The Other Mexicans

A few days ago, my wife and I met a relatively tall, white woman who was wearing a long, dark dress with flowers on it, and a head covering.  She speaks both English and Spanish, with a very heavy Germanic accent, and, of course, a dialect of Low German.  When my wife told her she was Mexican, she replied:

“Well, so am I.  I’m Mexican.  I was born there and I lived there all of my life.”

She is a part of the Old Colony Mennonite culture, which has grown so strong in Mexico, that many people informally call these people Mexican Mennonites.

I am very familiar with this culture, since my parents grew up as part of the Old Colony community in Mexico, and I grew up with close contact to the community in Canada; my parents have also retained a good number of the cultural traits, such as making cheese (see my post 2 days ago about Mennonite cheese) and the language.  However, I was still a little taken back to hear this woman call herself Mexican without any hesitation.  I’m also officially Mexican, but my first and also official nationality is Canadian (I was born here.)

This woman would have no other nationality to be if she weren’t Mexican.  Her grandparents were probably Canadian (the Old Colony Mennonites in Mexico came mostly from the Canadian Prairies), but until a few years ago, she had never been here, and would have no official claim to being Canadian, and only a weak cultural claim.

So, although Mexicans themselves would probably have trouble acknowledging it, and even many Mennonites erroneously refer to themselves as “Germans” (this claim would be like Australians calling themselves British,) they are in reality Mexicans.  A very different type of Mexican from the typical, but nevertheless Mexicans.  They speak a different language, wear different clothes, eat different food (although they are adopting some Mexican cooking traditions) and they are definitely not touchy-feely like other Mexicans.

Furthermore, Catholicism has nothing to do with any part of their life – Mennonite is also a group of Christian churches.  Almost every Latin Mexican is either Catholic or decisively non-Catholic, being very conscious of what they are rejecting, since just about everyone else around them is at least nominally Catholic.  Old Colony Mennonites have held their religious culture for centuries and have long since lost the cultural background of Catholicism to pit themselves against. (More on this will soon come in my other blog, Imagine)

This reflects a point that Mexico, despite our perception of a single culture, is actually multi-cultural in a way, and a melting-pot in another way, having adopted and adapted elements of a variety of cultures brought by invaders and immigrants.

More to come on multiculturalism in Mexico and Old Colony Mennonites.  Since it’s my own ethnic heritage, I’m fairly intrigued by it, and being back in Canada, I’m coming into more contact with it again.