Mennonites in Mexico
A Mennonite girl in Cuauhtémoc, Chihuahua
|
|
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| Approx. 100,000 (2012) | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Chihuahua | 90,000 |
| Durango | 6,500 |
| Religions | |
| Anabaptist | |
| Scriptures | |
| The Bible | |
| Languages | |
| Plautdietsch, Spanish, Standard German, English | |
There are 100,000 Mennonites (Spanish: Menonitas; German: Mennoniten) living in Mexico, including 32,167 baptized adult church members; about 90,000 are established in the state of Chihuahua and 6,500 in Durango. Other states with Mennonites colonies are Campeche, Tamaulipas, Zacatecas, San Luis Potosi and Quintana Roo.
Their settlements were first established in the 1920s. In 1922, 3,000 Mennonites from the Canadian province of Manitoba established in Chihuahua. By 1927, Mennonites reached 10,000 and they were established in Chihuahua, Durango and Guanajuato.
In 2012, about 1,500 Mennonites left Durango and moved to Canada due to severe droughts in Durango.
The ancestors of the vast majority of Mexican Mennonites settled in the Russian Empire in the late 18th and 19th centuries, coming from the Vistula delta in West Prussia. Even though these Mennonites are Dutch and German by ancestry, language and custom, they are generally called Russian Mennonites, Russland-Mennoniten in German. In the years after 1873 some 7,000 left the Russian Empire and settled in Canada. In the period leading up to and during World War I, governments in the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan passed laws requiring public schools to fly the Union Jack, required compulsory attendance, and created public schools in areas of Mennonite settlement. In response the more conservative Mennonites sent out delegates to a number of countries to seek out a new land for settlement. They finally settled in a tract of land in Northern Mexico after negotiating certain privileges with Mexican President Álvaro Obregón. Approximately 6,000 of the most conservative Mennonites eventually left Manitoba and Saskatchewan for Mexico. The first train left Plum Coulee, Manitoba, on March 1, 1922.
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Wikipedia