The Wanderers

In parched country of northern Mexico's Chihuahua, a prairie wasteland fit for nothing but coyotes, ocelots, wolves and white-faced cattle, thrives a large oasis of green fields, spotless barns and blue-trimmed, gabled cottages. This is the colony of a stolid blond race, strangely contrasting with its dark neighbors--the home of the Mexican Mennonites.

Peaceful, opposed to change and fiercely dedicated to hard work and to their fundamentalist religion, the Mennonites went to Mexico for the same reasons that they soon may choose to leave it: the land hunger of a burgeoning population, and an unshakable determination to live according to their own bleak code. After World War I, the Canadian government set out to homogenize its alien population groups, and the Mennonite settlements in Saskatchewan and Manitoba were told that their children would have to attend Canadian schools. Stubbornly refusing to obey, the German-speaking Mennonites, relatives of the plain folk of Pennsylvania and direct, inbred descendants of the Germanic fishermen who migrated from the Frisian Islands 400 years ago, began to search for a new homeland.

From President Alvaro Obregon of Mexico they got a pledge: exemption from military service and oath taking, permission to educate their children as they wished and to conduct their economic affairs in their own way. From the vast Terrazas ranch in Chihuahua they bought more than 200,000 acres of land. In 1922, some 5,000 of the Canadian Mennonites arrived at the isolated railroad station of San Antonio de Arenales and set to work transforming the prairie. The job was not done easily. Water flowed into their wells from a, huge underground lake, but even with irrigation, wheat, their customary crop, refused to flourish. The revolutionary Pancho Villa still held sway in Chihuahua, and the surrounding hills swarmed with his fierce Villistas, who learned soon that the Mennonite men would not raise their fists in anger. Time after time the Villistas forayed down from the hills to rape the blonde Mennonite women while their men stood by and prayed in helpless anguish.

End of Peace. The quiet folk won out. Finally, oats, corn and beans were made to grow, and the government ended the Villistas' raids. Today, the colony supports 15,000 Mennonites who live in 54 campos, small communities of 40 or 50 families. In some ways the Chihuahua settlers are less determinedly orthodox than the Amish of Pennsylvania. The men wear ordinary straw hats, overalls and work shoes, and the women wear colored homespun (only the older women cling to the black dress). Buttons and zippers are not considered works of the Devil, nails are used in construction, and there are no hex signs on the barns. The men may drink a limited amount on Sunday afternoons. But occasional defectors--young men who tire of the life and marry Mexican women, and Mennonite girls who allow themselves to be spirited off by latter-day Villistas--are ruthlessly cut off.

The Mennonites' only concession to Mexican ways has been to learn Spanish. After their fashion, they are good citizens; e.g., they will not buy licenses for their wagons, instead each month they promptly pay their accumulated fines for driving unlicensed vehicles. But last week, as they were getting ready to plant the oat crop and praying for a good rainy season, the Mennonites knew that their peace with the outer world was at an end.

Promised Lands. The trouble stems from the Mennonites' prolific growth (girls marry at puberty, bear ten or twelve children). The 15,000 settlers have overrun their original 200,000 acres and an additional 100,000 more bought a few years ago. Alarmed, the Chihuahua government and the Mexican landowners have refused to sell more land. Mexico's federal government has threatened to renege on Obregon's pledge, has tried to force the Mennonites to accept the Mexican social-security system and electrification. Reluctantly, the Mennonites decided that it might be time to move. Teams of Mennonite scouts in recent weeks have traveled to British Honduras, where there is much land for sale, and to Ontario, where the Mennonites already own a vast tract. This week the Menrtonite elders were studying the reports. Each promised land has drawbacks: Ontario still has the same restrictions that drove the Mennonites out of Canada 35 years ago, and Honduras offers only a steaming jungle terrain. But the Mennonites may have little choice, are sure that Mexico will scrap the Obregon contract. And if that happens, the precise Chihuahua fields will be sold to more compliant folk, and the Mennonites will become wanderers again.

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