May 11, 1996|By CHICAGO TRIBUNE
COLONIA LUZ Y ESPERANZA, Paraguay -- The name of this Mennonite colony, set amid the red-dirt soybean fields and palm trees of rural eastern Paraguay, is Light and Hope. But there is little of either.
Land-hungry peasants toting shotguns have come into the colony's fields, seeking to evict the American-born Mennonites from the land.
The Rev. Philip Eichorn, the colony's minister and leader, has been shot at and forced to get police protection. Thefts of everything from farm equipment to animals are rampant.
"We feel sure about Christ's teaching about being defenseless, not hurting others to protect ourselves," Eichorn says. But his wife, Delilah, talks about installing burglar bars and an alarm system.
Some thieves aren't so easily deterred.
The colony recently got a call from a notary public in Asuncion, asking if they had recently sold some land.
It turned out that forgers had created false title to 3,700 acres of the colony's land and sold it three times in two months.
Now the pages of the local land registry showing the colony's 1967 purchase of the property have vanished; the community's land titles will probably be tied up in court for years.
Living the simple life just isn't that simple anymore for Paraguay's 25,000 Mennonites, most of whom came here decades ago from the United States and Canada seeking greater peace and isolation in South America.
"We're continually under pressure," says Delilah Eichorn, who wears the traditional Mennonite blue dress and white cap. "We never know when it will be our turn."
The heart of the problem facing Paraguay's Mennonites is a paradoxical lack of land in a once sparsely populated country.
Just three decades ago Paraguay was recruiting farmers to settle vast tracts and bring them into production.
But today the country's Guarani Indians are pushing to reclaim traditional lands that cover much of the country.
Organized by politicians
Landless peasants, some organized by politicians, are trying to win land of their own.
And the Mennonites, particularly those who live in the more heavily populated eastern half of Paraguay, are coming under pressure.
Most live a simple life akin to that called for by Menno Simons, the 16th-century religious reformer and the movement's namesake who led a breakaway pacifist group in Switzerland.
Followers look to the Bible for guidance in life, try to raise their children without outside influences and to keep a small, respectful distance from the tumult of government and politics.
Among themselves, the Mennonites of eastern Paraguay speak Pennsylvania Dutch. But many also know Spanish, English or Guarani, Paraguay's second official language behind Spanish.
And they have a pragmatic view about technology: The Eichorns' small wooden farmhouse, set amid tropical hibiscus bushes at the end of a dirt road, has no telephone, television or radio but does have an electric refrigerator, washing machine and fan. The men farm with tractors, not horses.
"Medium conservative"
"We're not against modern technology. What can be used for good we use," Philip Eichorn says. "I guess you'd call us medium conservative traditional."
The 15-family colony was established in 1966-1967 by Eichorn's parents and another Pennsylvania family that wanted to bring their religion to Paraguay.
Today Eichorn and other colony members still take a break from their soybean fields and dairy cattle once a week to travel to two nearby prisons to distribute Bibles and talk with the inmates.
The colony also runs a birth clinic that last year delivered 517 babies, nearly all of them to non-Mennonites who come from as far as 70 miles away.
"These things give us a cause worth living for," Philip Eichorn says. Over the years, converts have grown to represent a third of the Mennonites in the country.
But that growth has barely kept up with the rush of Mennonites leaving Paraguay, which has the largest concentration of Mennonites in South America.
One of the Luz y Esperanza families is moving this month to Ohio, tired of the growing crime and land worries, according to Andrew Weaver, a visiting schoolteacher from Pennsylvania.
Other Mennonite families, especially those in the remote western Chaco region, the heart of Mennonite traditionalism, are moving to Bolivia, in hope of finding greater isolation.
But a growing number of Mennonite leaders warn that in a world that offers ever fewer remote places, followers would do better to adapt to the world than to flee it.
"The way I see it, some have come to believe in tradition, not faith," says Jacob Heinrich, an elder from Sommerfeld, a more conservative colony of red barns and lime groves just down the road from Luz y Esperanza.
Last year he was ejected from the colony for urging the teaching of Spanish in school and promoting non-traditional subjects such as social science and geography.
But Heinrich Ratzlaff, Paraguay's first Mennonite congressman, suggests that such change is inevitable:
