Mennonites in Latin America: Historical Sketches

In 2005, Jaime Prieto of Universidad B?blica Latinoamericana, San Jos?, Costa Rica, broke new ground by being the first person to give the Menno Simons Lectures at Bethel College in Spanish. Now the Wedel Series does the same by publishing both the original Spanish and the English translation.

Prieto examines the topic of "Anabaptists in Latin America" from several unusual angles. First, he looks at a typology for Anabaptist church groups in the region, dividing them into three groups: those of foreign missionary origin; those of immigrant origin (e.g., Germans who came to Paraguay in 1926, 1929 and 1947-49); and those of Latin American origin (e.g., the K'ekchi' Mennonites in Altaverapaz, Guatemala, the Amor Viviente churches in Honduras). Reflecting on the typology and the diversity of models of the church, Prieto says, helps in evaluating ongoing life and mission in Latin American contexts.

Next, Prieto emphasizes the inspiration toward peacemaking, peace-building and nonviolence found in the voices of Latin American children. He recovers two of these voices, one found in a poem written in 1937 by Benjam?n Hugo Luayza, the young son of an Argentinean Mennonite pastor, and the other that of Antonio Mosquera in an oral history recording his schoolboy memories of the persecution of Mennonite Brethren missionaries in Colombia in the 1940s and '50s.

Prieto also highlights the importance of understanding Latin American Mennonite history from women's perspective as well as men's. He uses the biography of Melita Legiehn Kliewer Nikkel, born in Omsk in Siberia in 1924, who fled Russia with her family at age five for Germany and then the Fernheim Colony in Paraguay, finally settling in Brazil in 1952 after her second marriage.

Finally, Prieto deals with the challenge of missiology and ecclesiology through the vision of Cecilia Espinoza Jim?nez, an indigenous Trique woman from Oaxaca, Mexico. Cecilia's vision, says Prieto, outlines the relationship between heaven and earth and the need to view spirituality from both the vantage point of the Word and the daily struggle for survival that many experience. People like Cecilia, Prieto says, remind us of the need to reconnect to God and nature, and to the importance of collaboration on many levels.