Mennonites in Bolivia

Mennonite inColonia del Norte
Total population
~150,000 (2023)[1]
Regions with significant populations
Santa Cruz
Religions
Anabaptism
Languages
Plautdietsch,Spanish

TheMennonites in Bolivia are among the most traditional and conservative of allMennonite denominations in Latin America. They are mostlyRussian Mennonites ofFrisian,Flemish, andPrussian descent. As of 2013^[update], there were about 70,000 Mennonites living inBolivia;^[2] that population has grown to around 150,000 as of 2023.^[1]

In the early-to-mid 16th century, Mennonites began to move from theLow Countries to theVistula delta region, seeking religious freedom and exemption frommilitary service. There they gradually replaced theirDutch andFrisian languages with thePlautdietsch dialect spoken in the area, blending into it elements of their native tongues. The Mennonites of Dutch origin were joined by Mennonites from other parts of northern Europe.

In 1772, most of PolandMennonites' land in the Vistula area became part of the Kingdom ofPrussia in the first of thePartitions of Poland.Frederick William II of Prussia ascended the throne in 1786 and imposed heavy fees on the Mennonites in exchange for continued military exemption.

In the 1760sCatherine the Great of Russia invitedMennonites from Prussia to settle on land and farm north of the Black Sea in what is modernUkraine, near Zaporizhia, in exchange for religious freedom and exemption from military service, a precondition founded in their commitment to non-violence. The ancestors of the Bolivian Mennonites settled in the Ukrainian section of the Russian Empire in two main waves in the years 1789 and 1804, leaving Danzig and the Polish Vistula delta because they were being annexed by Prussia. After Russia introduced the general conscription in 1874, many Mennonites migrated to the US and Canada.

In the years after 1873 some 11,000 left the Russian Empire and settled inManitoba,Canada, and an equal number went to Kansas, Nebraska and Dakota territory. The Russian Mennonites settled 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.

The more conservative Mennonites from Russia, some 6,000 people, left Canada between 1922 and 1925 and settled inMexico. Another 1,800 more conservative Mennonites migrated to the Chaco region inParaguay in 1927. In 1930 and in 1947 the Paraguayian Mennonites were joined by Mennonites coming directly from Russia. In the years after 1958 some 1,700 Mennonites from the Mexican settlements moved to what was then British Honduras and today isBelize.

The Bolivian government granted a privilege to future Mennonite immigrants including freedom of religion, private schools and exemption from military service in the 1930s, but that was not deployed until the 1950s.

Between 1954 and 1957, a first group of 37 families from various Mennonite colonies in Paraguay establishedTres Palmas colony, 25 km northeast ofSanta Cruz de la Sierra. Soon, a second colony was established five km away fromTres Palmas by a group of 25 conservative families fromMenno Colony in Paraguay. The settlers from Paraguay were experienced and well prepared to practice agriculture in a subtropical climate. In 1959, the total Mennonite population in Bolivia was 189.^[3]

In 1963, new settlements were founded where Mennonites from Paraguay and Canada lived together. In 1967,Mennonites from Mexico and fromtheir daughter colonies in Belize began to settle in theSanta Cruz Department.Las Piedras colony, founded 1968, was the first colony founded exclusively by Mennonites from Canada. Most settlers in Bolivia were traditional Mennonites who wanted to separate themselves more from "the world". Altogether there were about 17,500 Mennonites living in 16 colonies in Bolivia by 1986, of whom nearly 15,000 wereOld Colony Mennonites and 2,500Bergthal orSommerfeld Mennonites.^[3]

In 1995, there were a total of 25 Mennonite colonies in Bolivia with a total population of 28,567. The most populous ones wereRiva Palacios (5,488), Swift Current (2,602),Nueva Esperanza (2,455),Valle Esperanza (2,214) andSanta Rita (1,748).^[6] In 2002 there were 40 Mennonite colonies with a population of about 38,000 people. An outreach ofConservative Mennonites can be found atLa Estrella, with others in progress.

The total population was estimated at 60,000 by Lisa Wiltse in 2010.^[7][8]

In 2012 there were 23,818 church members in congregations ofRussian Mennonites, indicating a total population of about 70,000. Another 1,170 Mennonites were in Spanish-speaking congregations.^[3] The number of colonies was 57 in 2011.

Martyna Wojciechowska, a Polish journalist, created a TV documentary about the colony in Santa Rita, as a part of her TV programmeKobieta na krańcu świata, that aired on Polish TV on 1 October 2017. A 2020 survey found that there are more than 200 Mennonite colonies in nine Iberian American countries, with 99 in Bolivia.^[9]

^[10]

^[3]

In 2011, eight men belonging to theManitoba Mennonite Colony were convicted of a series of sexual assaults committed from 2005 to 2009. Prior to the discovery, the rapes had been attributed to a ghost or demon. The victims were reported to be between the ages of 3 and 65. The offenders used a type of gas used by veterinarians to sedate animals during medical procedures. Despite long custodial sentences for the convicted men, an investigation in 2013 reported continuing cases of similar assaults and other sexual abuses. Canadian authorMiriam Toews has made these crimes the center of her 2018 novelWomen Talking.^[11][12][13]

• Huttner, Jakob.Zwischen Eigen-art und Wirk-lichkeit: Die Altkolonie-Mennoniten im bolivianischen Chaco. Berlin 2012.
• Schartner, Sieghard and Schartner, Sylvia.Bolivien: Zufluchtsort der konservativen Mennoniten.Asunción 2009.
• Cañás Bottos, Lorenzo.Old Colony Mennonites in Argentina and Bolivia: Nation Making, Religious Conflict and Imagination of the Future. Leiden et al. 2008.
• Hedberg, Anna Sofia.Outside the world: Cohesion and Deviation among Old Colony Mennonites in Bolivia.Uppsala 2007.
• Pasco, Gwenaëlle.La Colonisation Mennonite en Bolivie: Culture et agriculture dans l'Oriente. Paris 1999.

• Photographic essay on the Mennonites of Bolivia
• Butet-Roch, Lawrence (text); Busqué, Jordi (photographs) (February 27, 2018) "Step Back in Time With the Mennonites of Bolivia",National Geographic.
• "Data for "Pious Pioneers: The expansion of Mennonite colonies in Latin America"", This data is provided in support of the paper "Pious Pioneers: The expansion of Mennonite colonies in Latin America", published inJournal of Land Use Science, December 15, 2020, 1–17,Taylor and Francis

Accessed August 29, 2020.

• Bolivia's isolated Mennonite community

• European diaspora in Bolivia
• Mennonitism in Bolivia
• Sexual abuse scandals in Anabaptism

• CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list
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• Articles containing potentially dated statements from 2013
• All articles containing potentially dated statements