Tag Archives: Tres Culturas Region

“Very Steady Steps Toward Education”: 50 Years of Education Reform in Chihuahua’s Southern Mennonite Colonies

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Along with the introduction of electricity, vehicles, and running water during the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, during tumultuous times of community and colony reorganization in Chihuahua’s southern Mennonite colonies near the city of Cuauhtémoc, in Mexico’s Tres Culturas Region, one of changes that most deeply impacted daily life for Mennonite residents was the wide-reaching education reform that completely changed the educational landscape in the colonies over the course of fifty years, providing a greater level of educational access and diversity of school experiences within the Campos Menonitas, which still continues to impact education in all but the most traditional communities to this day.

Until the late 1960s, schooling in the Tres Culturas Region of Chihuahua followed the traditional Darpe Schule model beginning with Fiebla (basic reading and writing) around age six and continuing with Katekjisem (catechism) and Jesankbuak (hymnal), and ending with Bibel (Bible) around age thirteen with basic arithmetic also integrated throughout. In this model, which is still used today in the most traditional communities, instruction is given by one male teacher in High German in a one-room schoolhouse and involves recitation, dictation, and Langeviese singing and has an end goal of preparing students for baptism and daily life within the traditional Darpe community. Billy Froese, who attended a traditional Darpe Schule in the 1980s, described his experiences to the Rebels, Exiles, and Bridge Builders: Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Campos Menonitas of Chihuahua Oral History Project,

The girls are on one side, the guys are one side. That can also be a punishment. You go sit with the girls. And I at one time thought that was a punishment! But the fule Benkj” is the “lazy bench.” And if you’re not doing your work, up there beside the teacher, there’s a bench. This hard bench. And you go sit up there. Of course, there were spankings, stuff like that. But they had these big windows. And you had to stand in the window, facing the street [if you got in trouble]. I just remember the teacher coming to my desk and putting the pen in my right hand. Or the chalk. Whatever it was then. We had those little Tofels too. Those little chalk boards. And the chalk. So, he would start me off writing, and then he would leave. And I would just put it back in my left hand….My experiences, my most memorable experiences in the school aren’t positive. They’re interesting, but not so positive. It was usually getting punished.

Education reform occurred first in the Manitoba Colony and then was implemented later in the Swift Current, Ojo de la Yegua, and Jagueyes colonies. In each colony and each Darp within individual colonies, reforms were propelled by external and internal factors and often came in waves. Reforms were implemented at different times and to different degrees depending on the community and educational infrastructure, pedagogy and curriculum remains in flux across the Mennonite colonies in the Tres Culturas Region.

One of the largest external factors impacting reform, was the establishment of the Álvaro Obregón school in the Quinta Lupita community, located near the outskirts of Cuauhtémoc at the edge of the Manitoba Colony by Mennonite missionaries from Canada’s General Conference in the late 1960’s. The founding of the Álvaro Obregón school was followed in subsequent years by mission churches and schools from other Mennonite conferences as well as other from other denominations, such as the German Church of God. These schools had multiple instructors and classrooms divided by age, a wider range of subjects including geography and history, and instruction in Spanish. These schools became known as Konferensa (Conference) schools because of their association either directly or indirectly with General Conference missionaries and churches and enrolled students not only from their congregations, but also students from more traditional backgrounds whose parents were interested in educational options that were different from the traditional Darpe Schule.

At times, Konferensa churches, particularly with the assistance of missionaries of Canada, would build relationships with a much more traditional community and launch a school within the community primarily designed to serve traditional students, but with a more modern pedagogy and academically diverse curriculum, which included Spanish, like in Konferensa schools. With the introduction of Spanish into the curriculum, Mestizo teachers began working in Mennonite schools for the first time as Spanish language instructors and gained access and proximity to traditional communities that was previously unheard of. One of these teachers, Diana Sandoval Arballo, who began teaching in 1998 at a school launched in the Ojo de la Yegua Colony by Iglesia Anabautista Ebenezer, a Spanish-speaking Mennonite church in Cuauhtémoc whose congregation is about evenly split between Mestizo-Mennonite converts, ethnic Low-German Mennonites and Mestizo and Mennonite couples and their bicultural children, shared her experiences in 2018 with the Rebels, Exiles, and Bridge Builders: Cross-cultural encounter in the Campos Menonitas of Chihuahua Oral History Project

The church at Campo 67, in a Mennonite community, was looking for a Mestiza teacher, but with Mennonite faith, to work in the community. So, they invited me to go to work for a year, and I accepted. And that was the first time I had direct contact with the more traditional Mennonite community….I lived in the Campo. There was a couple that were teachers, and another couple that were the pastors. So, I worked with these teachers and lived with the pastors. But I lived in the community from Monday to Friday, and for the weekend I returned to Cuauhtémoc, to my house…The first years it was difficult. For them it was difficult seeing and living with a Mestiza in the middle of the community. Maybe my way of dressing was also different, and that drew attention. There was also a bit of fear, because they had someone unknown and didn’t know who I was, what I was going to teach, what I was trying to do…. I came for one year and I stayed 20, but I think my biggest motivation has always been to serve and I think that I have a desire because God uses me to be able to serve. And I saw that this would be the way the God would use me. Teaching people the faith, mainly, that is my first goal, and the second is, well, the language. And I also believe that one of the things that has always impassioned me is that they can see that the Mestizo culture is different than the idea that they have always had in their head. That I think is one of the biggest motivations in my life. And also, I fell in love with the Mennonite culture. For me, it was never difficult being with them. I can’t say that there was anything I had to sacrifice, it was a pleasure.

Though external intervention from Conference churches and schools, which included the transformational role of teachers like Diana Sandoval Arballo, played a large part in implementing education reform in the Tres Culturas Region, it would not have been possible without internal proponents for school reform, like Peter Rempel Enns, whose lifelong advocacy for education reform in the Mennonite Campos was chronicled by the State of Chihuahua’s Mennonite Resource Office’s 2016 publication, Hombres y mujeres menonitas destacados: Caminos inspirantes (Outstanding Mennonite Men and Women: Inspirational Paths). These local advocates for school reform were concerned about what they perceived to be low educational standards, low levels of literacy among graduates, harsh punishments, and an incomplete curriculum. Often advocates for school reform, particularly those within more traditional communities faced strong backlash from community leadership and some were excommunicated for their stances; however, as more families chose Konferensa schools at the same time that tensions were high in traditional communities concerning increased business and social relationships between Mennonite and Mestizo communities, the use of vehicles with rubber tires, and the introduction of electricity, questions began to arise with traditional church leadership about the best path forward concerning education. Some remained steadfast in their Darpe Schule model, but many more began to make small, but significant changes to their education systems.

Faced with external and internal pressures for school reform, Kleingemeinde and Old Colony communities sought a solution that they felt would allow them to raise their academic standards while maintaining their distinctive values and cultural practices. Beginning in 1995, through the MCC and a variety of other Mennonite aid agencies, they built relationships with Amish communities and schools in the United States and began receiving Amish teachers, not just in the Campos Menonitas of Chihuahua, but across Mexico, to teach in Kleingemeinde and Old Colony schools, and to assist in the restructuring of administration, curriculum, and assessment. (This topic is addressed more in depth in Rebecca Janzen’s 2019 Anabaptist Historians blog post, “How Much to Change: Amish Teachers in Mexico.”)

Perhaps the most significant impact to education in the Tres Culturas Region in recent history, was when many private, Mennonite church schools began seeking accreditation from Mexico’s Secretary of Public Education (SEP). SEP accredited Mennonite schools have to meet specific national curriculum, assessment, achievement and enrollment standards, but are allowed to have religious instruction and maintain cultural practices. While the majority of SEP Mennonite schools only include Primaria (Grades 1-6) and Secundaria (Grades 7-9), which are the levels of compulsory education in Mexico and the most common level of education among Gen-Z Mennonites in the Campos, particularly among those from less traditional communities, a few SEP Mennonite schools offer Preparatoria (Grades 10-11/12), which was previously only available at non-Mennonite public and private schools in Cuauhtémoc.

More and more students from the Campos have been going to study at the universities in Cuauhtémoc and Chihuahua. Even some of the most traditional Darpe Schule in the region have been taking steps to examine educational practices and standards within their cultural context. Adults from traditional backgrounds are beginning to finish SEP accredited Primaria and Secundaria schooling through ICHEA (The Chihuahuan Institute for Adult Education), while other traditional adults, including Peter Rempel, the principal of a Kleingemeinde school in the Manitoba Colony, who shared his experiences with the Rebels, Exiles, and Bridge Builders: Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Campos Menonitas of Chihuahua Oral History Project, have taken advantage of a government program called Prepa Abierta to finish their high school equivalency online. From Darpe Schule to high schools that prep students for university and everything in between, the Campos Menonitas in the Tres Culturas Region have an educational diversity that is unique and 50 years in the making.

From her teacher housing, provided to her by the SEP school that serves traditional students in Campo 38 ½ where she currently works, Diana Sandoval Arballo looked out her window into the Darp and commented on the changes that she had seen during her 20 years as a Spanish instructor in Mennonite schools

Over the course of years, the parents became more interested in the education of their children. They saw it as more important, the fact that they could learn. And they are more motivated to make the school grow. I think it happens with the passing of the years. They have lost the fear towards education, that is different than what they got. And they have been motivated more so that their children can go further, even though they learn different things, they dream of being a doctor, not just working in agriculture. So, I think that the change in these years that I have been here have been very big and the steps have been very steady toward education.

This Woman Saved Lives: Prohibitions on Midwifery in Post-Revolutionary Mexico

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The following is the second article in the series Trachtmaokas, Parteras, and Midwives: 100 Years of Maternal Care in Chihuahua’s Mennonite Campos

In the years following the Mexican Revolution, a Mennonite midwife, Susanna Shellenberg, whose life and work was referenced in Part 1 of this series on the history of midwifery and maternal care, was ordered by the government to stop attending births and providing the local communities of Cuauhtémoc, Cusihuiriachi, and Santa Rita with herbal remedies. What happened next was the result of a perfect storm of contemporary socio-political and religious dynamics unfolding at the national level, as well as changing sentiments about midwifery and traditional healing that coincided with the development of Mexico’s national public health system and its focus on modernizing medical treatment in rural areas.   

The years following the Mennonites’ arrival in San Antonio de los Arenales (modern-day Cuauhtémoc, Chihuahua, Mexico,) from Canada in 1922, were marked by an intense period of national political and social reorganization following the Mexican Revolution. Pancho Villa’s soldiers in the north and Emiliano Zapata’s soldiers in south and central Mexico, returned home to conditions that were similar under the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz and continued pushing for increased land reform through armed revolt and political action. Some of these conflicts played out in and near the Mennonite Campos, detailed by local historian José Luis Domínguez in his book The Other History of the Mennonites (La Otra Historia de los Menonitas), and led to the creation of the Two Hundred Colony (Colonia Dos Cientos), so called for the 200 pesos paid for in exchange for giving up their claim to land now occupied by Mennonites.1

President Álvaro Obregón, who during his term (1920-1924) granted privilegium to the Mennonites to settle in the state of Chihuahua, enforced land reform provisions that had been laid out in the 1917 Constitution, but had not implemented in practice into the Mexican government’s infrastructure. He was viewed by many as a force that quelled unrest and that navigated the unification and modernization of Mexico, while negotiating increased commercial relations with the United States. However, in years following his term (1926-1929), an armed conflict, known as the Cristero War (La Cristiada), raged in the western and central regions of the country (excluding border states like Chihuahua) between President Plutarco Calles’ anti-clerical forces that advocated for a secular state and the enforcement of punitive “Calles Laws” and the Cristeros who supported the Catholic Church. In 1928, Álvaro Obregón succeeded Calles and was re-elected president, but was assassinated soon after because of his support of Calles and his anti-Catholic policies. A peace between Calles’ forces and the Cristeros and was brokered in 1929 through a complex web of international negotiations, which included a U.S. ambassador, the Knights of Columbus, and representatives from the Vatican.2

The 1930s ushered in the beginning of a period of relative stability and the election of Lázaro Cardenas in 1934 marked an increased push to modernize Mexico, with special attention to its rural areas. This period of reorganization, while tumultuous, shaped the economic, socio-political and religious dynamics in Mexico to this day and gave birth to some of modern Mexico’s institutions such as the Ejidal public land system and the national public health system3 and serves as the historical backdrop to the following oral history testimony concerning a confrontation between a Mennonite midwife, Susana Shellenburg, two local Cuauhtémoc doctors, and the Mexican government.

Coinciding with the drafting of the 1917 Constitution, which focused on land reform, the roles and responsibilities of the secular, centralized federal government, and the protection, fundamental human rights of Mexican citizens, which included healthcare, Mexico also created the first iteration of its national department of public health (Departamento de Salubridad Pública) that focused on the provision of potable water, the prevention and treatment of contagious diseases, and the launching of vaccination campaigns. By 1931, the State Health Services (Servicio de Sanidad de los Estados) was established to build health infrastructure and access in rural areas and was the precursor to the national public health system that Mexico has today that was created in a variety of iterations beginning in the 1940s.4

The following oral history, which was shared with Casa Geburt Midwifery Training School by Susanna Thiessen, Susana Shellenberg’s great-grandaughter, occurs in the midst of these sweeping national public health campaigns and reforms.

“My great-grandmother [Susana Shellenberg] was born in Canada in 1905 and was the wife of Heinrich Shellenberg. Susana learned how to attend births and how to heal the sick with herbs from two traditional Jewish women in Canada.

In 1927, Heinrich, Susana, and their two daughters came to Mexico. At that time, there were no doctors in the Cuauhtémoc area. She immediately began to care for the sick. After some years in Mexico, she also began to provide midwifery services. She served in the Campos Menonitas, as well as in the Mexican ranches. Sometimes, people came for her in the middle of the night in a horse and buggy to take her to attend births or to heal the sick.

Many times, the people were so poor, they couldn’t even offer her a coffee. She attended many births where she didn’t receive payment of any kind. She also took along baby clothes and blankets because she knew that the people didn’t have anything to keep their babies warm.

Some years later, doctors began to arrive in Cuauhtémoc, including Dr. Cazale and Dr. Barba Cornejo. The city had grown with the passing of time. There were people who were jealous of the type of help that Susana was providing and made a legal complaint against her with the government. She had to stop helping people for a time until some Mexican people that she had helped before said, “This woman saved our families’ lives and we want her to continue helping people.” The Mexicans fought for Susana until after some time, the government gave her a permit to be able to continue working freely.”

Despite tensions surrounding land disputes between Mestizos and Mennonites during this period  as well as accusations that the government was giving preference to the Mennonites as a religious group in a state that purported secular governance, Susanna’s rapport with the local Mestizo community was so strong that they came to her defense and demanded that she be allowed to continue to practice. Additionally, the local community’s support of Susanna reveals resistance of many within the rural population to embrace the modern medical infrastructure they felt was being imposed on them by outsiders from Mexico City. To avoid additional unrest in an already delicate socio-political, economic and religious environment, the government conceded to the will of local Cuauhtémoc residents and Susanna was allowed to continue to practice.    

Though the Mestizo residents advocated on behalf of Susanna Shellenberg and she was given a special permit by the government to continue practicing, Susana’s story is representative of a common theme occurring at that time in Mexico. As medicine became professionalized in Mexico, midwifery was seen as a threat to medical practice the woman-centered model of maternal provided by midwives was replaced by an almost exclusively male, professional medical establishment, which in keeping with commonly held views of the time, viewed pregnancy and birth through the lens of pathology and did not provide women a voice or position within the new modern medical system.

Doctor María Graciela Freyermuth Enciso, a researcher for Mexico’s National Social Development Policy Institute (CONEVAL) and a social anthropologist who focuses on maternal health and midwifery while simultaneously chronicling the history of midwifery in Mexico writes, “Midwifery almost went extinct in Mexico….midwives were criticized by doctors and didn’t have a voice in that transition.”5 Though Susanna continued to work as a midwife and herbal healer for the remainder of her life, she was the exception not the rule.

Susanna Thiessen describes her great-grandmother’s work after she was given permission by the government to begin practicing again saying,   

“My great-grandmother continued her work out of her home where she had a small clinic and saw patients freely. Sometimes, people had kidney problems and she attended to them for weeks in her home. At first, she ordered the products for her natural remedies from Germany, but there was a problem with the package delivery and she began to place orders with Mexican companies. She needed these herbs to care for sick patients. Sometimes, she sold a little of the medicine, but very cheaply, because many times people didn’t have money.

She had two books with medicinal recipes and she made many of the remedies herself. She worked into her old age. She was eighty years old when she attended her last birth and it was the birth of her great-grandson, her granddaughter’s son. This child’s mother said that this child who was born with his great-grandmother was stronger than the other children who were born in hospitals with doctors.”

By the 1980s, when Susanna Shellenberg died, births in the Tres Culturas Region with the exception of the most rural and marginalized women from Mestizo, Mennonite, and Rarámuri backgrounds, were almost exclusively attended in hospitals. The vast majority of these births were performed by C-section, which matched trends nationally. Though the national health system drastically improved health outcomes in many areas, particularly in the prevention and treatment of infectious disease, the maternal and infant mortality rates, particularly in rural areas of Mexico, remain so high that World Health Organization, federal, state and local governments, and health care workers in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors are continuing to seek the development of community health models and culturally responsive maternal care that will improve mortality outcomes.6

Part 3 of this series will explore the beginnings of the resurgence of midwifery in Mexico generally and the Mennonite Campos specifically, exploring the origins nurse midwives who beginning in the 1970s, began practicing integrating the knowledge and community trust held by traditional midwives with modern medical training, giving particular attention to the experiences of a nurse and midwife who is still practicing in the Campos today, Aganetha Loewen Wiens.   

[Oral History translated from German to Spanish by Sara Banman, a graduate of Casa Geburt’s midwifery training school, also currently working in the Campos Menonitas.]

[Oral History translated from Spanish to English by Abigail Carl-Klassen.]

Read part one of Trachtmaokas, Parteras, and Midwives: 100 Years of Maternal Care in Chihuahua’s Mennonite Campos

1. José Luis Domínguez. La otra historia de los menonitas. (Chihuahua: Ediciones Kleidi, 2015)↩

2. Michael J. Gonzales. The Mexican Revolution 1910-1940 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2002)↩

3. Ana Cecilia Rodríguez de Romo and Martha Eugenia Rodríguez Pérez. Historia de la salud pública en México: siglos XIX y XX. História, Ciências, Saúde-Manguinhos, no. 2 (1998): 293-310. ↩

4. Ibid.↩

5. María Graciela Freyermuth Enciso. La historia de partería en México. CIESAS. (YouTube, June 4, 2019). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=\4g8C426u-Ak&t=2050s↩

6. Progress and Prospects: Bringing Midwifery Back to Mexico. (MacArthur Foundation, November 12, 2019). https://www.macfound.org/press/grantee-stories/progress-and-prospects-bringing-midwives-back-mexico/↩

Trajchtmoakas, Parteras, and Midwives: 100 Years of Maternal Care in Chihuahua’s Mennonite Campos

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Abigail Carl-Klassen

This article is the first in a series investigating the history of Mennonite midwives and doulas in the Tres Culturas region of Chihuahua, Mexico, including personal narratives of Mennonite midwives in the Campos, past and present and as well as an exploration of the intersection of midwifery training, culturally appropriate care and public health outcomes in the Tres Culturas Region.

On the surface it would appear that Catalina Schroder and Susanna (Fast) Shellenburg lived very different lives and embodied the differences and tensions that existed between traditional and non-traditional Mennonite communities in Mexico during their lifetimes, which spanned from the early 1900’s to the last quarter of the twentieth century. However, differences in country of origin, dress, religious and cultural practices, and approaches to education did not keep them from building bridges between communities and providing maternal care to women from all ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds in region surrounding Cuauhtémoc, Chihuahua, for nearly sixty years.

Catalina, who married her husband after a nontraditional courtship (which included learning to cook from her fiancé) was formally educated as a midwife in what is now modern-day Ukraine. The young family arrived in the Mexican state of Veracruz in 1926 via a ship from Russia, fleeing violence and religious persecution. Eventually, after many delays, including the loss of newly-issued government documents in a fire, they made their way north to Cuauhtémoc in the state of Chihuahua along with small number of other Low-German-speaking Mennonites who had immigrated directly to Mexico from Russia with the hopes of settling alongside five thousand Low-German-speaking Altkolonier Mennonites who arrived from Canada in 1922, after negotiating a Privelegium from President Álvaro Obregón.

Catalina’s grandson, Walter Rempening Rico, pastor of Templo Ebenezer, a Spanish-speaking Mennonite congregation in Cuauhtémoc, shared with the Rebels, Exiles, and Bridge Builders Oral History Project (REBB) in 2018 how his grandmother, grandfather and their young children settled in the city of Cuauhtémoc and quickly integrated into many aspects of local Mexican culture because Mennonites from Russia were not allowed to live in the nearby Altkolonier colonies because of their less traditional lifestyle, dress and approach to education. Despite community prohibitions, Catalina worked tirelessly as a Trajchtmoaka, a sobadora (bonesetter), and midwife, and was, highly sought after to attend births for traditional Mennonite women and was beloved in the traditional, non-traditional, and Mestizo communities she served. 

Susanna Shellenberg, on the other hand, was a traditional Altkolonier Mennonite woman from Canada who arrived in Mexico with her husband Heinrich and young daughters in 1927 and was able to live in the traditional Mennonite Darpe, which was settled many kilometers outside of Cuauhtémoc in the years following the initial 1922 migration from Canada. 

In Canada, Susanna had trained under two Orthodox Jewish women as a midwife and herbal healer, and she continued her work upon her arrival in Mexico. Her granddaughter, Susanna Thiessen, who is also a midwife, related in a recent interview with Casa Geburt, a midwifery and doula training school and birthing center located in the Campos Menonitas about twenty minutes north of Cuauhtémoc, “At that time there were no doctors in the Cuauhtémoc area. She immediately began to care for the sick. After some years in Mexico, she also began to provide midwifery services. She served in the Campos Menonitas, as well as in the Mexican ranches. Sometimes, people came for her in the middle of the night in a horse and buggy to take her to attend births or to heal the sick. Many times the people were so poor, they couldn’t even offer her a coffee. She attended many births where she didn’t receive payment of any kind. She also took along baby clothes and blankets because she knew that the people didn’t have anything to keep their babies warm.”

Susanna worked as a midwife until she was eighty years old. Near the end of her life, after she had attended her last birth, the birth of her great-grandson, she was asked about the number of babies she helped bring into the world and she responded, “How many births have I attended? I don’t know. I never wrote it down. For me, it is good that God knows.”

Since the days of Catalina Schroder and Susanna Shellenberg, midwives in the Campos from traditional and non-traditional communities have occupied a vital role in community life and have been at the center of changing dynamics in the region over last century. There is a strong heritage of midwifery in each of Cuauhtémoc’s three cultures (from which the Tres Culturas Region derives its name): Mennonite, Mestizo, and Indigenous Rarámuri Pueblo. Midwives in each community, while distinct, are powerful advocates for women who are marginalized because of language, ethnicity and/or socio-economic status and serve as public health practitioners and educators in some of the most at-risk and underserved regions for maternal and child health in the country. Often operating at the margins of the official community rules, subverting taboos surrounding reproductive health, pregnancy and breastfeeding, midwives in the Mennonite communities of Chihuahua have always been invaluable in the creation of support networks between women and as agents of cross-cultural women’s solidarity and as bridge builders between communities that have historically experienced tension for a variety of cultural, economic and socio-political reasons. 

The next article with further explore Susanna Shellenberg’s life and experiences as a midwife and will include perspectives from her great-granddaughter Susanna Thiessen who, in keeping with family tradition, is a midwife in the Campos Menonitas of Chihuahua.