Mennonites in Latin America

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Mennonites in Latin America

Mennonites in Latin America established themselves according to their points of origin and the countries they entered. The first group came from the United States and Canada and settled in Argentina. The second group, consisting of Russian and German immigrants, organized churches in Paraguay, Mexico, and Brazil. Latin Americans who had early contact with North Americans made up the last group. The Evangelical Mennonite churches of El Salvador and the K'ekchi' Mennonite church in Guatemala exemplify this homegrown form of Mennonite worship. The K'ekchi' church operates an educational center known as Bezaleel, home to more than a hundred secondary- and vocational-school students. Mennonite church tenets call for plain living and dress, separation of church and state, condemnation of slavery, pacifism, refusal to take judicial oaths or hold public office, and the Anabaptist concept of adult baptism.

Since the late twentieth century in Latin America Mennonite church growth has been steady. In addition to the above-mentioned countries, Mennonites established communities in Belize, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. As of 1995, Mexico and Paraguay were home to the largest numbers of Mennonites in Latin America—44,000 in Mexico and 29,200 in Paraguay. The Mennonite Central Committee founded in 1920 and the Mennonite Mission Network established in 2002 have been important to the denomination's development in Latin America. For the most part, although not exclusively the former broke ground in South America while the latter opened missionary fields in Central America and the Caribbean. In addition, in 1890 a Hispanic Mennonite Church began operations in the United States.

In Argentina the first Mennonites arrived in 1917 and established the Iglesia Menonita Evangélica Argentina. In 1946 later generations of Mennonites entered the Argentine Chaco to begin work among indigenous people. This work in northern Argentina inevitably brought Mennonite missionaries into southern Bolivia. In 1971 Bible study workers entered, and in 1975 the first Mennonite baptism in Bolivia took place. In Brazil the initial group of Mennonites consisted of German-speakers from the Soviet Union. Arriving in 1930, they settled in southern Brazil where they lived as subsistence agriculturalists. In the 1950s North American Mennonites began missionary endeavors among Portuguese-speaking Brazilians. This brought about the formation of the Associação Evangélica Menonita, which in turn led to a foreign missionary service with Brazilians going to Africa and the Balkans. In Mexico, Mennonite missionary efforts began in earnest in 1958 when workers started planting congregations in Mexico City. In the 1990s these urban congregations joined to carry out a ten-year project to fashion a network throughout Mexico. Of special interest were the relationships formed between the Mennonite Church USA and Mexican congregations on the United States-Mexico border.

Paraguay is the home to the most prosperous Mennonite community in Latin America. German-speakers from Europe and North America, faced with anti-German sentiment during World War I, settled there in the 1920s. During the 1930s and 1940s others followed, fleeing Stalinist purges in the Ukraine and the Soviet Union. Many settled in Filadelphia, the capital of Fernheim colony, which along with the older Menno and newer Neuland colonies are the Mennonite population centers in the Chaco. In the long term this led to the establishment of the German General Conference and Convención Evangélica Menonita Paraguaya.

In the early twenty-first century, Mennonites in Paraguay are wealthy landowners, the country's largest suppliers of dairy products, the leading producers of cotton and peanuts, and exporters of beef. Their children, no longer trained to work in agriculture, are educated in the best Paraguayan schools and join the professional ranks as doctors, engineers, and scientists. In Filadelphia the ready availability of beer and tobacco challenge Mennonite ways, and an alcoholism treatment center has been established. Video games and the Internet also intrude on Mennonite traditionalism, and many remain unbaptized. Some have married outside the faith.

In Paraguay conflict over land has come to the forefront. The wealth of the Mennonite communities has created tensions with the Lengua and Nivaclé Indians of the Chaco. Although 80 percent of these indigenous people are Mennonites, converted over the decades, the European and North American Mennonites control almost four million acres of land. This inequality has relegated the indigenous people, who work as day laborers for landowners, to second-class status and has caused uneasy relationships between the two groups. The landowning Mennonites, who do not worship together with the indigenous people, are ambiguous about building ties with them, whereas the Indians are concerned about maintaining traditions. Mennonite prosperity in the Paraguayan Chaco has affected native peoples who do not share the benefits the wealth created.