Loma Plata
| Loma Plata | |||
|---|---|---|---|
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| Coordinates: 22°23′0″S 59°50′0″W / 22.38333°S 59.83333°WCoordinates: 22°23′0″S 59°50′0″W / 22.38333°S 59.83333°W | |||
| Country | Paraguay | ||
| Department | Boquerón | ||
| Founded | June 25, 1927 | ||
| Government | |||
| • Intendente | Ernst Giesbrecht Sawatzky | ||
| Elevation | 133 m (436 ft) | ||
| Population (2008) | |||
| • Total | 5,500 | ||
| Postal code | 9370 | ||
| Area code(s) | (595)(492) | ||
| Climate | BSh | ||
Loma Plata is a city in the district, distrito, of Department of Boquerón, Paraguay. It is located 407 km from Asunción by a paved detour of 22km from the Ruta Transchaco. It is the main town of the Menno Colony, one of the Mennonite colonies of the Paraguayan Chaco.
The temperature in summer reaches 44 °C and can in winter reaches 0 °C. However most winter days are fairly warm, though a jacket, long-sleeved shirt and pants are good to pack down in the suitcase on a winter visit since the climate changes quickly. The average temperature is 26 °C. The rainy season is December through March, however some years are very dry and others very rainy so the climate varies a lot.
In the 1760s Catherine the Great of Russia invited Mennonites from Prussia to settle north of the Black Sea in exchange for religious freedom and exemption from military service, a precondition founded in their commitment to non-violence. After Russia introduced the general conscription in 1874, about a third of the Russian Mennonites migrated to the US and Canada. The members of the Colonia Menno (of which Loma Plata is the largest town and administrative centre), settled first in Canada until a universal, secular compulsory education was implemented in 1917 that required the use of the English language, which the more conservative Mennonites saw as a threat to the religious basis of their community. 1743 pioneers came from Canada to Paraguay in 1927 and turned the arid Chaco into fertile farmland over the years. It was the first Mennonite colony in the region. Some years later more Mennonites immigrants arrived to the Chaco area from Germany and Russia and founded the Fernheim (1930) and Neuland (1947) colonies.
At the beginning, these pioneers had to overcome many adversities. Not only was their arrival not properly prepared as was previously promised by the Casado company because the settlement complex should have been surveyed and a railway constructed up to the settlement location, the settlement on the promised land was delayed 16 months and the immigrants were forced to stay in a preliminary, overpopulated camp in Puerto Casado before being able to move into the interior of the Chaco wilderness and the land they had bought for their settlement. Many became sick due to the lack of medical care, whereof 121 died, 75 of them being children under 14 years. Some 60 families returned to Canada.
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Wikipedia