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.

Comments

Vaccinations in Chortitza and Molotschna, beginning in 1804

Vaccination lists for Chortitza Mennonite children in 1809 and 1814 were published prior to the COVID-19 pandemic with little curiosity ( note 1 ). However during the 2020-22 pandemic and in a context in which some refused to vaccinate for religious belief, the historic data took on new significance. Ancestors of some of the more conservative Russian Mennonite groups—like the Reinländer or the Bergthalers or the adult children of land delegate Jacob Höppner—were in fact vaccinating their infants and toddlers against small pox over two hundred years ago ( note 2 ). Also before the current pandemic Ukrainian historian Dmytro Myeshkov brought to light other archival materials on Mennonites and vaccination. The material below is my summary and translation of the relevant pages of Myeshkov’s massive 2008 volume on Black Sea German and their Worlds, 1781 to 1871 (German only; note 3 ). Myeshkov confirms that Chortitza was already immunizing its children in 1804 when their District Offic...

"A Small Town near Auschwitz” – Chortitza Mennonite Refugee/ Resettlement Camps

Simple proximity to a place of horrors does not equal knowledge or complicity. Many Gnadenfeld-area Mennonite refugees were, for example, temporarily housed 20 km. away from the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp where 15-year-old Anne Frank died ultimately of typhus ( note 1 ). The day after liberation by British troops on April 15, 1945, camp survivors began to flow through neighbouring villages. “What a sight they were! They had been tortured and starved, and were swollen from lack of food. … We could hardly believe that the glorious country of Germany could commit such crimes against people,” Susanna Toews wrote ( note 2 ). My mother was only seven, but she remembers overhearing shocking descriptions given by their host family’s teenaged girls forced by the British to clean some of the camp buses. What about the much larger death camp at Auschwitz? There is a book entitled: A Small Town near Auschwitz: Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust. It is about an administrator living near the ...

“Operation Chortitza” (Part II) – Resettler Camps in Danzig-West Prussia, 1943-44

Waldemar Janzen, my former German professor and advisee, turned eleven years old in 1943. He and his mother and 3,900 others from Chortitza and Rosenthal (Ukraine) were evacuated west to the ethnic German resettler camps in Gau Danzig-West Prussia in October that year (see Part I; note 1 ). Years later Janzen could still recall much from this childhood experience—including the impact of the visit by Professor Benjamin H. Unruh a few weeks after their arrival. “He was a man who had extended much help to his fellow Mennonites ever since they began to emigrate from Russia during the 1920s” ( note 2 ). Unruh was a father-figure to his people, and his arrival at their camp in West Prussia signaled to the evacuees that they were in good hands ( note 3 ). Unruh’s impact on 7,000 other Chortitza District villagers in Upper Silesia would be the same some weeks later ( note 4 ). Surprisingly Unruh’s West Prussian camps visit left an equally indelible impression on the Gau’s Operations Commande...

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 ...

Village Reports Commando Dr. Stumpp, 1942: List and Links

Each of the "Commando Dr. Stumpp" village reports written during German occupation of Ukraine 1942 contains a mountain of demographic data, names, dates, occupations, numbers of untimely deaths (revolution, famines, abductions), narratives of life in the 1930s, of repression and liberation, maps, and much more. The reports are critical for telling the story of Mennonites in the Soviet Union before 1942, albeit written with the dynamics of Nazi German rule at play. Reports for some 56 (predominantly) Mennonite villages from the historic Mennonite settlement areas of Chortitza, Sagradovka, Baratow, Schlachtin, Milorodovka, and Borosenko have survived. Unfortunately no village reports from the Molotschna area (known under occupation as “Halbstadt”) have been found. Dr. Karl Stumpp, a prolific chronicler of “Germans abroad,” became well-known to German Mennonites (Prof. Benjamin Unruh/ Dr. Walter Quiring) before the war as the director of the Research Center for Russian Germans...

What is the Church to Say? Letter 1 (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 accuarte and carefully considered. ~ANF American Mennonite leaders who supported Trump will be responding to the election results in the near future. Sometimes a template or sample conference address helps to formulate one’s own text. To that end I offer the following. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Mennonites in Germany sent official greetings by telegram: “The Conference of the East and West Prussian Mennonites meeting today at Tiegenhagen in the Free City of Danzig are deeply grateful for the tremendous uprising ( Erhebung ) that God has given our people ( Volk ) through the vigor and action of [unclear], and promise our cooperation in the construction of our Fatherland, true to the Gospel motto of [our founder Menno Simons], ‘For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.’” ( Note 1 ) Hitler responded in a letter...

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 ...

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, ...

What is the Church to Say? Letter 3 (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 Mennonite endorsement Trump the man No one denies the moral flaws of Donald Trump, least of all Trump himself. In these next months Mennonite pastors who supported Trump will have many opportunities to restate to their congregation and their children why someone like Trump won their support. It may be obvious, but the words can be difficult to find. To help, I offer examples from Mennonite history with statements from one our strongest leaders of the past century, Prof. Benjamin H. Unruh (see the nice Mennonite Encyclopedia article on him, GAMEO ). I have substituted only a few words, indicated by square brackets to help with the adaptation. The [MAGA] movement is like the early Anabaptist movement! In the change of government in 1933, Unruh saw in the [MAGA] movement “things breaking forth which our forefathe...

Diary of Johann Jantzen, 1843-1903

Johann Jantzen was born in 1823 in Neuteichsdorfsfeld, West Prussia, resided in Neuendorf near Danzig, and migrated late to Russia (1869), then Central Asia, and finally in 1884 to Nebraska, USA. He died in 1903. Decades later his descendants translated his diary of notable annual highlights, entitled: Accounts of various Experiences in Life. A Diary begun in the Year 1839 ( note 1 ). The little West Prussian villages he names regularly are familiar place to many with Russian Mennonite family history: Schönau, Neu Münsterberg, Schönsee, Lakendorf, Neuteicherwalde, etc. While most Russian Mennonite families left Prussia much earlier than Jantzen, his diary offers a picture of the typical rhythm of life that Mennonites lived in West Prussia over generations. It also offers something I did not expect. The revolutions across Europe in 1848 had a local impact which he mentions, and he gives us a hint as to the other political highlights and episodes of civil unrest that were on the mind...

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog