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Mennonite Paraguayan Foodways

Community

⚠ A DISTINCT COMMUNITY, NOT A PARAGUAYAN REGIONAL VARIANT. Mennonites settled the central Chaco from 1927 — Russian-Mennonite families from Canada, then refugees from the Soviet Union — at Filadelfia, Loma Plata and Neuland, on land whose Indigenous inhabitants were already there and with whom the relationship has been complex and unequal. They built the cooperative DAIRY industry that now supplies much of Paraguay, plus beef, peanut and sesame production. The kitchen is Russian-Mennonite: zwieback, borscht, vareniki, plümemooss, cured sausage and cheese — Plautdietsch and German-speaking, in the middle of a Guaraní-speaking country.

Atlas — where and when

Where in the world

Communities and languages

  • Mennonites community documented

Languages: German

What is recorded

  • Mennonite communities settled the central Paraguayan Chaco from 1927 and built the cooperative dairy industry that supplies much of the country. Their foodways are Russian-Mennonite and Plautdietsch-speaking and are recorded as a distinct community system, not as a Paraguayan regional variant. The settlement occurred on land already inhabited by Indigenous peoples and that relationship has been unequal. documented
  • Mennonite settlement of the central Chaco — Russian-Mennonite families from Canada, then refugees from the Soviet Union — founding Filadelfia, Loma Plata and Neuland and the cooperative dairy industry. documented

Related foodways

This foodway relates to

  • related to German Foodways documented

    A Russian-Mennonite kitchen — zwieback, borscht, vareniki — in the middle of a Guaraní-speaking country.

Recorded as relating to this foodway

  • related to Mennonite Foodways in Belize documented

    Two Mennonite agricultural settlements in Latin America with the same origin and the same cooperative dairy pattern.

Recipes

No recipes are filed under this cuisine yet.