Menno Moto

by Cameron Dueck

  “Giving them a meal doesn’t make the problem go away,” John said. “But it makes them weak, and it brings the government to our side. If he’d come out there with a rifle, he would not have won the respect that he has won now.”

  Offering the other cheek, like the character Dirk Willems in Martyrs Mirror, a book describing the persecution of the early Anabaptists. Dirk was arrested in Asperen, Holland, in 1569 for being an Anabaptist. He escaped and fled across a frozen lake. His pursuer fell through the ice, and Dirk turned back to save him. That good deed meant he was recaptured and later burned at the stake. Mennonites held up the story of Dirk as the epitome of their pacifism and servitude.

  John and his neighbours saw themselves as a hard-working, hard-done-by people, playing an important role in Mexico’s agricultural economy with no thanks from the Mexicans. If the Mennonites were breaking laws, it was because that was just the way business was done here. Mennonites like to pretend that we stand apart from the rest of society, that we let others control the levers of power, and therefore can never be sure when the circumstances will turn against us. Never mind that as large-scale landowners and employers of indigenous and economically depressed people we are part of the system, a key part of the power structure. Never mind the Privilegia we’ve been granted.

  This was just the latest chapter in the often-repeated narrative of Mennonites as a wandering people continuously unwanted and rejected from their various temporary homes. Mennonites embrace this victimhood. We work so hard, we bring virtue and honesty to these places, but still we are rejected. The forces that push us on to the next country—whether that is Russia, Canada, or Mexico—are always out of our control because we are the outsiders. Mennonites believe that each new slight against us, each forced sale of our recently colonized land, is a test of our faith. It’s God’s will. He wants to see how loyal and loving we really are. Poor, righteous Mennonites. We’re just innocent bystanders, who work so hard but don’t fight for our rights. We are the real victims, and because we don’t have brown skin that we can show to the government to get handouts and tax breaks, we are the victims. Bullshit.

  The extra dollop of whipped cream on this tasty pie of self- serving victimhood is that we still show Christian love for those who wrong us. Like Dirk saving his pursuer and the farmer feeding the Barzónistas. In Russia the Mennonites opened their doors to bandits and treated them well: fed them, and warmed them by their fires, and this dulled their hate and anger. And the Mennonite victims were even more righteous for it.

  This was the multi-generational, ocean-crossing story John was telling me as we drove through the colonies. When conversation waned, John would break into song, switching between singing and whistling, all the while pointing out the sights as we drove through the countryside: “He leadeth me, He leadeth me, / By His own hand He leadeth me.”

  “My wife and I like to sing and play music together in the evenings, and now we have even recorded ourselves. Here, listen to this one.” He pushed a home-recorded CD into the player. Soon I could hear his whistling accompanied by a ragged banjo and then a harmonica.

  “Oh, it’s time for Bram’s show,” John said as he ejected the CD and turned on the radio.

  Bram was starting his daily Dietschet Radio Programme on XEPL, a mix of news and commentary. Every word Bram uttered was dissected and discussed in the colonies. His opinions were more liberal than those of many listeners, but he was aware of where the line of tolerance was, and he toed it carefully.

  “Now we get to the matter that everyone here is talking about,” Bram said in Plautdietsch. His familiar voice crackled over the airwaves. “This problem with the wells and dams is easy to see from a business point of view. Our farms need that water. But what if we approach it as Christians, what would we do differently then?”

  John hmm’d in agreement. “I admit, we’re not innocent in this matter,” he said as we drove by giant sprinkling systems that marched their way across fields of corn and created rainbows and lush crops in an otherwise parched landscape.

  “But still, the Mexicans are taking it too far,” he said, an injured tone in his voice. “I think, from our experience with the government, they will give us money to fix the dams.”

  The Mennonites had a generally warm relationship with the local government because they generated a lot of taxes, provided much of their own social services and infrastructure, and lived peaceful, quiet lives. The government was keen to keep the Mennonites happy.

  The Mennonites were accused of—and admitted to—drilling illegal wells for the purpose of irrigating their fields. They had drilled too many wells, bigger wells than their licences allowed, and had drilled the wells too deep or too close together. Sometimes their licences and permits were obtained through bribes paid to government officials. The going price for false papers to drill a well was in the neighbourhood of US $40,000. The wealth and readiness of Mennonites to pay bribes had created a cozy, if complicated, relationship with the officials. The Mennonites shrugged their shoulders and said it was the only way to get things done here in Mexico.

  “It’s just like in Russia,” John continued. “The Mennonites became wealthy and powerful, with big grain farms and businesses. We had our own hospitals, orphanages, and mission organizations. Just like here. And we also didn’t fit in there, because we spoke German and didn’t want to be Russian.”

  The Mennonites had made little effort to assimilate in Mexico, and this only magnified the spite of their critics. It wasn’t hard to imagine why the Barzónistas might resent that the Mennonites had moved in and bought up the land. The Mennonites were referred to as “Menones,” a name that had taken on a derogatory tone. The Mennonites, ignoring the fact that many of them were born in Mexico and carried Mexican passports, referred to the Spanish Mexicans as Mexas and Sponsch, and the names were not spoken in a tone of respect. Caucasians who were not Mennonite were often colloquially referred to as Enjlisch.

  I spent hours riding the colony roads, admiring what the Mennonites had created. The soil around the city was a deep red that contrasted with the bright green of the crops and the hazy blue foothills of the Sierra Madre Occidental to the west. Many farmers were still planting in mid-July, and shiny red, green, and yellow tractors crawled across the fields, chased by clouds of red dust.

  Riding my motorcycle gave me a lot of time to think. I caught myself thinking in Plautdietsch for the first time in my life. I’d spoken Plautdietsch before English as a child, but as soon as I’d started school it became uncool to speak it. I understood it, and my parents might speak to me in Plautdietsch, but I replied in English. Now I had a terrible accent and limited vocabulary, and my family snickered every time I tried to speak it. When I’d first arrived at the Travellers Inn on Manitoba Colony I had the odd experience of checking into a hotel in my mother tongue for the first time in my life. Check-in…how would I say that in Plautdietsch? At the Los Arcos restaurant next door, I was amused when the waitress greeted and served me in the flat, guttural tones of the language I’d heard since childhood, but rarely used myself. It reminded me of my attempts to speak Chinese—stringing together words to explain something when I knew there must be a single word that would do a better job of it. It didn’t help that the Mennonites here were more likely to revert to Spanish than to English, and I didn’t speak Spanish.

  When I’d finished my lunch, I paused. How to say “Check please”? or “I’d like my bill”?

  “Etj welle nü betohle,” I called out to the waitress as she passed. The look of surprise she gave me told me she’d understood, but that it wasn’t how most people asked for the check.

  But I liked how Plautdietsch changed my inner dialogue. There was less debate, and it made my thoughts more blunt and rudimentary. Plautdietsch offers very little nuance unless you’re describing rainfall or cow manure.

  “What if I’d stayed in Manitoba. I wonder how these Mennonites would appear
to me then? I’m different too. Or maybe that’s just in my head,” I thought, hunched over the handlebars.

  The constant need of Mennonites to be different, the fear of belonging to something they don’t wholly agree with or embrace—I could see that in myself. Was that a remnant of my Mennonite identity? I joked with friends that I was a commitment-phobe, but I wondered if it was just another case of a Mennonite resisting assimilation. I’d always liked that part of being a journalist—being an observer, an outsider to every meeting, plan, or crisis. Like a Mennonite farmer who does all his business and shopping in town, but never says he’s from there. He’s Mennonite; he can’t belong to a town full of weltmensch.

  The Mennonites in Mexico didn’t even get along with their Mexican neighbours well enough to share a bank with them. The Unión de Crédito Agricultores de Cuauhtémoc was in a colonnaded brick building at a key road junction between Cuauhtémoc and the Mennonite colonies to the north. This was where the Mennonites hoarded the rewards of all their hard work taming the land. Within twenty years of its founding it became the third largest credit union in Mexico.

  The credit union served the entire spectrum of the Mennonite community. Families from the Old Colony church, with the men in schlaub’betjse and their stolid wives in long dark dresses and black head coverings, shushing barefooted children in the waiting area. In the couples from more moderate church groups it was only the women who wore distinctive clothing, a small headscarf or a dress that was unfashionably modest. Then there were the most progressive Mennonite farmers, dressed no differently than the Mexicans, in jeans and scuffed cowboy boots, pale foreheads glowing above sun-raw faces when they took off their tall white cowboy hats. Mennonite churches were divided by arcane differences in biblical interpretation such as what colour of head covering the women wore, whether men wore schlaub’betjse or regular trousers and whether the children were educated in German or English. But Mennonites of different stripes could peacefully coexist under the same roof when it came to money.

  Most local Mennonites didn’t have the necessary education to work at the bank. Attempts to train young Mennonites for a career in finance failed because they could earn quicker money in manual labour, farming, and industry. So the Mennonites hired Mexicans to count their money. Nearly every teller was Mexican and the women outnumbered men. The women were dressed in urban office attire, high heels, knee-length skirts, and makeup, while the Mennonite women customers waited in their drab dresses and black kerchiefs. But it was the drab ones who owned the bank. I looked at the drab ones, and then at the coiffed, confident women behind the counter, and I felt no connection to my people.

  The credit union lent money exclusively to Mennonites, although a few wealthy Mexican landowners were granted the privilege of depositing their money with the Mennonites so they could enjoy the higher interest rates the credit union offered. The Mennonites were well aware that their isolation benefited them, and they didn’t want to erode that advantage by lending money to those untrustworthy Mexas.

  I spent several days with John, until we were familiar enough that he invited me to stay in his guest house, built into a corner of his machine shed. It was where he and his wife had lived before they had the money to build the simple house they now lived in.

  “This is my frü,” John said as his wife came to the door. He did not offer her name. She smiled at me, saying nothing. She wore a plain dark dress, a dark kerchief covering her head.

  “He’s come from Canada by motorcycle. I told him he was welcome to stay with us. You can set another place for dinner, right?”

  She nodded and disappeared into the kitchen; the perfect demure Mennonite wife.

  And with the offer of dinner and a bed for the night came an invitation to attend evening service at the Steinreich Conferencia Menonita de Mexico church. The church was next door, across John’s lawn and through a row of trees.

  Their church was running the traditional, week-long series of evening sermons often called revival meetings. Normally run in spring or early summer just after the seeding season, such services are a tradition of Mennonite community life. The sermons are often delivered by a visiting preacher who attempts to spark spiritual renewal and public professions of faith. I still had strong memories of the revival meetings of my childhood, particularly the foreboding sense of guilt they brought, the tearful confessions and trips to the front of the sanctuary where we would kneel for prayer. “Rededicating” your life was a teenage rite of passage in our church. It meant confessing all the bad things you’d done and promising to try harder in the future, and the exercise won you praise. But capitulating too often wasn’t good either, you had to strike a balance. I also remembered the drowsy mon- otony of the services. My friends and I held vigil over the heads of the tired farmers and mothers, breaking into snickers when their heads would roll and lurch with exhaustion. I told John I’d be thrilled to join him at church.

  Like most Mennonite churches, John’s church was very plain. The faith and the people made the church, not the building. I liked that aspect of Mennonite churches, and the honesty it suggested. White walls and a tile floor contained rows of straight-backed wooden pews. This was an informal weekday service: the newest jeans, clean of course, cowboy boots, simple dresses. Families sat together, toddlers trampled on laps, some fathers tried to assist mothers with the brood while others were oblivious to the chaos. Worshippers exchanged subdued greetings, nods and smiles for their neighbours as they filed into the pews. It was very similar to the church I’d grown up in.

  The service started with German hymns and choruses accompanied by guitars and a piano. The Evangeliums—Lieder hymnals smelled musty with a hint of varnish from the racks on the backs of the pews. Strong baritone and tenor voices filled the church. There was no raising of hands or swaying to the music—that would be too flashy. Just sing with all your heart. Then the children were invited to the front for a Bible story. The herd of children that ran up the aisle was testament to the community’s longevity. The entire congregation craned their necks to listen, as well as to see that little Frieda and Henry were behaving themselves. There was laughter at the children’s naive responses to the lesson. When it was over, they stampeded back to their pews, but a few stragglers wandered up and down the aisle, fingers stuck in slobbery mouth, eyes wide with alarm as they searched the crowd for their parents.

  Then the sermon. The preacher, from a neighbouring church, began with a few anecdotes, a bit of mild humour, delivered with humble candour in Plautdietsch. His slight social distance from the congregation gave him the liberty and authority to chastise them. His message was one of morality and clean living. There were little things in everyone’s lives that were sinful and very hard to give up.

  “Salt must remain salty,” he intoned. “If the salt is no longer salty, it doesn’t make your beans taste any better, does it?”

  Delivering less than a kilo of beef when you were paid for a full kilo was a sin, just like pride, and lust for money, power, and recognition. He paced back and forth behind the pulpit, occasionally pausing to check his notes on an iPad. He knew his audience, knew their language and their way of thinking, and he was a masterful speaker. He admitted his own failings and weaknesses, beseeching all to work together to live better, holier lives.

  “Don’t let those things that bring short-term benefits distract you. These things have no place in a Christian’s life.”

  The air was hot and stuffy. Just one fan whirred near the ceiling. Heads began to nod and people fidgeted and shifted in the hard pews. Some people remained alert by following each Bible reference the preacher mentioned, flipping through their Bibles in a whisper of India paper. Then, when the muggy sanctuary was still like a pond, a motorbike passed the church with a Doppler whine. Heads swivelled towards the windows. The bike was gone, but the dust from its passing still hung in the air. Who in the village was not at the service? Who was outside, playing in the dyin
g light and evening coolness, when they should be sitting here, listening to this good sermon? I shared in the curiosity, but I also knew that feeling of tearing past on the road, filled with glee and a tinge of guilt at my escape.

  The song leader returned to the front of the church and we sang a closing song that evoked sentiments of hope and humility. The preacher delivered a homily, something familiar and final. Eyes reopened and children ran for the doors.

  John introduced me to family and friends on our way out into the cool evening air.

  “It was interesting to hear him talk about resisting the vices that come with a life of wealth and power,” I said. “But nothing about how to get along with people around you.”

  John chuckled. “If we can’t get along with people we just move somewhere else, and we think there it will work better,” John said. “But if we don’t solve our problems they’ll just follow us to the new place, and we’ll be fighting there. But that’s how we are taught. Better to go start a farm and dig a well in some other place if there are problems where we are.”

  Some thought it might be even better to go back to the place they’d come from.

  CHAPTER 4

  Mexico

  A Return to Russia

  I was thinking about how Russia had gone from being a utopia to holding a place of horror in our hearts. The Mennonites there went from having everything to losing it all, and then we were driven from the land.

  These thoughts distracted me as I rode several hours north of Cuauhtémoc on a two-lane strip of tarmac that passed through the farmland of northern Mexico. I’d been in the colonies for several days, and it felt good to ride the open highway on my bike again, the howl of the engine opening my mind to daydreams. Row upon row of corn and soybeans flashed by with rhythmic conformity. The land had just enough contours to it that approaching cars dipped in and out of view as they crossed the hills. The farms had tin windmills and fences and trees in rigid straight lines against the hazy backdrop of the Sierra Madre Occidental range. We’d had it just as good as this in Russia and look what had happened. Again and again.