![]() ![]() The Bolivian government wanted to populate a strategically important region of the country with people who would be loyal to them, and who would, in their estimation, improve its economy. They joined a smaller group of Paraguayan Mennonites who had already established themselves there. Mennonites migrated from Mexico to Bolivia between 19 in order to preserve the most traditional elements of their way of life, away from encroaching ideas of progress and larger urban centers. First of all, the community was isolated on purpose. And yet there are some very Bolivia elements to the story. The maps in the film were based either on allusions to place in the book (rather than the well-known street village pattern of settlement) or to an otherworldly place that is no place, a Foucauldian heterotopia of horrors. ![]() The problem with this is that it has stopped being a story about these Old Colony Women. I hope that Kerry Fast’s post in this series will give us more of that perspective. Indeed, as I noted in a 2016 article that I wrote about Bolivian reporting on the events, I could not find recordings or statements of or by women affected by the events. Unfortunately, much like the novel, and most reporting, it is not based on women’s versions of events. The film, I think, tries to use these events to comment on the universal experience of sexualized violence and rape – the many positive reviews of the film focus on how this rings true, and I would emphasize that the film’s comments on the criminal legal system are true in Bolivia and anywhere else. As I have shown in my previous academic work, when Old Colony Mennonites (and related groups) in Mexico and in Bolivia, are portrayed either as too perfect, or prone to crime or other questionable behavior, this says more about the surrounding culture and how it conceives of nationhood than of the particular group in question (listen to a brief summary of the book here). ![]() Films like Silent Light have reached international acclaim for similar reasons (see my discussion of this on the Just Plain Wrong podcast). The events were covered by international news media in English, as well as national and international news in Spanish, and I believe it was so well reported because Mennonites (like Amish people) often attract attention when the community deviates from the idealized portrayals that I believe are rooted in problematic white supremacist ideas. These events reached international attention. In 2009, the Bolivian authorities arrested nine men, and in 2011, it convicted seven of them for the crimes of rendering women unconscious via horse tranquilizer and raping them. This is a common accusation levied against victims of sexualized violence and rape, and, as experts in trauma have demonstrated, survivors typically do not have memories of the events that can be shared in a logical, narrative order, that would satisfy the demands of any legal system. Others in their community accused them of fabricating the events from what was called a “wild female imagination.” Between 20, women in the Manitoba Colony of Old Colony Mennonites in Bolivia reported waking up after experiencing various forms of sexualized violence, including rape, and not having any memory of what had happened. Sarah Polley, 2022) is based on Miriam Toews’ 2018 novel of the same name.īoth the film and the book bring events from 2005 to 2011 to life. This blog post will contextualize Women Talking by examining the events on which it is based and alluding to the history of the portrayals of Old Colony Mennonites across the Americas. Janzen is a scholar of gender, disability and religious studies in Mexican literature and culture whose research focuses on excluded populations in Mexico. She is Associate Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. This week’s post comes from Anabaptist Historians’ contributor Rebecca Janzen.
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