Skip to main content

Canadian Mennonites and Paraguay: 1922

The first attached photo vividly depicts a meeting of conservative Mennonite elders in Saskatchewan and Manitoba in 1922 who intended to lead their communities to Paraguay. This was happening as hundreds of “Old Colony” Mennonites were leaving for Mexico.


The “Old Colonists” from Manitoba’s West Reserve were in fact the first conservative Canadian Mennonites to scout out Paraguay for settlement land. In 1920 they were assisted in their search by New York financier and lawyer, General Samuel McRoberts, who had extensive holdings as well as political and business connections in Paraguay. The delegation travelled 90 km into the Chaco interior, west of the Paraguay River. They were however unimpressed with the land and ultimately recommended Mexico to their community (note 1).

Other conservative groups in Manitoba and Saskatchewan were however interested in sending their own scouts to assess the Chaco and the political climate in Paraguay vis-à-vis the list of privileges they were seeking.

Leaders representing the Saskatchewan Bergthaler, the Manitoba West Reserve Sommerfelder and the Manitoba East Reserve Chortitzer left Canada on February 17, 1921 and arrived in New York City in the next days to meet with McRoberts. The group sailed on February 21 for Rio de Janeiro, and then on to Buenos Aires where they arrived on March 17. When they finally reached the Paraguayan capital they met with officials and purchased gear for the expedition (note 2).


Already in Buenos Aires they were assisted by General McRoberts’ land agent Fred Engen. Engen--a Norwegian—was fascinated by the beauty of the Chaco and was uniquely committed to engage Indigenous peoples “without guns”—like the Quaker William Penn whom he admired (note 3). Here they started negotiations with the Carlos Casado Company, which owned 2.5 million hectares (5.25 million acres) of land in the Chaco. One of the Casado brothers spoke fluent German. The Casado family acquired this land from the government in 1885 at 8.5 cents per hectare and were now offering it for $3 to $5 per hectare.

The delegation travelled up the Paraguay River and disembarked at Puerto Casado. The Casados had built a small railway that extended 60 km into the interior from the river for extracting and transporting quebracho wood for the production of tannin. From the end station they entered the interior of Paraguay’s Chaco on April 30, 1921—completely dependent on ox carts (see pic) and their Indigenous guides. “Indians under the direction of several white men preceded the company and cut a passage through the forest,” as recorded in one account (note 4). The group penetrated a distance of 255 km (about 160 miles) into the jungle west of the Paraguay River before they were finally convinced to have found land suitable for settlement.

Upon their return to the capital, the Mennonite group leader telegraphed to Canada: “Everyone returned here healthy. Found promising conditions for settlement in every respect. Freedoms (privileges) are now being decided. Mexico and other options are now unattractive when compared with advantages here” (note 5).


The Mennonite delegation requested special privileges in exchange for colonizing the land. These included:

  • Freedom of religion and exemption from military service and the oath;
  • Right to conduct their own schools in the German language;
  • Right to administer the property of their widows and orphans;
  • Right to have their own mutual fire insurance organization;
  • Limitation of the sale of alcoholic beverages in the colony for a 5 km radius;
  • Exemption from import and export duties and taxes for ten years;
  • Permission for the old and disabled to immigrate. (Note 6)

The request of special privileges for one group was hotly debated in the Paraguayan press and by the Senate in July 1921. But Paraguay was in search of prospective colonists to stimulate their economy and agricultural production, and also sought to anchor their claim over the Chaco. The Mennonite requests were strongly supported by President Manuel Gondra and especially his foreign minister, Eusebio Ayala. Ayala expressed the opinion that Prussian King Fredrick the Great had “followed the same policy. His army fought the wars while the Mennonites made sure the economy continued to function.” He and the President knew that the Mennonites would not come unless the law was passed. Another Senator defended the military exemption by arguing that in a time of war not all citizens fight: “First of all we need economic progress to be able to raise an army which will be able to defend our sovereignty. We expect that the Mennonites will be able to help us to achieve this progress” (note 7). Not all agreed.

After heated debate, Bill No. 514 was enacted as law, which safeguarded the above privileges and guaranteed that they would pass automatically from one generation of Mennonites to the next. (See pic 3--news articles; note 8).

The Mennonite land scouts from Canada came with a typical “colonial mindset”—the land was “empty” and the “Indians” were a “problem.” One of the key questions the scouts asked the president after their return from the Chaco was about the Indigenous peoples. “In Canada, they reminded President Gondra, the government had removed the Indians before the Mennonites arrived,” implying that Paraguay might want to do the same. “The president did not think this was necessary as the Indians were nomadic. ‘If necessary,’ he volunteered, ‘placing the Indians on reservations could always be undertaken later’” (note 9).

The President assured the Mennonites, moreover, “that laws and national authorities would protect Mennonite properties and give ‘maximum guaranty for your persons, possessions, and work” (note 10).


A first group migration to Paraguay however did not occur as soon as expected. Because of an economic crisis in 1921, plans were temporarily suspended. McRoberts withdrew from the project, and the Mennonites ...

“were not able in their own strength to finance the emigration, particularly since it was for the group a matter to be taken for granted that the poorer families would be taken along at the expense of the entire group. The cost of the trip to Paraguay was reckoned at $100 per family on the average so that for the poorer families alone $60,000 had to be provided. … [Also] the price of land and grain in Canada had fallen more than 100% [?] as a consequence of the economic crisis and that therefore so much land could not be disposed of in a short time without extraordinary loss.” (Note 11)

Ultimately McRoberts was reengaged, and his land corporation netted a clear profit of almost half a million dollars from the settlement agreement (note 12).

The first group of 309 Mennonite settlers for Paraguay left from Altona, Manitoba by train on November 28, 1926, and then with the steamship “Vasari.” In Paraguay the group was greeted by the president, and on December 30 they finally disembarked at Puerto Casada. A hard start lay ahead. By 1930, 1,785 Mennonites from Canada settled in the Chaco—fewer than initially expected (note 13).

The events of 100 years ago by conservative Canadian “cousins” seeking a place to live “undisturbed” paved the way for later Mennonite migrations from the Soviet Union and war-torn western Europe.

            ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Photo 1: Mennonite Elders from “Manitoba and Saskatchewan intending to move Paraguay,” September 21, 1922, Mennonite Library and Archives-Bethel College, A.A. Friesen Paper, MS 60, folder 24: General Correspondence, October 1922, https://mla.bethelks.edu/metadata/pholist11.php?num=2022-0100.

Photo 2: Chaco, Paraguay, Kilometer 60: “On our departure for the interior on April 30, 1921,” from MCC-Akron, IX 13-2.1, Box 1, Folder 6, Photo 1, Front.

Newspaper clippings: (Search: “Mennonites,” pre-1945) Lethbridge Herald, https://digitallibrary.uleth.ca/digital/search/searchterm/mennonites!00000000-1944/field/all!date/mode/all!exact/conn/and!and.

Note 1: Cf. Peter P. Klassen, The Mennonites in Paraguay, vol. 1, trans. G. H. Schmitt (Hillsboro, KS: Self-published, 2004), 24.

Note 2: Cf. Walter Quiring, Rußlanddeutsche suchen eine Heimat. Die deutsche Einwanderung in den paraguayischen Chaco (Karlsruhe: Schneider, 1938), 41, https://mla.bethelks.edu/gmsources/books/1938,%20Quiring,%20Russlanddeutsche%20suchen%20eine%20Heimat/.

Note 3: Edgar Stoesz and Muriel T. Stackley, Garden in the Wilderness: Mennonite Communities in the Paraguayan Chaco, 1927–1997 (Winnipeg, MB: CMBC, 1999), 17f.

Note 4: Walter Quiring, “The Canadian Mennonite Immigration into the Paraguayan Chaco, 1926-27,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 8, no. 1 (January 1934), 32-42; 34.

Note 5: In Klassen, Mennonites in Paraguay I, 26; also Quiring, Rußlanddeutsche suchen eine Heimat, 50.

Note 6: Cf. Klassen, Mennonites in Paraguay I, 45f.

Note 7: In Klassen, Mennonites in Paraguay I, 49.

Note 8: “Mennonites after Land in Paraguay,” Lethbridge Herald (July 16, 1921), 14, https://digitallibrary.uleth.ca/digital/search/searchterm/mennonites!00000000-1944/field/all!date/mode/all!exact/conn/and!and.

Note 9: Stoesz and Stackley, Garden in the Wilderness, 20.

Note 10: Frank H. Epp, Mennonites in Canada, 1920–1940: A People’s Struggle for Survival (Toronto: MacMillan, 1982), 127, https://uwaterloo.ca/grebel/sites/ca.grebel/files/uploads/files/mic_iir_0.pdf.

Note 11: Quiring, “Canadian Mennonite Immigration into the Paraguayan Chaco,” 36.

Note 12: Epp, Mennonites in Canada, 1920–1940, 123.

Note 13: Epp, Mennonites in Canada, 1920–1940, 122; Quiring, “Canadian Mennonite Immigration into the Paraguayan Chaco,” 37.

Print Friendly and PDF

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Sesquicentennial: Proclamation of Universal Military Service Manifesto, January 1, 1874

One-hundred-and-fifty years ago Tsar Alexander II proclaimed a new universal military service requirement into law, which—despite the promises of his predecesors—included Russia’s Mennonites. This act fundamentally changed the course of the Russian Mennonite story, and resulted in the emigration of some 17,000 Mennonites. The Russian government’s intentions in this regard were first reported in newspapers in November 1870 ( note 1 ) and later confirmed by Senator Evgenii von Hahn, former President of the Guardianship Committee ( note 2 ). Some Russian Mennonite leaders were soon corresponding with American counterparts on the possibility of mass migration ( note 3 ). Despite painful internal differences in the Mennonite community, between 1871 and Fall 1873 they put up a united front with five joint delegations to St. Petersburg and Yalta to petition for a Mennonite exemption. While the delegations were well received and some options could be discussed with ministers of the Crown, ...

Flooding as a weapon of war, 1657

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then these maps speak volumes. In February 1657, the Swedish King Carolus Gustavus ordered an intentional breach of the embankments along the Vistula River to completely flood the villages of the Danzig Werder. See the vivid punctures and water flow in 1657 map below; compare with the 1730 maps with rebuilt villages and farms ( note 1 ). In Polish memory this war is appropriately remembered as "The Deluge". Villages in the Danzig Werder (delta) from which Mennonites immigrated to Russia include: Quadendorf, Reichenberg, Krampitz, Neunhuben, Hochzeit, Scharfenberg, Wotzlaff, Landau, Schönau, Nassenhuben, Mönchengrebin, and Nobel ( note 2 ). In the war the suburbs outside the gates of Danzig suffered most; Mennonites lived here in large numbers, e.g., in Alt Schottland and Stoltzenberg. First, these villages were completely razed by the City of Danzig to keep the invading Swedes from using the villages to their advantage in battle. ...

“The way is finally open”—Russian Mennonite Immigration, 1922-23

In a highly secretive meeting in Ohrloff, Molotschna on February 7, 1922, leaders took a decision to work to remove the entire Mennonite population of some 100,000 people out of the USSR—if at all possible ( note 1 ). B.B. Janz (Ohrloff) and Bishop David Toews (Rosthern, SK) are remembered as the immigration leaders who made it possible to bring some 20,000 Mennonites from the Soviet Union to Canada in the 1920s ( note 2 ). But behind those final numbers were multiple problems. In August 1922, an appeal was made by leaders to churches in Canada and the USA: “The way is finally open, for at least 3,000 persons who have received permission to leave Russia … Two ships of the Canadian Pacific Railway are ready to sail from England to Odessa as soon as the cholera quarantine is lifted. These Russian [Mennonite] refugees are practically without clothing … .” ( Note 3 ) Notably at this point B. B. Janz was also writing Toews, saying that he was utterly exhausted and was preparing to ...

What is the Church to Say? Letter 4 (of 4) to American Mennonite Friends

Irony is used in this post to provoke and invite critical thought; the historical research on the Mennonite experience is accurate and carefully considered. ~ANF Preparing for your next AGM: Mennonite Congregations and Deportations Many U.S. Mennonite pastors voted for Donald Trump, whose signature promise was an immediate start to “the largest deportation operation in American history.” Confirmed this week, President Trump will declare a national emergency and deploy military assets to carry this out. The timing is ideal; in January many Mennonite congregations have their Annual General Meeting (AGM) with opportunity to review and update the bylaws of their constitution. Need help? We have related examples from our tradition, which I offer as a template, together with a few red flags. First, your congregational by-laws.  It is unlikely you have undocumented immigrants in your congregation, but you should flag this. Model: Gustav Reimer, a deacon and notary public from the ...

Formidable Fräulein Marga Bräul (1919–2011)

Fräulein Bräul left an indelible mark on two generations of high school students in the Mennonite Colony of Fernheim, Paraguay. Former students and acquaintances recall that Marga Bräul demanded the highest effort and achievements of her students, colleagues and of herself—the kind of teacher you either love or hate but will never forget! In March 1947, Marga was offered a position at the Fernheim Secondary School ( Zentralschule ). A recent refugee to Paraguay from war-torn Europe, she taught mathematics, physics, and chemistry. In 1952, she was the only female faculty member ( note 1 ). Marga wedded a strong commitment to academics with a passion for quality arts and crafts. She provided extensive extra-curricular instruction to students in handiwork and was especially renowned for her artwork—which included painting and woodworking— end of year art exhibits with students, theatre sets, and festival decorations. Marga’s pedagogical philosophy was holistic; she told Mennonite ed...

Landless Crisis: Molotschna, 1840s to 1860s

The landless crisis in the mid-1800s in the Molotschna Colony is the context for most other matters of importance to its Mennonites, 1840s to 1860s. When discussing landlessness, historian David G. Rempel has claimed that the “seemingly endemic wranglings and splits” of the Mennonite church in South Russia were only seldom or superficially related to doctrine, and “almost invariably and intimately bound up with some of the most serious social and economic issues” that afflicted one or more of the congregations in the settlement ( note 1 ). It is important from the start to recognize that these Mennonites were not citizens,  but foreign colonists with obligations and privileges that governed their sojourn in New Russia. For Mennonites the privileges, e.g. of land and freedom from military conscription, were connected to the obligation of model farming. Mennonites were given one, and then later two districts of land for this purpose. Within their districts or colonies , villages w...

1929 Flight of Mennonites to Moscow and Reception in Germany

At the core of the attached video are some thirty photos of Mennonite refugees arriving from Moscow in 1929 which are new archival finds. While some 13,000 had gathered in outskirts of Moscow, with many more attempting the same journey, the Soviet Union only released 3,885 Mennonite "German farmers," together with 1,260 Lutherans, 468 Catholics, 51 Baptists, and 7 Adventists. Some of new photographs are from the first group of 323 refugees who left Moscow on October 29, arriving in Kiel on November 3, 1929. A second group of photos are from the so-called “Swinemünde group,” which left Moscow only a day later. This group however could not be accommodated in the first transport and departed from a different station on October 31. They were however held up in Leningrad for one month as intense diplomatic negotiations between the Soviet Union, Germany and also Canada took place. This second group arrived at the Prussian sea port of Swinemünde on December 2. In the next ten ...

Mennonite “Displaced Persons” and MCC’s “Jewish Argument”

At the conclusion of the war Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) was fully aware that “their” 13,000-plus Russian Mennonite refugees in Germany did not qualify as displaced persons and for support from the International Refugee Organization. They were refused IRO “care and maintenance” as Soviet citizens, i.e., they were free to return home. MCC sought to convince the IRO that the Mennonite refugees were not “Soviet Germans” and--if they had became German citizens in Warthegau (also a disqualifier), it was done under duress ( note 1 ). Astonishingly MCC’s Europe Director Peter J. Dyck—later seen as the Moses of the Mennonites—proposed to top military personnel at US military headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany (USFET) in July 1946, that Mennonites be granted the same status as Jews as a persecuted people. “By a recent decree all Jews, regardless of their nationality, are automatically given the status of 'D.P.' [displaced person] on the grounds that they are victims of persecu...

The Flight to Moscow 1929

In 1926, my grandfather’s sister Justina Fast (b. 1896) and her husband Peter Görzen moved from Krassikow, Neu Samara (Soviet Union) to village no. 5 Dejewka, Orenburg. “We thought we would live our lives here with our children secure in the hands of God. But the times were becoming turbulent,” Justina recalled. In May 1929 they travelled back to Krassikow for Pentecost to visit with her mother, brothers and their families. But when they returned to their home, she writes, “… a large quota of grain was demanded of us. But we had nothing, and the harvest was not yet in. Then we heard that many were planning to move to Canada, including my three siblings with my mother, and my husband's three sisters too. My husband decided to go to Moscow first to see if it was possible and what was required for emigration. We made the decision to leave when the harvest was complete. At that time so many people were leaving [for Moscow], and early in September we sold everything we had. Only the b...

Immigration to Canada, 1923: Background

In April 1921 Mennonites in the Caucasus and Don Region officially petitioned Moscow for permissions to emigrate—which Lenin had “flatly refused.” Their rationale was more than economic. “The disruption of economic conditions leads to impoverishment, which again goes hand in hand with the degradation of morals and has an alarming impact on our youth, who are also constantly exposed to the pressure of brutal and ruthless agitation on the part of those in power. … This decay of our spiritual and economic goods will only become greater and more ruinous.” ( Note 1 ) Later that year and some months before the large-scale feeding operations could begin in the Soviet Union, American Mennonite Relief (AMR) commissioner A.J. Miller petitioned the Soviet Embassy in London for exit permissions for 20,000 Mennonites ( note 1b) . He was unsuccessful. Nonetheless in a highly secretive meeting in Ohrloff, Molotschna on February 7, 1922, key Mennonite leaders took a decision to work toward the re...