A Mennonite colony in the middle of the Gran Chaco — the most unexpected efficient town in South America
Filadelfia in Paraguay's Chaco region is the capital of Fernheim, one of three Mennonite colonies established in the 1920s and 30s by German-speaking Mennonites fleeing persecution in the Soviet Union. In the middle of one of South America's harshest environments — the Gran Chaco, a flat, hot, thorn-scrub wilderness with minimal water — the Mennonites built an extraordinarily productive agricultural economy: dairy farms, peanut oil, meat processing, and grain, supplying much of Paraguay's food. The town itself feels like a piece of rural Germany transported to the South American interior — cl…
The Chaco Mennonite colonies were established after Paraguay offered land grants in the 1920s to attract settlers willing to cultivate the almost uninhabitable Chaco region. The Fernheim colony (of which Filadelfia is the capital) was founded in 1930 by Mennonites who had briefly settled in Brazil before moving on. They arrived with minimal equipment in a landscape without roads, water, or infrastructure, and built the colony through cooperative labour over decades. The Chaco War between Bolivia and Paraguay (1932–35) was fought partly in the Mennonite colonized area — the settlers helped the…