Jason Pinas (The Guardian) reports from Klaaskreek, Suriname. He writes about the possible immigration of Mennonite farmers to Suriname: “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.”
Tempers are running high in Klaaskreek, a village 50 miles south of Suriname’s capital, Paramaribo. Local officials and residents meet weekly to pool what they know about three groups of unwelcome new settlers in the area: Mennonite farmers.
Klaaskreek is located in Brokopondo, a hilly district predominantly settled by Saamaka Maroons, who fled from the plantations during the days of slavery. The area, newly popular with tourists, is known for its 1960s-era reservoir and hydroelectric plant, timber concessions, goldmines and fertile land. It is this last resource that is proving attractive to Mennonites.
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.
In a country scarred by colonialism and the legacy of slavery, what bothers local people most is the lack of detailed information from the government about the new settlements. Suriname’s president, Chandrikapersad Santokhi, has said only that the government granted permission to settle to 50 Mennonite families, who will most likely come from Bolivia. According to Santokhi, it will be a three-year pilot project. “The state will not provide land to the group. They will also not be eligible for land belonging to tribal communities,” the president assured parliament recently.
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.
Souverein confirmed to the Guardian that 50 Mennonite families from Bolivia, Belize and Mexico intend to settle in the country. On their behalf, Terra Invest is looking for a total of 50,000 hectares (125,000 acres) of land, to be divided between the three communities. “That’s the same as 0.4% of Suriname’s land,” he says, showing the official letter in which the president of Suriname confirms the settlements.
[. . .] 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. Adding to the unease is the isolated and secretive nature of Mennonite communities. In 2009, a Mennonite settlement in Bolivia made world news when it was revealed that more than 130 women and girls had been drugged and raped by a group of men from within the same conservative and enclosed community between 2005 and 2009.
[. . .] Often, Mennonites’ large-scale agriculture uses modern machinery, agrochemicals and genetically modified seeds. “We know very little about these people. They are a closed community that does not fit our culture,” says Yvonne Pinas, recently installed as another chief in Klaaskreek. “We are friendly people, free and open with everyone.”
Local Indigenous groups and Maroon tribes find the president’s statement misleading and disingenuous because, so far, all of the areas that are supposedly of interest to the Mennonite farmers are inhabited by Indigenous and tribal peoples. [. . .]
The organisations want the government to reconsider its decision, especially since Suriname, with about 93% forest cover, is the most forested country in the world. Of the eight Amazon countries, Suriname and Guyana are the only ones where large-scale deforestation has not yet occurred.
Suriname is also one of only 11 countries with high forest-low deforestation (HFLD) status, through which it seeks to get funding through carbon credits. David Singh, director of WWF Guianas, says: “The Mennonite way of agriculture, which we are familiar with in other parts of South America, does not square with Suriname’s commitment to maintaining 93% forest cover.”
[. . .] Rudi van Kanten, director at Tropenbos Suriname, says: “If large-scale deforestation is introduced in Suriname, there is a good chance we will lose our HFLD status. That could seriously damage our image as the greenest country in the world.
“We are not against agriculture, but there are other ways to do it, like agroforesting or agrotourism,” Van Kanten says. “Deforestation dishonours the whole biodiversity.” [. . .]
For full article, see https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/dec/15/suriname-indigenous-tensions-mennonite-christian-sect-farm-settle-amazon-deforestation
[Photo above by L Wiltse/Corbis/Getty: Mennonite community in Bolivia.]
Jason Pinas (The Guardian) reports from Klaaskreek, Suriname. He writes about the possible immigration of Mennonite farmers to Suriname: “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.” Tempers are running high in Klaaskreek, a village 50 miles south
