Preservings 11 (1997) - Plett Foundation

Preservings
Mexican Mexican Mennonites Mennonites 75th 75th Anniversar Anniversary
Anniversar
A special report on the Mexican Menonites and 75th anniversary celebrations
August 14, 15 and 16, 1997, in Cuauhtemoc, Mexico, by Delbert F. Plett, Q.C., Editor Preservings.
Introduction.
The purple dawn shimmered over the horizon
framed by the Sierra Madres mountains.
The rays of the bronze-fired sun danced over
jagged bluffs and splashed across the Bustillos
valley, 1,000,000 acres of red virgin soil stretching
north for 90 kms.
A snorting steam engine trailing passenger
and freight wagons stopped at the end of a railway
spur in a freshly laid-out town site, clouds
of smoke wafting into the prescient sky. The
place was named Cuauhtemoc, the legendary
Aztec king who fought Cortez during the Spanish
invasion of Mexico in the dawn of the 16th
century.
It is 1922 and only short years before, Poncho
Villa rode his calvary through these mountain
valleys. From 1910 to 1917 Mexicans
fought a civil war laying the foundations for
the modern Mexican State. The cost was
1,000,000 lives lost. President Alvaro Obregon
decided that Mexico needed new immigrants
to help save it from the devastation of the civil
war.
The Governor of the State of Chihuahua, C. P. Francisco
Barrio Terrazas and Senora Hortencia de Barrio,
enjoy their visit to the Mennonite 75th anniversary
celebrations in Cuauhtemoc, Mexico, August 14,
1997.
Mennonites, 1525.
The Mennonites were a religious community
originating in the Anabaptist wing of the
Reformation in 1525. Many thousands suffered
martyrdom, others fled from Holland, Belgium
and northern Germany to Danzig, Prussia (to-
day Gdansk, Poland) to escape persecution.
In 1788-89 400 families moved on to southern
Russia (today Ukraine) and established the
Chortitza Colony, on the west bank of the
Dneiper River. It was named for the world-famous
Island Chortitza, earlier the home of
Ukrainian Cossacks and before that a place of
worship for ancient Greek and Norse traders.
The name ‘Chortitza’ came from the ancient
word ‘Hortz’ or God, roughly translated meaning,
‘thanks be to God’. Since Chortitza was
the oldest settlement its citizens were called
“Old Coloniers”.
In 1803-4 another 400 families left Prussia
and founded the Molotschna Colony, situated
on the Molotschna or ‘milk’ river. The colonies
quickly became model farming settlements
for Imperial Russia.
In 1870 the Russian government instituted
a Russification program which included educational
reform, universal military service, etc.
Understandably these measures caused great
concern.
The Canadian Government needed people
to settle in the newly established Province of
Manitoba. Hearing about the situation, and
being aware of the prowess of the Mennonites
in establishing pioneer settlements under adverse
conditions, the Federal government sent
Wm. Hespeler to Russia to persuade them to
come to Canada. A critical part of the inducement
was a letter dated July 23, 1873, guaranteeing
religious freedom, language rights and
control of their own schools.
Three denominations of Mennonites immigrated
to Manitoba in 1874-78: 750 Kleine
Gemeinde from the Molotschna settling in
Steinbach and Rosenort; 3000 from Bergthal,
an 1836 daughter colony of Chortitza, settling
in the Grunthal, New Bothwell and Altona areas;
and 4000 Old Coloniers from Chortitza,
Russia, settling in the Winkler area. For several
years Mennonites constituted over half of
the population of Manitoba.
Manitoba 1916-19.
1916-19 were years of tumult and chaos as
nations and cultures were caught in the slaughter
and tragedy of World War One. These were
the best of years for munitions manufacturers,
but bad years for people like Mennonites who
wanted to live by the Good Book and who took
literally the teachings of Jesus to love your enemy.
In Soviet Russia, the armies of anarchist
Nestor Machnov, considered a freedom fighter
by some, murdered, raped and pillaged their
way across the eastern Ukraine. The prosperous
settlements of the Mennonites were vulnerable
targets for these miserable peasants
hoping to establish a workers’ paradise.
In Manitoba, Canada, Sheriffs’ officers and
police stormed farmyards in the Winkler and
22
The municipal granary near Neuendorf, 3 km west of
Cuauthemoc on Hwy 16, where the 75th anniversary
celebrations were held. The huge public building has
a capacity of 6,000 people and was almost full for
some of the main events and presentations.
Altona areas, arresting Mennonites and
particulary ministers who refused to heed a new
law which closed their traditional Christian
private schools—schools which had been promised
in perpetuity only 40 years earlier.
Riding a wave of WASP anti-German and
anti-pacifist hatred which could only be described
as mass hysteria, the newly-elected
government of T. C. Norris in 1916 outlawed
these schools and implemented ethnic cleansing
measures including ruinous fines and imprisonments
for clergy who counselled their
parishioners to abide by their guaranteed civil
rights. According to one report 2018 cases were
referred to the police in Manitoba in 1921. Another
source states that at one point six Mennonite
ministers were in jail in Winnipeg. The
Russian Mennonite population in Manitoba and
Saskatchewan in 1921 was about 42,000.
One senseless aspect of this cultural rape
was the abolition of historic place names which
the Mennonites brought to Manitoba in 1874,
some of which had already been used in Prussia
for half a millenium and more. Other names,
such as Chortitza, originated in Russia with a
history as ancient as time. e.g. The central village
of Chortitz, Manitoba, was renamed
Randolph, a name more suitable for a pet dog
or stud bull.
From Stalin, Machnov and the boys nothing
better could be expected, but surely T. C.
Norris’ mother must have taught him better.
The post-WWI era was a time when Orangemen
myopia reigned supreme. Other ethno-cultural
groups including the French and Ukrainians
were likewise arbitrarily deprived of their civil
rights. The situation of the Mennonites was
unique in that they had negotiated these rights
as a condition of coming to Manitoba. Had these
rights not been granted they would undoubtedly
have joined 10,000 of their co-religionists
who settled in Nebraska and Kansas.
Instead of intervening in support of guarantees
it had given in 1873, the Canadian Government
joined in the betrayal and withdrew