Village among Nations: “Canadian” Mennonites in a Transnational World, 1916–2006 by Royden Loewen (review)

This is a serious, sophisticated, and long-overdue book, full of anecdotes and closely argued analysis. It traces the three-generation history of groups of Low German–speaking, pacifist, and ethno-religiously separatist Canadian Prairie Mennonites (principally from Manitoba) who sought to escape modernity in many of its forms by migrating from Canada to five countries in Latin America in the period from the 1920s to 2000 – Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Mexico, and Paraguay. There they took up residence in groupings of almost identical villages. There were also many return migrations. The principal issue prompting the migrants to leave Canada was the fear that the Canadian Prairie provinces’ requirement that the Low German–speaking Mennonite children attend English-language schools would result in their assimilation. Today this immigrant society in Latin America numbers around 250,000 people. They are locally and nationally prized by their host societies for their skills as tradesmen and farmers.

Loewen terms this migration experience as unusual in that it did not, as is common in migration experiences generally, result in the assimilation of these migrants into their national host societies. In Loewen’s words, ultraconservative migrants of this kind usually “resisted allegiance and emotional attachment to any one country.” They preferred to recreate a homogeneous Mennonite migrant society spread across the five mentioned Latin American countries that, in its life, work, religious devotion, and in-group intimacy, came to resemble a single large Mennonite transnational village, a “village among nations.”

In his search for sources Loewen has travelled and lived in these conservative societies for long periods of time and interviewed many of their inhabitants. Together with research assistants, he has also scoured rich collections of English-, German-, and Spanish-language in-group and out-group sources, including published and unpublished diaries, memoirs, letters, newspaper articles, statistical records, and scholarly studies. This is an empathetic portrayal in which the author invites the reader into the life and thoughts of his subjects.

Loewen develops his wide-ranging story in eight robust chapters and a conclusion. The chapters are entitled: “Leaving the ‘British Empire’ in Canada: Promises in the South, 1916–1921”; “Settlers in Mexico and Paraguay, 1922–1929”; “Dreaming of ‘Old Canada,’ Nostalgia in the Diaspora, 1930–1945”; “East Paraguay and Beyond, 1945–1954”; “New Life in British Honduras and Bolivia, 1954–1972”; “The ‘Return’ of the Kanadier, 1951–1979”; “Imagining a Pan-American Village: Reading Die Mennonitische Post, 1977–1996”; and “Homing In on the Transnational World: Women Migrants in Ontario, 1985–2006.” The endnotes cover fifty-five pages.

It would have been useful if the author had briefly discussed the earlier history of Mennonites in Russia, including the progenitors of this Low German group. How did this group become unique? This lacuna notwithstanding, Loewen has written an excellent book.