A Mennonite Vendor

There are areas in Mexico where there are farms owned by the Mennonites. The younger members of the community show up from time to time selling cookies and cheese at the traffic lights in the Banderas Bay area. They are always young, the men wearing overalls and straw cowboy hats and the women wearing long dresses and little traditional caps. They don't speak a word of English, just Spanish but with blue eyes and blond hair look for all the world like gringoes.

Comments

[M. Suderman]

Hi, I stumbled onto your blog when researching something, I don't remember what. It is very interesting but as someone from a Mennonite background living in Mexico City since 1992, I take umbrage (ooo, good word!) at your calling the cheese vendors Amish. Not Amish, Mennonite. In fact, many of the Mennonites living in Mexico are related to me. As a culture that was religiously (in all senses of the word) persecuted throughout its existence, the Mennonites have a long history of moving from one place to another in search of religious freedom. My family can be traced back to what is now Holland, then to Prussia, then to the Ukraine, then to Manitoba. I know that in the 1920s, the Canadian government made a law requiring all children to be educated in either French or English. Some of the Mennonites objected, because they wanted to educate their children in German, which had in fact been a condition for them settling a part of Canada that was considered unattractive by many. The most radical of these Mennonites, including many Sudermans, my relatives, moved to Mexico, where they were offered wide expanses of virtually uncultivatable land in Chihuahua and elsewhere. Which is why they turned to other kinds of production, including cheese (queso menonita) and honey.
Just so you know.

BTW Bucerías sounds great. I love the Pacific coast beaches and have been to many of them, but I will have to put this one on my list.

[M. Suderman]

Oh just an aside: perhaps they speak no English, but if you don't speak Spanish you can always talk to them in Plaut Dietsch! (Low German of course)