Editorial: These are our people
In June 2009, two men were caught breaking and entering a home on the Manitoba colony in Bolivia, and the series of rapes that had begun four years earlier appeared to end. According to a report by Ross Muir of the Canadian Mennonite, as many as 130 victims were identified. However, other sources state that more than 150 women and girls and possibly males as well were victims of men who used an animal tranquillizer to sedate victims before assaulting them in their own homes (source).
Award-winning Canadian author Miriam Toews based her 2018 book Women Talking on these events, and in December 2022 a movie from Sarah Polley based on the book was released in theatres to generally positive reviews but also some frustration from those with first-hand knowledge or experience on the colonies.
This story, as foreign as it may seem to most of us, is very connected to EMC.
My own Kleine Gemeinde-founded hometown includes the account of a large segment of the church migrating to Mexico in response to the threat of outside influence (1948–1950). They and other groups from other EMC* villages settled in Mexico and Paraguay, and from there, many moved again in later decades to Belize and Bolivia for the same reason—fear of the outside world. Our Kleine Gemeinde siblings may or may not be part of the Manitoba colony—the migrations are hard to track—but that was the route taken by Manitoba colony residents.
We are also connected to Miriam Toews, author of Women Talking. Toews was baptized in and later left another Mennonite church in Steinbach, but she was raised in an EMC church, her father a committed member who never missed a Sunday. Toews incorporates aspects of her own story in her novels, one of which sparked a lot of anger here in her hometown. A Complicated Kindness is hard to read when you’re a Steinbach-area Mennonite. I found myself alternately pulled into the profound sadness her lead characters express in humorous and quirky ways and cringing at her portrayals of Mennonites and our faith. Yet her church background is probably the reason the conversations in Women Talking about forgiveness and peace feel so familiar, reflecting more EMC theology than that of the colony on which the story is based, right down to the foot-washing scene, something which is not done on colonies but certainly was in EMC churches in her childhood.
Finally, we are connected to the Mennonite colonies of Bolivia because EMC workers minister there. Our work in Bolivia began in 2013 when Henry and Caroline Krahn and John and Helen Froese were accepted by EMC missions and joined EMMC and EBMC churches already serving colonies through Misión Evangélica Menonita (MEM).
From many angles, the story of Women Talking is a story of our people.
In this issue of GT, we begin with the movie itself. Our three reviews are from Andrew Reimer, who, like author Miriam Toews is a descendent of Kleine Gemeinde founder Klaas R. Reimer and, like her, grew up in Steinbach, but 35 years later; Brigitte Toews, who became part of the EMC family by choice as an adult; and Ward Parkinson, a pastor who has served in the EMC for several decades but didn’t grow up Mennonite. Each of them is far enough from our church’s cultural history to view the movie on its own terms.
That isn’t the case for people who have lived on a colony like the one portrayed in the movie or who have worked with people who do. Though they acknowledged Toews’ statement that the story she tells is fiction, their focus was on the events themselves, the reports behind the news reports, doubts about the guilt of the accused that have surfaced since events made world news and the ongoing tragedy of sexual abuse on colonies and the inability to end the cycle. The movie was frustrating for them, yet a few of them expressed the wish that people living on the colonies could view it. It might help, they said.
*The Canadian “Kleine Gemeinde” changed their name to “Evangelical Mennonite Church” in 1952 and then to “Evangelical Mennonite Conference” in 1960.
For an excellent and much fuller treatment of the actual story, see The Ghost Rapes of Bolivia by journalist Jean Friedman-Rudovsky
For more on how women on colonies actually do respond to abuse, on the extent of abuse, and the hold leaders have on colonies, continue reading here. (Taken from interviews with people of EMC and related conferences who have worked with and counselled colony members.)
Find out more about Miriam Toews in this 2019 interview by Alexandra Schwartz of The New Yorker Miriam Toews Reckons with Her Mennonite Past | The New Yorker.
