Emmie Hoebens is conducting research in Mexico in a Mennonite community with roots in the Low Countries: ‘Mennonites fascinate me’

10 October 2025 Research news item

If you search carefully in the vicinity of the Mexican coastal town of Bacalar, you might just come across a settlement that resembles a nineteenth-century farming hamlet in Friesland or Drenthe. This is home to a Mennonite religious community that ended up in Mexico after many wanderings. They live completely isolated from the outside world. Anthropologist and linguist Emmie Hoebens spent eight years researching the language and culture of this fascinating community as an external PhD candidate. ‘You still come across names like Hendrik or Anna.’

During the Reformation in the sixteenth century, several Catholic church leaders rebelled against the Catholic Church. The Frisian pastor Menno Simons became the church father of the Anabaptists in the Low Countries. He preached absolute non-violence, a sober life, and an emphasis on the community. The Mennonites were persecuted by Catholics and Protestant reformers in the sixteenth century, causing many to leave the Low Countries. They first moved to the Polish-Prussian coastal region and later to what is now Ukraine. In the nineteenth century, they settled in Canada and the United States, after which groups travelled on to various countries in Latin America in the twentieth century.

This is how Emmie Hoebens first came into contact with Mennonites. She worked as an anthropologist in Mexico for almost thirty years. She knew that communities of Mennonites lived in Mexico and Belize, where she also conducted research, if only because Mexicans sometimes remarked, “te pareces menonita” (you look like a Mennonite). Her good friend and fellow researcher Ewald Hekking always said, ‘When we have time, we'll research this.’

Waiting politely outside

That idea faded into the background, especially after Hoebens returned to the Netherlands in 2004 to work as a Dutch teacher. Until 2017. 'Then Ewald called and reminded me of our plan. We got in touch with a former colleague from the Mexican school of anthropology and supervisor of a student who had written a thesis on a community of about 1,800 Mennonites in the municipality of Bacalar. Through her, we had access to the community. She told us about a deaf-mute girl who was eligible for a cochlear implant, but had to arrange this through the regular healthcare system. We were able to help with this because we were more familiar with Mexican bureaucracy.'

Although contact had already been established through the ex-colleague, it was not easy to get in touch with people in this insular community. Hoebens remembers the first meeting well. 'You arrive at a house and wait politely for someone to come out and ask you what you want. That is the custom among them. Children playing outside saw us standing, and after a while, they ran inside to warn their parents. Then chairs were placed in a circle outside and we started talking. They asked if we were the people who could help the girl and, in a mixture of Dutch and German, we were able to have a reasonably good conversation with the Mennonites, who speak Plautdietsch, also called Mennonite Low German.’

In the years that followed, Hoebens did fieldwork in Bacalar every year, except for the COVID year of 2020. Communication was not easily established. ‘When I was there for a month and a half in 2018, I felt quite desperate at times because people hardly wanted to talk.’ But persistence pays off. ‘After a while, they recognized me and greeted me cautiously. With the same nods and hand gestures they use with each other. Old Colony Mennonites are reserved in socializing.’ Although Hoebens did not establish deep connections with everyone, she has now formed good relationships with several families and individuals.

Not sports, but playing pranks

In Bacalar, Hoebens experienced the austere lifestyle of the Mennonites up close. ‘During one of my first visits, I brought some toy balls for the children, but they don't play sports. Reading for pleasure or artistic tendencies are also frowned upon.’ Nevertheless, there are moments of relaxation. On Wednesdays from around four o'clock and on Sunday afternoons after lunch, young people aged fifteen and older are allowed to go outside. They sing a little, stroll through the community or play pranks, for example by climbing onto the roof of the shop. ‘These are the moments when boys and girls get to know each other. They have some fun and may meet someone they like.’

Hoebens immersed herself in the culture of the Mennonites to discover more about them, particularly their language. ‘The language they speak and write is crucial in preserving the community. Plautdietsch prevents members of the community from coming into contact with the outside world. At the same time, communities need commercial contacts to trade their harvests to survive. This makes it necessary to have members who speak Spanish.’

Secretly using phones

In addition to language, new technologies, apart from agricultural machinery, pose a threat to Mennonite communities. Here, too, you see differences between more modern and more traditional communities. ‘In Chihuahua, for example, they use the internet, smartphones and pick-up trucks. According to the Mennonites in Bacalar, their kin in Chihuahua are no longer true Mennonites. Conversely, people in Chihuahua say that those in Bacalar are hypocrites because there are also Mennonites there who secretly use telephones.’

Indeed, Hoebens witnessed firsthand the struggle over whether to use certain technologies. ‘The central question is always: “Does this tool benefit or harm the community?”. Of course, telephones are useful; they facilitate communication, but they also provide access to countless worldly matters. That is why they have kept telephones out of Bacalar until now.’ The use of tractors presents a similar dilemma. ‘They are instrumental in agriculture, but young people can also use them to drive to surrounding villages. As an interim solution, they have therefore opted for tractors with steel wheels.’

Hoebens remains fascinated by how the Mennonites have managed to preserve their language and culture for about five centuries. ‘It’s like they have conserved a part of the sixteenth-century Low Countries.’ At the same time, Hoebens foresees that pressure from modern environmentalists, the Mexican government and modern missionaries will make it increasingly difficult for them to maintain their way of life. ‘How long can the communities keep the outside world out? The possibilities for this isolated existence are becoming increasingly limited.’

Contact information

Organizational unit: Faculty of Arts, Radboud Institute for Culture and History, Department of Modern Languages and Cultures
Theme: History, International, Art & Culture, Language