The Mormon Colonies of Northern Mexico

The Mormon Colonies of Northern Mexico
By Karl Young from American West Mag.
Host: Doug “They Were Preppers”

The Mormon Colonies of Northern Mexico

South from the border town of Columbus, New Mexico, the Mormon settlements extended like beads on a string all the way to the Sierra Tarhumare: Colonia Diaz first, about sixty miles below the Mexican border; thirty five miles farther south, Colonia Pacheco; then Colonia Garcia, and finally Chuichupa. All of these Chihuahua towns lay on the east side of the Continental Divide, though the mountain towns were not far from the western slopes of the Sierra Tarahumare. Across the mountains, in Sonora, were two other colonies, Morelos and Oaxaca. In name and place the towns were Mexican; but their origins were in the United States, and the story of their foundation was one of the last chapters in the history of the long flight of the Latter-Day Saints.

The history of the Mexican colonies may be said to have begun in 1852, when Bringham Young announced publicly the doctrine of plural marriage. That the Constitution of the United States contained no strictures against polygamy, that it expressly guaranteed religious freedom, that Mormon marriage involved a temple ceremony and held a basic place in the Mormon concept of salvation gave Young and his people a misplaced confidence in their right to offend the mores of an American public not only ignorant of the theological justification of Mormon polygamy but emotionally incapable of accepting it in any case.

Congress responded to popular indignation at Mormon “immorality” in 1862, but the resulting Morrill Act proved an ineffectual bar to polygamy, as prosecution of offenders lay in the jurisdiction of local courts controlled by Mormons.
Read: History of Mormon Colonies in Mexico HERE
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