Why are there Mormon colonies in Chihuahua, Mexico?
The straightforward answer is religious freedom sought by their respective founders. In other words, the right to practice polygamy.
The Mormons arrived in Mexico’s biggest state with scouts in the region as early as 1875. This move across the border was spurred on by increasing persecution of the tradition of polygamy in the early Mormon church.
Mexico’s iron hand premier, Porfirio Diaz, welcomed them and the idea of developing agriculture in the sparsely populated northern reaches of the country. As a result of this openness, church leaders purchased 60,000 acres of land, and the Mormon migration to Mexico from the US intensified as the Anti-Polgamy Edmunds Act was ratified by the US Congress in 1882.
Mormon immigrants settled in northwest Chihuahua, in the wider Casas Grandes area, founding seven different colonies and even three settlements in Sonora by the 1890s. Four thousand Mormon colonists were counted in 1895 as residing in Chihuahua and Sonora.
The chaos of the Mexican Revolution directly impacted the Mormon colonies as foreign targets for different factions, as they were there at the invitation of the former dictatorship. This resulted in three different mass departures of Mormons to the safety of the U.S. side of the border.
Photograph of Latter-day Saint plural spouses, ca. 1878–1885. Photo by Charles Weitfle.
Many of these revolution war refugees would establish the Mormon colony of Binghampton in Tucson on the Rillito River.
Two of the original ten Mormon communities in northern Mexico continue to this day. They are Colonia Juárez, close to Casas Grandes, and Colonia Dublán located on the northern outskirts of Nuevo Casas Grandes.
Want to visit the Mormon community of Colonia Juárez? Join us on our upcoming Casas Grandes & Paquimé Tour.