones who cultivate the largest area of soybeans in the country. About 16% of the soybeans planted in Bolivia correspond to the work of these colonies, according to Adalberto Kopp. Then there are Argentine, Japanese and other nationalities producers.
...
Eulogio Núñez is the national director of the National Institute for Agrarian Reform (INRA), a specialist in the agrarian issue who, before assuming this public position -since February 2021- had a negative view of the Mennonites: he accused them of being part of the network dedicated to land traffic.
“Regarding access to and possession of land, knowingly, I must affirm that the majority of the high religious hierarchy of the Mennonite colonies, their ministers, are an important part of the chain of land trafficking in eastern Bolivia,” he said in 2020 at a press conference when he was director of the organization Center for Research and Promotion of the Peasantry (CIPCA).
The official stressed that a large part of the lands owned by the Mennonites were acquired illegally and that the occupations mainly affected the demands of the TCOs in the lowlands of Bolivia.
Today, that vision has not been completely eradicated in Núñez, although now he is more careful when referring to this group. The director of INRA gives as an example a last event related to the Mennonites. The specific case is that of the Valle Verde neighborhood, located in the community of Quimome, in the municipality of San José de Chiquitos. Núñez accused this colony of “avasalladores” (invaders) for extending beyond what was permitted. This problem happened in February of this year.
“(This colony) had to back off a bit. They tried to extend beyond what is legal and that is not allowed. Even where they wanted to expand is a fiscal land”, explained Núñez in a public event. The official stated that “we are not going to allow the subjugation of public lands, it is not that they were taken to another place, but that they have to return to their former colony, they extended more than they were allowed.”
Not like that Mennonites, not like that! – ¡Así no menonitas, así no!
Mongabay Latam – Ivan Alejandro Paredes, El Deber: Bolivia: indigenous territories cornered by the agricultural expansion of a Mennonite community Indigenous territories cornered by the agric…
bolivianthoughts.com
Not like that Mennonites, not like that! – ¡Así no menonitas, así no!
Mongabay Latam – Ivan Alejandro Paredes, El Deber:
Bolivia: indigenous territories cornered by the agricultural expansion of a Mennonite community
...
They dominate the agro industry business and are experts in soy cultivation. In its streets, guarded as if it were a military barracks, there is luxury heavy machinery. This is how they live, with cell phones in hand and many no longer opt for their traditional clothing. And so they are also expanding and buying land to enlarge their agricultural frontier, leaving fallen trees as if they were domino pieces.
Mongabay Latam reached the Chihuahua colony. This Mennonite space –founded in 1989 and with 33 years of existence- is located 132 kilometers from the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra. There is strict control at each entry. Metal railings prevent normal circulation. There is state-of-the-art technology. Surveillance cameras, immediate communication and security guards are at each entrance gate. This colony looks like a gated community.
...
San Miguelito has even lost its name: the new Mennonite colony installed inside now uses it. In a tour of the community we confirmed that there are very few houses left and that these lands are nothing more than the continuation of the Chihuahua Mennonite colony. More Mennonite families and ranchers will soon settle there. While we were in the community, the machinery never stopped operating and clearing the field for agriculture.
What is worrying is that this deforestation is dangerously close to the Community Territory of Origin (TCO) of San Antonio de Lomerío, the first autonomous indigenous municipality in Bolivia. The TCOs in Bolivia are the spaces in which the indigenous peoples and communities have traditionally had access with their economic, social and cultural organization. They are inalienable, indivisible, irreversible, collective, unattachable and imprescriptible. Even so, the machinery is getting closer, while it continues devouring trees without mercy.
...
Colque details that in some Mennonite colonies there is an overpopulation of inhabitants, so they decide to expand: they buy land and immediately install harvesters, tractors and seeders, a whole mechanized process from land preparation to harvest. That is what is happening in San Miguelito.
There, the vegetation will be replaced by extensions of soybeans, sorghum, corn and sunflower, which are the main crops of the Mennonites. And to this agricultural activity we must add the livestock that focuses on the production of milk and its derivatives. In the surroundings of San Miguelito deforestation is immense.
Mongabay Latam tried to talk with the representatives of the Chihuahua colony, but they refused to talk and sent negative messages to two members of the community.
Their arrival in Bolivia
The Mennonites have been in Bolivia since 1954. Since then their main settlements have been consolidated and scattered throughout the area of expansion in Santa Cruz; that is to say, in the Bolivian region that concentrates more than two thirds of cultivated land and where the large-scale agro-industrial model oriented to production for export predominates.
Two conflicting currents of opinion qualify the nearly 120,000 Mennonites in Bolivia. On the one hand, the peasant unions and some environmental institutions accuse them of being foreign land grabbers, which by right would belong to indigenous and peasant communities.
They also believe that they are responsible for the massive deforestation - especially in the department of Santa Cruz - and other environmental damage. On the other hand, businessmen, local governments, the transportation sector and some local communities come out in defense of the existing colonies in the country.
The greatest expansion of the Mennonites in Bolivia began in 1990, taking advantage of a program to expand colonization financed by the World Bank. Some 10,000 of them settled near the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, where they initially acquired some 70,000 hectares from ranchers and small landowners.
This nucleus rapidly expanded and multiplied in the department of Santa Cruz and, to a much lesser extent, in other regions, such as Beni and Tarija. In 2008 it was estimated that the Mennonite population reached 57,375 inhabitants. As of 2015, there were 57 Mennonite colonies or enterprises in the country, according to a study by researcher Adalberto Kopp that was published by Fundación Tierra in 2015.
Today around 150,000 Mennonites live in Bolivia in at least 120 colonies, many of them with the same rigid religious and traditions, according to a work by William Kehler, a Mennonite who has lived in the country for 30 years. According to a study carried out by the researcher Alle Rechte in 2019, until that year the colonies reached 106.
“There is no agrarian or rural development policy that says how many Mennonites there are, where they are and what type of property they should have,” Colque remarks. According to Kopp’s research, more than 90 percent of the Mennonite colonies, in terms of area and population, are concentrated in the department of Santa Cruz. These groups are in the six municipalities of the three regions with the greatest expansion dynamics of the Santa Cruz agricultural frontier: Pailón and San José de la Chiquitania; San Julián and Cuatro Cañadas in the north; and Cabezas and Charagua in the Bolivian Chaco.
After the Bolivians and the Brazilians, the Mennonites of Santa Cruz are the ones who cultivate the largest area of soybeans in the country. About 16% of the soybeans planted in Bolivia correspond to the work of these colonies, according to Adalberto Kopp. Then there are Argentine, Japanese and other nationalities producers.
...
Eulogio Núñez is the national director of the National Institute for Agrarian Reform (INRA), a specialist in the agrarian issue who, before assuming this public position -since February 2021- had a negative view of the Mennonites: he accused them of being part of the network dedicated to land traffic.
“Regarding access to and possession of land, knowingly, I must affirm that the majority of the high religious hierarchy of the Mennonite colonies, their ministers, are an important part of the chain of land trafficking in eastern Bolivia,” he said in 2020 at a press conference when he was director of the organization Center for Research and Promotion of the Peasantry (CIPCA).
The official stressed that a large part of the lands owned by the Mennonites were acquired illegally and that the occupations mainly affected the demands of the TCOs in the lowlands of Bolivia.
Today, that vision has not been completely eradicated in Núñez, although now he is more careful when referring to this group. The director of INRA gives as an example a last event related to the Mennonites. The specific case is that of the Valle Verde neighborhood, located in the community of Quimome, in the municipality of San José de Chiquitos. Núñez accused this colony of “avasalladores” (invaders) for extending beyond what was permitted. This problem happened in February of this year.
“(This colony) had to back off a bit. They tried to extend beyond what is legal and that is not allowed. Even where they wanted to expand is a fiscal land”, explained Núñez in a public event. The official stated that “we are not going to allow the subjugation of public lands, it is not that they were taken to another place, but that they have to return to their former colony, they extended more than they were allowed.”