The Sociologists and the Anthropologists: Intellectual Imaginations of Mennonite Settlements in the Paraguayan Chaco

Samuel Boucher

Keywords

Indigenous rights; Barbados Declaration; Miguel Chase-Sardi; ethnocide; Christian missions; Stroessner dictatorship; mental landscapes

Abstract

The debates over Indigenous rights and missionary intervention in Paraguay’s Chaco were shaped not only by international declarations and local conditions but by the sociologists and anthropologists who interpreted—and contested—them. North American sociologists such as J. Winfield Fretz, Jacob Loewen, and Calvin Redekop studied the Mennonite colonies as agents of modern development, weighing the achievements and shortcomings of their mission efforts. The Paraguayan anthropologist Miguel Chase-Sardi cast those same colonists as foreign capitalists exploiting their Indigenous neighbors, drawing international scrutiny through his contribution to the 1971 Barbados Declaration and its charge of ethnocide. The ensuing clash with administrators such as Hans Epp and Edgar Stoesz exposed deep tensions over paternalism, cultural change, faith, and justice, sharpened by Cold War politics under Stroessner. Just as Mennonite migrants had constructed and contested communal narratives in the 1930s and 1940s to make sense of their belonging in the Chaco, these intellectuals built rival mental landscapes in the 1960s and 1970s through which the public and policymakers came to imagine the colonies. Their analyses did not merely document the ground; they actively framed it, shaping the flow of aid, agrarian reform, and the very perceptions—academic and popular—that endure. [First paragraph.]

Recommended Citation

Boucher, Samuel. 2025. "The Sociologists and the Anthropologists: Intellectual Imaginations of Mennonite Settlements in the Paraguayan Chaco." Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies 13(1-2):29–39.