This paper examines how the migration of Old Colony Mennonites to Maya territory in southeastern Mexico represents a form of fugitivity that both resists and reproduces colonial logics, drawing on religious myths to fuel eschatological visions of utopia.
This paper emerges from participatory action research conducted in Maya ancestral territory, at the invitation of a Maya collective of seed guardians who raised alarm at the influx of Mennonite colonists in the last 40 years, and the resulting deforestation and agro-chemical contamination of groundwater. The Maya collective invited us, members of a Coalition of Mennonites in the United States and Canada, to work with them in clarifying the interests, values, and concerns of their Mennonite neighbors, with the goal of seeking pathways for mutual wellbeing for both Maya and Mennonite communities.
Through ethnographic accounts, we explore how Old Colony Mennonite communities narrate their relationships with both land and their core scriptural texts – the bible, the catechism, and the songbook. We suggest that Old Colony Mennonite communities, through the practices of their everyday lives, are engaged in processes of scripturalization, which religious scholar Jacqueline Hidalgo defines as "the making of people and place through a complex set of power relations practiced in relationship to texts."[i] This paper takes an interest in the contradictions that arise in Old Colony Mennonite communities as they attempt to enshrine a particular vision of freedom through separatist and self-sufficient colonies, while also participating in global, agro-industrial systems.
In conversation with religious scholars Jacqueline Hidalgo and Stephen Moore, we argue that there is a strong analogy between the utopic communities that Old Colony Mennonites are attempting to create, and the utopic/apocalyptic visions held in the book of Revelation.[ii] Both envision a "New Jerusalem" set apart from "Rome"—or in the Mennonite case, the modern nation-state. Revelation's utopic vision also holds the temptation to reproduce the very structures of the Roman Empire it seeks to resist. Similarly, Old Colony Mennonite communities, through their processes of engaging with scripture, reinscribe colonial logics of production that harm the land and neighboring Maya communities. This stands in tension with Mennonites’ dependence on land for their livelihoods, and their resolute theological commitments to pacifism.
We further this analysis through engagement with theologian Willie Jennings and biblical scholar Mari Jørsted, who help us trace the formation of Mennonite racial identity through the ruptures and re-piecing of their relationships with land and the more-than-human world.[iii] This re-piecing of identity has happened as Mennonites have repeatedly fled from state control in the name of pacifism and religious freedom – from the Netherlands to Prussia, Ukraine, Canada, Mexico, and now throughout Latin America and Africa.
We see these patterns of migration as being indicative of a vision of fugitive freedom, and consistent with Jacqueline Hidalgo’s account of utopias. Utopia, as Hidalgo recognizes, is a Greek pun that combines “good place” (eu-topos) and “no place” (ou-topos).[iv] In the book of Revelation, Hidalgo suggests, the New Jerusalem is the enigmatic utopia. In Mennonite colonies, villages are designed around horse-and-buggy travel, replicating 18th century Russian colony structures. These villages are the material expressions of a “good place” that exists independent of geographical context – a “no place” that can be recreated anywhere.
Maya seed guardian networks offer crucial witness to this dynamic. While Mennonites interpret ecological changes—drought, insect pressure, soil erosion—through eschatological frames that absolve them from responsibility, Maya seed guardians recognize these changes as consequences of re-inscribed colonial violence, manifested through agro-industrial practices. Yet instead of responding with retribution, Maya communities call Mennonites into relationship and accountability, offering their own myths and metaphors centered on interdependence rather than separation.
Apocalyptic narratives and metaphors have long been used to interpret and convey experiences of displacement and migration. This continues to be true in a time when climate change is intensifying migration. This paper provides insight into how such religious frames can foster accountability and connection, while also creating a shield, preventing communities from recognizing their participation in economic, political, ecological, and spiritual violences.
We attempt to complicate binary understandings of resistance and complicity by examining how Old Colony Mennonites —themselves historically persecuted— perpetuate colonial violence even as they seek to free themselves from entanglement with the state. In doing so, we demonstrate how migration narratives framed through religious myths and metaphors can offer both possibilities for liberation and justify harm. This recognition ultimately invites careful consideration of the complex interplay in experiences of migration between fugitivity, freedom, and the reproduction of power and violence.
[i]Jacqueline Hidalgo, Revelation in Aztlán: Scriptures, Utopias, and the Chicano Movement (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 4.
[ii]Stephen Moore, Untold Tales from the Book of Revelation: Sex and Gender, Empire, and Ecology (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2014); Hidalgo, Revelation in Aztlán: Scriptures, Utopias, and the Chicano Movement.
[iii] Willie James Jennings, The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010); Mari Jørstad, The Hebrew Bible and Environmental Ethics: Humans, Nonhumans, and the Living Landscape (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019).
[iv]Hidalgo, Revelation in Aztlán: Scriptures, Utopias, and the Chicano Movement, 40.
This paper examines how the migration of Old Colony Mennonites to Maya territory in southeastern Mexico represents a form of fugitivity that simultaneously resists and reproduces colonial logics, drawing on religious myths to fuel eschatological visions of utopia. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with both Mennonite and Maya communities, this paper focuses on Mennonite narrations of their relationship with land and scriptural texts to understand how Mennonites envision “a good place.” The paper explores the contradictions that arise as Mennonite communities attempt to enshrine particular freedoms through separatist communities while participating in agro-industrial systems that damage ecosystems and neighboring Indigenous communities. We interpret these contradictions through a reading of analogous visions of utopia in Mennonite communities and in the book of Revelation. In doing so, we aim to complicate binary understandings of resistance and complicity to power structures, suggesting that utopic visions of freedom can simultaneously offer possibilities for liberation and justifications of harm.