Mormon ranches and agribusiness aren't the only religious groups taking up lots of land.


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https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/dec/15/suriname-indigenous-tensions-mennonite-christian-sect-farm-settle-amazon-deforestation

Secretive Christian sect poised to carve big farms out of the Amazon, despite concerns of Indigenous people about the settlers’ deforestation elsewhere in Latin America


The Mennonites are a Christian sect that originated in the Netherlands, Switzerland and Germany in the 16th century, following the teachings of the Anabaptist preacher and religious reformer Menno Simons. Seeking seclusion, religious freedom and agricultural land for their large families, Mennonite groups, who often speak a Dutch-German dialect, started settling in Latin America more than 100 years ago after migrating from western Europe to Russia and from there to the Americas.

The company behind the arrival of the Mennonite settlers is Terra Invest, which is owned by Ruud Souverein, a Dutch businessman based in Suriname, and his Argentinian business partner, Adrián Barbero. Souverein says he has been working with Mennonites for three years and that Barbero has been doing the same in Latin American countries for 25 years.

The businessman says that land prospecting continues, and they still do not know exactly where the settlements will be based. “There is a very important road from the airport to the west, called the Road to West Suriname,” Souverein says. “In that area, called Nickerie, there are a lot of plots of land that are very good for the Mennonites.”

Part of the concern around the settlers’ arrival stems from the fact that Mennonite communities have been held responsible for extensive environmental damage in many countries, including Mexico, Bolivia, Colombia, Belize, Peru and Brazil.

In Peru alone, the settlers have been accused of deforesting more than 7,000 hectares of Amazon rainforest since their arrival in 2017, according to a study by the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project.

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Ouch. More farmers in the rainforest, where they will within a few years learn that the topsoil is exceptionally thin and cannot sustain agriculture over the longer term. Then they'll either have to abandon their colonies or, more likely, bribe officials to let them move farther into the forest and being the process all over again.

I wonder why the government favors rich outsiders over poor indigenous people. Hard to fathom, isn't it?

Brazil has 18% of the world’s potable water. I worked for an investment banker who was buying up Brazilian farm land like crazy. He told me fresh water is what the world will fight over in the future. It will be a valuable resource.

The LDS Church knows this. They buy up all the land with water rights they can get. They even got into a bidding war with Bill Gates over some land.

South America is very corrupt and nothing that goes on down there surprises me.

> South America is very corrupt and nothing that
> goes on down there surprises me.

Yes, that was my point.

One of the biggest obstacles to rainforest preservation is the fact that the main countries--Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the DRC--lack the state capacity to fend off loggers, ranchers, and slash-and-burn agriculturalists. The farmers are the least influential of those lobbies, but even they have vastly more power than the rainforest tribes.

Money talks, forests burn.

I hate to see people buying case after case of individual water bottles, I’ve seen a pallet of them disappear into shopping carts in an hour or two.

SHAME SHAME SHAME

OTOH, it’s good they’re available for disaster victims & other displaced (unhoused) people.

I live in a rather remote area of Washington State; state voters have not voted in bottle deposits bc of anti-deposit lobbying efforts.

(Having been associated with Mennos in Ohio & Seattle…)

There are some observed differences - distinctions within the Mennonite faith; I choose not to fellowship with the local (Sequim) group bc they’re far away from other ‘western’ Mennonites.

I know nothing regarding European Mennonites including their motives, means or their regards for land, resources or people.

I hope locals all over the world manage their own affairs a lot better than indigenous Americans did after Europeans arrived in America.

Kind of hard to manage your own affairs well when you get hit with small pox and when who’s invading your territory has superior technology and you are in the way of their progress.

Guns, germs, and steel.

Religious types hated it.

Excellent book. The PBS series is good, too. Don’t know if it’s still available.

The Guardian's main concern is that it can't get advertising revenue off that crowd. In the meantime it will happily take money from McDonalds, Monsanto or whichever despoiling billionaire will fund it. The worst culprit just now is the Brazilian government, but that would wreck the narrative of Lula good, Bolsonaro bad.

Grauniad Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The Guardian's main concern is that it can't get
> advertising revenue off that crowd. In the
> meantime it will happily take money from
> McDonalds, Monsanto or whichever despoiling
> billionaire will fund it. The worst culprit just
> now is the Brazilian government, but that would
> wreck the narrative of Lula good, Bolsonaro bad.

Didn't McDonalds sue over claims they were destroying the rainforest?

If Only those people would pay tithing, Everything would be OK!

Bonus if they have gold tooth fillings removed & donated!!

I have certain unavoidable triggers in my brain. Any discussion of Mennonites automatically reminds me of that poor, excommunicated Amish girl...

The case had something to do with two Mennonite.

Sorry. Please resume your serious discussion.

...at least you did start with "three Mennonites went into a bar..."

Okay, here goes.

Three Mennonites walked into a bar and asked the mustachioed foreigner behind the counter for shots of liquor with worms, at which point dagny and Nightingale, who were in town because they'd heard what happens in Tijuana stays in Tijuana, lost their tacos and beat a hasty retreat to the Courtyard by Marriott across the street.

    
    

There are so many ways in which one could reply to that. . .

I was just in Mesa AZ, at one of those snowbird mobile home villages - about a thousand units, two thousand people. About half of the people were Canadian. The unit I rented was owned by a Manitoban.

I am going to Mexico next month and staying with a Canadian friend who spends a month down there every January..

I have been mocked for years by the same Canadian friends because they routinely had winter vacation in Cuba, and I wasn't allowed to go to Cuba. On top of which, they were pissed off at the US, because the US would not let Canadian flights to Cuba pass through US airspace. When you are in Manitoba, it is very inconvenient to have to fly to the Atlantic coast of Canada and then hang a right and fly down the Atlantic to Cuba.

If we had one country, worldwide unity, with pro football teams (either variety) in the Hawaii and Samoa archipelagos, along with all the other mainland areas, Sunday football games would be on TV for 24 or more hours as the Earth majestically rotated its curvy, spherical butt beneath an exultant Sol.

Earth would be renowned for having the Sol of a warrior ... or whatever...

No spoilers in my post, but the second link will lead you to spoilers.

The movie won an Oscar for best adapted screenplay. I watched it last week (streaming on Amazon). It’s an amazing discussion about agency, religion, power and forgiveness.

The movie is based on a book with the same title. The book is based on true events, but the dialogue is fiction.


Movie
https://www.mgm.com/titles/women-talking/

Book
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_Talking_(novel)

I saw the movie when it first came out. It was one of the very few movies in my life where my first thought when I left the theater was that I have to watch that again. The content came so thick and fast it was like standing in front of a firehose.

Part of my fascination was that I lived in Manitoba for a couple years, and within am radio range for a couple decades. I don’t know Miriam Toews, but I certainly know of her, and had several Toews, likely relatives of hers, as students.

There were many fascinating aspects of the movie, but one that sticks out was watching a group of women with grade school educations, cobble together something like Roberts Rules of Order to guide their discussion and how to decide what to do next.

I was also surprised to see Frances McDormand in what to me was a pretty unsympathetic role. Then there was the young man who had left the colony, gotten an education, and tried to help by being a scribe for the women. They ended up setting firm boundaries on what he could or could not do, no matter how sympathetic he was.

I didn’t make it back to see the movie again, but if it’s on Amazon, I think I will find some time now to watch it. Considering that it is in fact mostly women talking, mostly in one big room, it is a fascinating story. Plus based on an actual event.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/19/2023 12:24PM by Brother Of Jerry.

Yes!

McDormand is one of the producers, and I think she took a back seat so the other actors could shine. Jessie Buckley is one of my favorites, and she and the others were amazing.

One thing: they didn’t even have grade school educations. They were illiterate and only spoke Plautdietsch. So here they are in Bolivia of all places (!!) doing something they have never been allowed to do. They thought for themselves.

A great question they debated was what does pacifism mean within the context of their surroundings (ETA I mean their colony and not Bolivia)? Also, after being gaslit for *years*, how do they know the Bible says what the men tell them it says?

The book is also good. Most of the important dialogue in the movie is verbatim. I'd write more, but again, no spoilers from me.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/19/2023 01:43PM by Beth.