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Mormon Colonies in Mexico

LaMond Tullis

n 1847, having been driven from their properties in the midwestern United States, the Mormons secured a new homeland in Mexico's Great Salt Lake Valley, later ceded to the United States in 1848 by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo as a consequence of the Mexican-American War. Within a year the Mormons were sending out colonizing companies throughout the Great Basin in order to establish suitable living sites for the tens of thousands of converts arriving annually. By 1875, the Mormons had explored western Canada and northern Mexico as possible colonization areas. Ten years later (1885) the first Mexican colony was established in Chihuahua (Colonia Juárez), followed soon by eight others--Dublán and Díaz (along with Juárez) on Chihuahua's central plateau; Cave Valley, Pacheco, García, and Chuichupa in Chihuahua's mountains; and Oaxaca and Morelos in the semitropical areas of Sonora.

Mormon leaders had long been interested in Mexico for theological and practical reasons. In 1875 they received positive reports about the Casas Grandes region of Chihuahua from an early Mormon exploring and missionary expedition. They established a mission in Mexico City in 1879 and proceeded to make important and helpful contacts with Mexican federal government officials. Both the knowledge of terrain and the contacts in Mexico served the Mormons well, for U.S. government opposition to plural marriage prompted a new Exodus. The 1882 Edmunds Act penalized severely even those who merely believed in polygamy, and in 1887 the Edmunds-Tucker Act was passed, which shattered the Mormon Church's temporal foundation, abolishing every important Mormon institution including the Church's governing bodies and its schools.

In the early years, before the revolution of 1910 to 1917 that turned Mexico's politics and economics into utter chaos, the Mormon colonies in Chihuahua and Sonora prospered immensely. Within several years of their founding they became economically integrated, trading the goods, produce, and materials that each best produced. By establishing an irrigation system (some of which followed an ancient indigenous canal), farming and associated industries could flourish in the plateau colonies of Juárez and Dublán. The mountain colonies of Cave Valley, Pacheco, García, and Chuichupa were all situated in timbered areas of pine and oak where meadows and trees sustained cattle and timber industries. The semitropical Sonoran colonies of Oaxaca and Morelos, situated on the Bavispe River, yielded valuable produce. In 1892 the Juárez colonists built a canning factory for their abundant orchard fruit and tomatoes.

Concerning Colonia Juárez, the Mormons' flagship colony, Charles W. Kindrich of the U.S. State Department reported in 1899 that the gardens [there] are fragrant with flowers, and the blossoms of the peach, apricot, and plum trees glow in the pure air. Clear water from the Acequia along the hillside flows down the gutter of each cross street. Neat brick residences are nestled amid grapevines and pear trees. . . . From this valley the Mormons have extracted in ten years enough wealth to give them independence. . . . There is a gristmill, a furniture factory, and other industries in Colonia Juárez. There is an academy with five teachers and 400 pupils. It is the policy of the Mormons to erect school-houses before churches and temples. (Review of Reviews 19 (June 1899): 704)