By Cathy Alexander
A German-speaking religious community has found the seclusion it craves in the back country of Paraguay — but can the community survive modernisation?
THE PEOPLE of Paraguay´s remote Chaco region expect life to be tough, and it is.
The Chaco is a vast monotonous plain, prone to dust and mud. People from small indigenous communities sit outside their modest shacks as dogs sleep in the beaten earth yards. The children are barefoot and curious. The bus stops at a petrol station where rundown trucks park haphazardly, their huge loads secured with whatever comes to hand. The drivers squat sipping mate, unfazed by the glaring sun.
Further down the road sits a whitewashed church, its car park divided into 24 spaces. Signs saying Eingang and Ausgang direct the traffic. A blonde woman drives past on her motorbike, her son sitting in front of her. He turns to stare at me, and his mother gently takes his chin in her hand and turns it so he faces the road again. They drive past an air-conditioned bakery which sells doughnuts and rye bread.
The Mennonite religious community arrived in the Chaco in 1927 in search of seclusion from the world.
The sect was formed in the 16th century and Mennonites, who speak German, describe themselves as free evangelical Christians. They oppose war and military service, believe in adult baptism, and like to run their own communities and schools, free from government interference. This freedom has proved hard to find.
Quote from the Mennonite museum in Loma Plata:
“For 400 years the Mennonites have been wandering over the face of the globe in search of a place where they can shut themselves in from the rest of the world and live in peace. They desire no intercourse with the rest of the world; they merely ask to be left alone.”
Their traditions could be under siege
They found that seclusion in Paraguay, a landlocked country dwarfed by neighbouring Argentina and Brazil. The quiet hills and plains of Paraguay are home to many people who wanted to escape the world. It is said that some Nazis came to Paraguay after World War II.
The Paraguayan Government gave the Mennonites land and left them alone. The Mennonites are allowed to run their own German-speaking schools and levy their own taxes. Dairy proved successful for the settlers, and the Mennonite cooperatives oversee factories kitted out with European machinery. I buy a yoghurt in the supermarket and am asked if I want to pay in cash or charge it to my account — the cooperatives run a barter system.
To date, the Mennonites seem to have been successful in “shutting themselves in from the rest of the world” — but their traditions could be under siege.
A teenager with an earring and a Bresil singlet sits next to me in the internet cafe in the Mennonite town of Loma Plata. He says he uses the internet a lot, and is keen to talk to a foreigner.
Young Mennonites use telephones, cable TV and the net to access the world. It used to take days and an oxen team to reach the the Paraguayan capital of Asuncion — now a bus does the trip in 6 hours.
I am told the young people do not go to church as often as they should, and that Mennonites are starting to drink more alcohol, traditionally frowned upon.
For now, young Mennonites seem content to ride up and down the dusty streets on their motorbikes for entertainment. But will they want to stay? And will they uphold Mennonite traditions — marry young, have large families and keep the faith?
The Mennonites survived persecution in Russia in the 1920s, a typhoid epidemic on arrival in Paraguay, and the tough conditions of the Chaco. Whether their community can survive the lure of modernisation remains to be seen. The Mennonite experiment in the Chaco may yield nothing more than the curiosity of German speakers in a remote corner of South America.
Journalist Cathy Alexander, formerly of the Burnie Advocate, is now in Bolivia.
