Old Colony Mennonites in Argentina and Bolivia BOTTOS_F1_i-xviii.indd i 12/20/2007 4:17:04 PM Religion in the Americas Series Edited by Henri Gooren (Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA) VOLUME 7 BOTTOS_F1_i-xviii.indd ii 12/20/2007 4:17:05 PM Old Colony Mennonites in Argentina and Bolivia Nation Making, Religious Confl ict and Imagination of the Future by Lorenzo Cañás Bottos LEIDEN • BOSTON 2008 BOTTOS_F1_i-xviii.indd iii 12/20/2007 4:17:05 PM Cover photograph (c) Jordi Busque / www.jordibusque.com This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISSN 1542-1279 ISBN 978 90 04 16095 8 Copyright 2008 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands BOTTOS_F1_i-xviii.indd iv 12/20/2007 4:17:06 PM To Susanne, and our common future. BOTTOS_F1_i-xviii.indd v 12/20/2007 4:17:06 PM BOTTOS_F1_i-xviii.indd vi 12/20/2007 4:17:06 PM CONTENTS List of Tables .............................................................................. ix Preface: Arrival . and Departure .............................................. xi Acknowledgements ..................................................................... xvii Introduction ................................................................................ 1 Representations of the Mennonites, Amish and Hutterites ... 4 The problem of the future ..................................................... 9 Book overview ......................................................................... 14 Chapter One The transformations of community ................. 17 Introduction ............................................................................ 17 Persecutions, migration, and settlement ................................. 18 Contemporary organization of the Church of Christ .......... 27 Authoritative texts ................................................................... 33 Identifying the Church of Christ ........................................... 35 Regulating the Church of Christ: the Ordninj ...................... 42 Conclusion: Mennonite transformations ................................ 46 Chapter Two Negotiating states, rejecting nations ................. 49 Introduction ............................................................................ 49 Invitations, impositions, schisms and migrations ................... 51 Excursus: those who stayed behind ........................................ 64 Paraguay .............................................................................. 65 Uruguay, Brazil, and Belize ................................................ 67 Conclusion: the Mennonites’ place in a world of nation-states ........................................................................ 68 Chapter Three Inter-colony dynamics .................................... 71 Introduction ............................................................................ 71 The founding of new colonies ............................................... 71 Cross-border practices ............................................................ 77 Parish records .......................................................................... 80 Conclusion: externalization of dissent, and cross-border strategies .............................................................................. 83 BOTTOS_F1_i-xviii.indd vii 12/20/2007 4:17:06 PM viii contents Chapter Four Articulations, connections and short-circuits ... 85 Introduction ............................................................................ 85 Perceptions of others .............................................................. 87 Controlled connections ........................................................... 88 Franz’s balancing act .............................................................. 98 Short-circuits ........................................................................... 102 Conclusion: isolation and the management of borders ........ 107 Chapter Five Careers in the faith ........................................... 113 Introduction ............................................................................ 113 First movement: from the inside-out ...................................... 117 The paths to riches, poverty, suffering and enlightenment 120 Second movement: from the outside-in ................................. 126 The road to Damascus ....................................................... 127 Conclusion: the reconstruction of the Christian self ............ 139 Chapter Six Scriptural practices ............................................. 143 Introduction ............................................................................ 143 Writing dissent ........................................................................ 145 Becoming worldly, becoming Christian ............................. 145 The Roboré project ............................................................ 158 Interpreting the world and the Word .................................... 160 The Church of God ........................................................... 160 The Beasts of the Book of Revelation .............................. 163 Conclusion: alternative imaginations ..................................... 166 Chapter Seven The handling of dissenters ............................. 169 Introduction ............................................................................ 169 Translations and transgressions .............................................. 172 Letters to the Mennonites .................................................. 175 Blessing as disguise ............................................................. 179 The uninvited host .................................................................. 180 Encounter with Sergio ........................................................ 182 The visitors ......................................................................... 186 Conclusion: patterns in dealing with dissent ......................... 188 Conclusions ................................................................................. 191 Glossary ....................................................................................... 197 References ................................................................................... 199 Index ........................................................................................... 211 BOTTOS_F1_i-xviii.indd viii 12/20/2007 4:17:06 PM LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Etiology of types of colony formation ........................ 76 Table 2: Consequences of types of colony formation .............. 77 Table 3: Types of colony formation, cases ................................ 77 Table 4: Sergio’s exegetical key .................................................. 164 BOTTOS_F1_i-xviii.indd ix 12/20/2007 4:17:06 PM BOTTOS_F1_i-xviii.indd x 12/20/2007 4:17:06 PM PREFACE: ARRIVAL . AND DEPARTURE It was a cold August morning, and after spending all night on the bus, I was back in Guatraché, a small town in the southeast of the prov- ince of La Pampa, Argentina. Its grid layout traversed by diagonals evidences that Guatraché is a planned town, although preceded by a nineteenth-century military fort built during the campaign to conquer the Native Americans who named the place. It was founded in 1908 by the London based Guatraché Land Co., a company associated to the one that built the railways that carried the cereals and cattle to the port cities of Bahía Blanca and Buenos Aires, from where it would be exported. Unlike many other ‘railway towns’, Guatraché survived the closure of the railways, thanks in part to the signifi cant immigration that it attracted during the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1986 a group of roughly 1200 Old Colony Mennonites, coming from Mexico and Bolivia built a colony and settled some 35 kilometres westwards of Guatraché. The Old Colony Mennonites is a religious group with origins in sixteenth-century Holland. They have a long history of migrations through West Prussia, Ukraine, Canada, Mexico, Bolivia and Argentina. Living in religiously exclusive agricultural settlements, they seek to make a reality the biblical teachings of living ‘separate from the world’, while building a community of believers on earth. I was tired but optimistic about the future and happy to reacquaint with, after two years in England as a graduate student, some of my friends from my previous fi eldwork. As usual, I headed straight to Omar´s supermarket El Libanés (‘The Lebanese’, referring to the own- er’s ancestry), where I am always greeted with homemade delicacies prepared by Ana, his wife (herself descendent of Italian immigrants but brought up in a nearby Volga-German settlement).1 Under post- ers depicting several of Boca Juniors’ formations (arguably the most popular Argentine football club)