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What does it cost to settle a refugee? MCC (1947-48) and Paraguay

It is impossible to count the volunteer hours, the unregistered gifts and donations, “sweat equity,” and the incalculable contribution of indigenous peoples who shared the land and helped settle the post-WWII Mennonite refugees in Paraguay.

But the larger financial expenditures can be tracked. All North American Mennonites were part of this story through the Mennonite Central Committee.

1. The total cost for transporting the 5,620 refugees was $650,000 US, or about $125 per person. MCC loaned $200,000 and the International Relief Organization carried the remainder of the costs (note 1). MCC hoped that the refugees could soon repay their transportation debt in order to fund further refugee work. Before leaving Europe, MCC loaded the Volendam ship with boxes and bales filled with 32,000 items of donated clothing, shoes, and quilts for distribution.


2. Paraguay—a welcoming country. All Mennonite refugees were offered entry—including the sick, aged and those conscripted as German soldiers. All immigrants were granted broad religious freedoms as negotiated by those who came before them (Menno Colony). But the state could not provide any social or economic support for those settlers in the Chaco.


3. Lengua Indigenous people were peaceful, shared the land and know-how of Chaco flora and fauna, as well as survival skills and medicines (note 2a).

4. Colonies Menno (from Canada, est. 1927), Fernheim (est. 1930) and Friesland (est. 1937) received the new refugees generously in their homes, and prepared and trained them with skills for next stages of settlement.

5. MCC acquired 75,000 hectares of land for the new Chaco colony of Neuland. Land surveys were undertaken and village plans laid out, including common bush- and woodland. Each lot was 200 metres wide and 600 metres long (12 hectares in total). Though the land titles were held in common by the administration of the colony, the farmsteads were considered private property that could be bought and sold among the settlers themselves. Buyers of land first had to be accepted as members of the colony, however. The lots were distributed by lot!

6. Single mothers without grown sons made up 40% of the new households. It was agreed “that each six Fernheim families would be responsible for erecting a house for a widow in Neuland. If a person could not donate time, he was expected to contribute the equivalent value in cash” (note 2b). In total 94 houses were built for the single mothers in Neuland (note 3): all single story wood framed, adobe brick buildings 6 to 7 metres long and 3.5 to 4 metres wide (max. length of timber) with a porch with an overhanging roof. The first piece of furniture was often gifted.


7. Fernheimers also lent each family a tame cow for five years, a pair of tame oxen for each complete farm, six chickens and thirty kilograms of peanuts for seed (note 4). MCC made these arrangements possible: 100 Guaraní to purchase an ox and 90 Guaraní to purchase a cow (note 5).

8. Basics: MCC arranged that each new farmstead would be given the most necessary utensils and tools needed for survival, including an axe, a hoe, a spade, a bush knife, a water bucket, a handsaw and barbed wire for fencing for six hectares (note 6)—though wire for fencing was in very short supply. MCC also gave each family a 250 Guaraní credit (worth between $60 and $80 US) to acquire farming equipment. At that time a wagon cost between 500 and 600 Guaraní and a plough 80 Guaraní. Consequently, in the first years, families shared equipment: “Ten families shared a wagon. Eight families shared a cultivator. Six families shared a plow” (note 7).

9. MCC financial support for the maintenance of the refugees for the first years amounted to 20 Guaraní (about $6.00 US) per month per family; of this amount 3 Guaraní per month was deducted and designated for common c
olony projects and expenses, including roads, schools, a first-aid station in Neu-Halbstadt and later for the wages of the colony manager, teachers, and the first wagon for the settlers’ committee (note 8).

Settling a refugee family is expensive. Those families who benefited—like my own—owe a huge debt of gratitude to all of the above. As one observer noted, this was only possible because “a sense of a cooperative common life which had developed over centuries” (note 9). Other accounts recall the almost “limitless willingness to assist one another,” a strong “spirit of unity”—and of course the singing that also marked those early years (note 10).


            ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: Edgar Stoesz and Muriel T. Stackley, Garden in the Wilderness. Mennonite Communities in the Paraguayan Chaco, 1927–1997 (Winnipeg, MB: CMBC Publications, 1999), 75. Another calculation: “Total cost of the movement including transportation, down payment on land purchases, equipment and maintenance up to November 30, 1947, was $549,335.17. Of this amount $160,000 was paid by the Intergovernmental Committee for Refugees and the balance was covered by gifts and loans of the North America Mennonite brotherhood through Mennonite Resettlement finance” (Frank H. Epp, Mennonite Exodus [Altona, MB: Friesen, 1962], 381).

Note 2a: See previous post, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/03/lengua-indigenous-people-of-gran-chaco.html

Note 2b: J. Winfield Fretz, Pilgrims in Paraguay: The Story of Mennonite Colonization in South America (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1953), 42f. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001448782.

Note 3: Stoesz and Stackley, Garden in the Wilderness, 77.

Note 4: Marlene Epp, Women without Men: Mennonite Refugees of the Second World War (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 96, https://archive.org/details/womenwithoutmenm0000eppm.

Note 5: Walter Regehr, ed., 25 Jahre Kolonie Neuland, 1947–1972 (Karlsruhe: Schneider, 1972), 33.

Note 6: Regehr, 25 Jahre Kolonie Neuland, 21f.

Note 7: Stoesz and Stackley, Garden in the Wilderness, 90. In 1948, the 538 farms in Neuland had only 65 ploughs, 24 cultivators and 45 wagons (Fretz, Pilgrims in Paraguay, 45f.).

Note 8: Regehr, 25 Jahre Kolonie Neuland, 22f.

Note 9: Herbert Klassen and Maureen Klassen, Ambassador to his People: C. F. Klassen and the Russian Mennonite Refugees (Winnipeg, MB: Kindred, 1990), 154f., https://archive.org/details/AmbassadorToHisPeopleOCRopt1.

Note 10: Heinrich Ratzlaff, Atlas der Siedlungsdörfer der Kolonie Neuland, 1947–1997 (Neu-Halbstadt, PY: Kolonieamt-Neuland, 1996), 2.

Pics: from W. Regehr, ed., 25 Jahre Neuland.

For MCC video,

1970's version with Peter Dyck retelling the story in three parts:

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