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.

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