Four face U.S. charges in $750,000 drug arrest
By Sarah Treffinger and John Caniglia
January 28, 2003

What is the world coming to? Cleveland Police busted four Mennonite men for trying to sell $300,000 worth of cocaine... the men were from Mexico (Mexican Mennonites? Named Isaac, Henrich, Frank and Cornelius??) and tried to smuggle the drugs under the hood of their car. What's next — Amish terrorists?
— David Fox

Yes, Dave, there really are Mexican Mennonites. It's a little known fact (even to some Mexicans, I guess) but there is a Mennonite community in Northen Mexico; it's located in the San Antonio Valley in Chihuahua, the largest state in Mexico (which, how appropriate, borders the largest state in the US of A, Texas).

According to authorities, the cargo consisted of "22 pounds of cocaine, 87 pounds of marijuana and 21 Ecstasy tablets [with] a 'street value' of $750,000." But the detained (Frank Wiebe, Cornelius Neufeld, Henrich Wiebe and Isaac Friesen) are actually Canadian citizens living in Mexico — or so they claim.

Canadians living in Mexico? What's going on here? Maybe we can find an answer looking at he history of Mennonites in Mexico:

The mennonites first arrived from Canada to Chihuahua in 1922 at the invitation of President Álvaro Obregón. What the Mexican goverment seeked to gain were farmers that would settle land that belonged to William Randolph Hearst, which was taken from him when foreign landowners were expelled from the country after the Mexican Revolution of 1910. To sweeten the deal, the Mennonites were offered exemption from Mexico's educational laws and obligatory military service; this appealed to the Mennonites, who do not believe in educating their children beyond the sixth grade (for fear they become too worldly and abandon their religion) neither in serving on the military, practices that had put them in trouble with the Canadian government. The Mennonites bought the land and the Mexican government kept their part of the deal, topping it with a 50-year tax exemption. 20,000 Mennonites originally moved in from Canada; today they number around 50,000, and are known chiefly for the cheeses they produce.

So there you have it, how four Canadian Mennonites could be living in Mexico. Too bad they didn't opt for smuggling some fine cheeses instead of narcotics into the country; I'm sure the penalty for that would have been less harsh.