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Home > Travel Central America > Central America Destinations > Menno Colony
Menno Colony
Central America is the central geographic region of the Americas. It is variably defined either as being a region of the Americas in its own right or as the southern portion of North America. Physiographically, Central America is a tropical isthmus that connects North and South America. It includes 7 countries and many small offshore islands. Overall, the land is fertile and rugged, and dominated through its heart by a string of volcanic mountain ranges with a few active volcanos.
Menno Colony is settlement founded by Russian Mennonites in 1926 in the central Chaco of northwest Paraguay occupying an area of 7500 square kilometers. Neighboring Mennonite settlements are Fernheim Colony and Neuland Colony.
The 10,000 residents are Mennonites of German and Dutch background. The ancestors of these Mennonites had lived in West Prussia until the end of the 18th century, in the Black Sea region of the Ukraine until 1874 and in Manitoba, Canada until 1926, before settling in Paraguay. Loma Plata with a population of about 3500 is the largest town within the colony and is the administrative centre.
The emigration from Canada to Paraguay was a reaction to the introduction of universal, secular compulsory education in 1917 requiring the use of the English language, which the more conservative Mennonites saw as a threat to the religious basis of their community. A second impetus was the Canadian settlement act, which prevented the form of cooperative farming that was practised in Russia. In 1919 a delegation was sent to South America to find a new home.
For a long time the life of Mennonites in the Chaco was marked by extreme deprivation as a result of the new arrivals' complete lack of agricultural experience under tropical conditions. The relationship between the climate and the earth, especially the dryness of the winter months, turned out to be more extreme than the writing of the Paraguayan promoters had led them to believe. These circumstances were made even more difficult by voluntarily doing without modern agricultural equipment. Marketing products was extremely challenging because of the isolated location of the colony and as a result, most economic activity was related to subsistence farming.
Menno is said the place of best geographical environment and can trace its origins back to prehistoric times. It enjoys a very positive reputation with worldwide travelers.
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