© 2012 Brilliance Press. All rights reserved.
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T
HE
M
ENNONITES OF
P
ARAGUAY
M.G.
E
DWARDS
The third article
in a series on Paraguay’s Chaco region
features the local Mennonite communities. The first focused on Filadelfia
, the area’s largest town
, and the second on
the rural Chaco. The final post will highlight the local indigenous community. Enjoy
photos and stories from one of Pa
raguay’s most intriguing places.
’s
remote western region, the Chaco,
boasts a diverse mix of Mennonite, Spanish, Brazilian, and indigenous
Guarani
influences. The approximately 60,000 to 80,000 Mennonites in Paraguay who live in large communities, or
“colonies,”
dominate the local culture. Its distinctly German flavor was introduced to the country by Russian Mennonites of Germanic
descent who emigrated from the former Soviet Union in the late 1920s and early 1930s to avoid persecution under Stalinism. Other Mennonite
communities migrated to Paraguay between 1929 and 1932 from Canada, Germany, and the United States. The Fernheim, Menno, and Neuland colonies settled near present-day Filadelfia in 1930, and have since grown to more than 10,000 members. Most are farmers with large ranches (
estancias
) that produce a variety of agricultural products, including beef, dairy products, and other foodstuffs.
The Mennonites’ arrival
in the Chaco coincided with the rise in tensions between Paraguay and its neighbor, Bolivia. Eager to solidify
the country’s
hold on the sparsely populated region, the Paraguayan government granted in the 1930s large parcels of Chaco land to the Mennonites on the condition that they establish a permanent presence there. The Bolivians, who coveted the Chaco for oil-producing potential that never materialized, invaded it in 1932 and fought the three-year Chaco War with Paraguay. More than 80,000
Bolivians and 50,000 Paraguayans died in the conflict that ended with
Bolivia’s defeat
. Although the pacifist Mennonites did not fight, the food they cultivated kept the Paraguayan troops fed.
© 2012 Brilliance Press. All rights reserved.
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The Mennonites struggled to survive in the 1930s and 1940s. An inhospitable, semiarid environment with little rainfall and poor soil made life difficult for the early settlers as they domesticated the land. Travel overland to
Paraguay’s
capital, Asunción, before the construction of the Trans-Chaco Highway in the late 1950s, was an odyssey that left the remote colonies isolated from the outside world. Indigenous groups such as the Guarani resisted encroachment by their new neighbors and fought occasional skirmishes with the settlers. The Mennonites and the indigenous learned to co-exist peacefully, and many indigenous now work for the colonies. After years of toil, the Mennonites transformed the area into one of the country
’s most productive agricultural
regions. The Mennonite's cooperatives (
cooperativas
) are among Paraguay's largest enterprises. Closely affiliated with the local Mennonite Church, they manage the
colonies’
commercial interests. Their operations and logistics networks are brilliantly efficient. They provide farmers with enriched animal feed, transport raw milk from farms to dairy plants, transform milk into dairy products, process foodstuffs, and ship finished goods to market on gravel roads that they maintain. The cooperatives also operate service businesses, including hotels, restaurants, gas stations, hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, and shopping centers that cater to the Mennonite communities. Fernheim Colony
best known, also runs an experimental farm that incubates and crossbreeds cash crops capable of the surviving in the Chaco. The power and influence of the cooperatives is astounding, although one would not know it at first glance. The low- profile associations are opaque operations whose sole purpose is to serve the Mennonites.
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