The eight members of the Delbert F. Plett Historical Research Foundation board, plus three staff and one spouse, spent three packed days of meetings and visits in the Cuauhtemoc area of Mexico in early December 2019. The board meets twice each year, in spring and fall. Every second year its fall meeting is away from Winnipeg, in a larger conservative Mennonite community. This fall meeting was the board’s first outside of Canada or the United States, providing an opportunity to visit Old Colony and Kleine Gemeinde communities and meet church and civic leaders.

The largest of the original settlements in the area is Manitoba Colony, founded in 1922 by Old Colony Mennonites from Manitoba, hence the settlement’s name. Because of its large original size, 3,200 immigrants, the majority of the more than 200,000 Old Colony Mennonites in the Americas have roots in this colony. The Manitoba Old Colony Church community today consists of about 15,000 people, including members and children.

The overall impression gained from visiting this area is change. Compared to half a dozen visits in previous decades, the changes in community life are impressive. Economically, the area has evolved from a poor, largely subsistence agricultural community to an agricultural, manufacturing, and business powerhouse. Agriculture consists primarily of dairy, corn, pinto beans, and apples, largely supported by irrigation systems. Many businesses have sprung up along the 40 km four-lane, and in parts six-lane, paved highway connecting Cuauhtemoc to Rubio. Hardly an acre along this stretch is undeveloped. The price of land along this commercial corridor is about $100,000 to $150,000 US per acre. Numerous small, and some not-so-small, factories have sprung up, creating products for markets near and far. Service establishments, like restaurants and motels, advertise their presence. Farm implement dealers import machinery from the United States, and have made this strip the primary farm machinery marketplace for all of Mexico.

Every workday about seven thousand Mexicans from the nearby cities of Cuauhtemoc and Rubio drive into the colony to work in businesses and factories. During the apple picking season, this number expands greatly. And yet this economic dynamism does not create enough jobs for Mennonite young people. To alleviate the land and job shortage, the colony has bought land in Argentina, and will assist young families to establish a new colony consisting of numerous villages.

Education is also changing. A number of decades ago the traditional one-room village school with one teacher provided most of the formal education in Manitoba Colony. More advanced education was provided by a small school supported by the Mexico General Conference Mennonite Church.

During the past decades colonists realized that the village schools were inadequate, and started a new school system with the assistance of Amish educators from the eastern United States. With their help, and advice from Kleine Gemeinde in the nearby Quellen Colony, the Manitoba Old Colony Church has sanctioned the establishment of an education committee that oversees a new, and parallel, school system. These schools are called “Committee Schools.” The teachers are young, usually unmarried women who are trained by the Amish. They use a German language curriculum produced by the Kleine Gemeinde. Tuition is about the same as the cost per student for the village schools. Children are bussed to the schools.

Of the more than two thousand Old Colony elementary school children, more than half attend one of these church-sanctioned Committee Schools, and the number is growing. A new Committee School is being built to be ready in 2020. Feeling the competition, the village schools are upgrading and reforming.

The small General Conference school (called the Alvaro Obregon School) has expanded to more than nine hundred students. It has an impressive program from kindergarten to grade 12, including a government-recognized university preparation program. In addition, many Old Colonists have joined Kleine Gemeinde churches established in Manitoba Colony, and send their children to the Kleine Gemeinde schools, which in terms of quality are a further upgrade from the Committee Schools.

Today the majority of children in Manitoba Colony are getting a good education that prepares them well for life in the community. Students in the Obregon and Kleine Gemeinde schools receive Spanish and English language instruction, in addition to German. Numerous high school graduates continue their education at Mexican universities.

Change is also happening in Old Colony church life. About a decade ago groups of people started meeting for Bible study, singing, and fellowship. To some these meetings looked suspicious. But when the bishop, after attending one or more of the sessions, indicated that he did not see anything wrong with the meetings, they began to flourish. After some time, these meetings were organized into what is known as Abendschulen (evening schools), which meet every Thursday throughout the year.

Today there are seven or eight such groups meeting regularly at various places in Manitoba Colony. The Plett Foundation group was invited to attend the Lowefarm Abendschule Christmas program at the Lowefarm Old Colony Church Gymnasium on Saturday, December 8. The Gymnasium is a large sports hall built to accommodate multiple sports events, including volleyball. The Lowefarm Abendschule consists of young people 15 to 25 years of age. It has met for two years, so this was their second Christmas program. The crowd in attendance was estimated by locals at about 1,500 people. This shows that the program had strong church and community support.

The Plett Foundation group was invited to sit in the second row, right behind the Aeltester, minsters and Vorsteher (civic colony leader). The program started with eight children, three boys and five girls, about 10 to 12 years of age, singing in unison “Alle Jahre wieder kommt das Christuskind” (Every year again comes the Christ child). As they sang, the choir members filed in, softly joining the singing of the eight young people. The choir of about 170 youth filled the riser benches in front of us, men on our left and women on the right. One row of women took up the men’s back row.

The program included about eleven songs, all sung in unison, unaccompanied, and without a conductor. Three of the hymns were from the Old Colony Gesangbuch and sung in Lange Wies — that is, the traditional Old Colony singing style which adds musical ornamentation to the melody line. The rest of the songs were Advent and Christmas songs, sung in non-Lange Wies style. There were three “Readers’ Theatre” presentations, called “Geschichten” in the printed program, read by male and female choir members. Opening and closing comments were made by the two leaders, Jacob Banman and Cornelius Janzen. In addition to the usual welcome and concluding remarks, they included some practical advice, for example, drawing attention to a booklet explaining the dangers of alcohol and drug addiction.

The program ended with a long line of speeches, more than half an hour in total, some short, others longer. Since the Abendschule as well as the Christmas program are relatively new, it appeared that the organizers were concerned to have the church and community leaders publicly pronounce their blessing upon this event. The Abendschule leaders, all men, thanked the young people for their participation, and in good Old Colony style, apologized for any mistakes they might have made, or offenses they might have caused someone, and asked for forgiveness. Minister Isaak Dyck, after some hesitation in which all the ministers looked at each other to see who should speak, spoke on behalf of the ministers and the Aeltester. Some of the language used by the local speakers was quite evangelical in tone, including expressions of personal salvation and commitment that seemed new in an Old Colony context. This language may indicate the influence of evangelical mission churches in the area.

Kennert Giesbrecht, Die Mennonitische Post editor and a Plett Foundation board member, spoke on behalf of the Plett board and staff, introducing the board and its mission. Abe Rempel, an Old Colony minister from Winkler, Manitoba, and a Plett Foundation board member, was invited by the local minsters to speak. This invitation seemed to be an affirmation of Abe, and of our Foundation group. The program concluded with a gift exchange among the choir young people. A buffet-style Faspa was prepared for all present.

In a meeting with the Aeltester and a number of ministers we asked about the influence of the Abendschulen. With about two hundred young people meeting at seven or eight locations, the schools touch a lot of people in the colony. The responses by the leaders were uniformly positive. They said the schools provide young people with wholesome evening activities and opportunities for socializing. One of the ministers said the police have even noticed the positive influence, and have said that in villages that encourage attendance at the Abendschulen there are significantly fewer incidents police have to attend.

Old Colony Mennonites near Cuauhtemoc are often seen as victims: as poor, struggling immigrants, unjustly pushed out of Canada, trying to eke out a living in the harsh, dry, and windy conditions of the valley near the Sierra Madre Mountains. Or they may be seen primarily as immigrants to Canada from Mexico who often lack some of the necessary life skills needed to transition into Canadian society.

What we saw on this visit was that neither of these views is a complete, or accurate, picture of Mennonites in Manitoba Colony. What we saw was Mennonites for whom, within the past one hundred years, Manitoba Colony has become home. Here they have rooted their families, businesses, farms and churches. The people and communities are creative, dynamic, changing, optimistic, confident, and proud (humbly so) of what they have accomplished against considerable odds. The visit, short as it was, was inspiring and enlightening.