Historic Mennonite migration to Mexico takes centrestage at conference

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/10/2022 (1452 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

One-hundred years ago, the largest voluntary mass migration in Canadian history began when more than 7,000 Mennonites left Manitoba and Saskatchewan for new lives in Mexico.

The emigrants, who departed by train from places such as Plum Coulee and Swift Current, Sask., were fleeing what they viewed as persecution and oppression by the Canadian and provincial governments.

“They were resisting the push to Anglicize Canada after the (First World) War, and the requirement to send their children to English-language schools,” said Ben Nobbs-Thiessen, who holds the chair in Mennonite studies at the University of Winnipeg.

The school question was a breaking point, he said, since the community believed the government had broken its promise to let it educate its children in its own schools.

“Some parents were fined for not sending their children to English-language schools and a few parents were imprisoned,” he said.

In 1920-21, leaders were sent to other countries to find a new home. They explored Mississippi and Minnesota in the U.S., before selecting Mexico.

The first groups left in 1922; the emigration continued until 1928.

“The Mexican government wanted them as settlers and farmers in the northern part of that country,” he said, adding they were guaranteed the right to send their children to their own schools.

Today, there are more than 250,000 Mennonites in Mexico and Central and South America who trace their origins to those emigrants in the 1920s. Since many retain access to Canadian citizenship, about 100,000 others have come back to live in this country, with between 15,000 to 20,000 in Manitoba.

The historic migration is the subject a conference, sponsored by the Centre for Transnational Mennonite Studies, at the University of Winnipeg.

The free event Friday and Saturday — titled “Departing Canada, Encountering Latin America: Reflections on the Centenary of Mennonite Emigration from Canada to Mexico and Paraguay” — will be held in-person and livestreamed.

The conference will feature presentations such as “From Russia to Mexico: the Demographics of Mennonite Migration”; “Role of the Railway and Press in Mennonite Immigration to Northern Mexico, 1922–26”; “Gender Relations in Low German Mennonite Communities in the Lowlands of Eastern Bolivia” and “Indigenous-Mennonite Relations in the Paraguayan Chaco.”

It will also feature the first public screening of Conform: the Mennonite Migration to Mexico, a new documentary by Andrew Wall of Refuge 31 Films of Winnipeg.

“It’s a fascinating story,” said conference co-organizer Nobbs-Thiessen, noting it hasn’t received the same academic treatment as other aspects of Canadian Mennonite history.

At the same time, it’s something other Mennonites in Canada should take note of because this group, sometimes called Kanadier or Canadian Mennonites, due to their origin in this country, are one of the largest such groups in North America.

“They are the fastest-growing Mennonite group,” he said, adding their descendants continue to arrive in the province every year. “There just isn’t as much written about them.”

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