Building a Polygamous Zion in Mexico: Mormon Exiles, Statelessness, and Whiteness in the Late 19th Century

In the spring of 1885, a small group of Mormon exiles arrived on the plains of northwestern Chihuahua, not far from the town of La Ascensión. Their move was a response to an 1884 letter to regional Mormon authorities, Church President John Taylor (Brigham Young’s successor) suggested that the United States was no longer a nation that would protect religious liberty and that polygamous Mormons should seek refuge south of the border in Mexico. Mormon refugees in Mexico, then, believed that they had left their nation (some for the second time) because it had failed to protect their basic religious rights. In Mexico, they hoped to find protections for their religious freedoms—especially the continued practice of polygamous marriages.

            This paper evaluates the actions of Mormon colonists in Mexico within the context of their status as refugees and potentially stateless persons. Unlike many political refugees that later fled Mexico for the United States during the Mexican Revolution, many Mormon migrants to Mexico put down roots in their adoptive nation and naturalized as Mexican citizens. Still others, however, maintained their ties to the United States and returned when they were able to do so. As historian W. Paul Reeve has recently argued, Mormons were not considered “white” in the context of late nineteenth century United States social and political relations. In Mexico, however, they were never considered anything other than white. Mormon migration to Mexico illustrates the complicated overlap of religious and ethnic categories in the late nineteenth century. By relocating to another nation state in North America, Mormons sought to solidify rights denied them in the United States due to their perceived sexual transgressions and their status as not-quite-white.