Attack victims were Mormons

THE nine women and children killed by drug cartel gunmen in northern Mexico lived in a remote farming community where residents with dual US-Mexican citizenship consider themselves Mormon – and many are descended from former members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who fled the US to escape the church’s 19th century ban on polygamy.

La Mora, population less than 1 000, lies in a desert valley ringed by rugged mountains. While many residents identify as Mormon, they also consider themselves independent from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said Cristina Rosetti, a Mormon fundamentalism scholar.

Many of the families living in the area known for growing cotton and grain trace their La Mora origins to the 1950s. A resident said his great grandfather settled there in the late 1890s or early 1900s after leaving the US and was later run back across the border by Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa.

The great grandfather didn’t return, but the resident’s grandfather moved back to La Mora in the 1950s along with others, said the resident.

Although many La Mora residents believe in mainstream Mormonism tenants, they believe “they shouldn’t be forming churches, they shouldn’t be organising under one leader. They should just be Mormon and live their Mormon life,” Rosetti said.

Some of the families living there still practice polygamy while others stopped generations ago, she said.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints earlier this year launched a campaign for people to stop using the shorthand church names “Mormon” and “LDS”.

In explaining his decision to halt the use of nicknames for the faith, church president Russell M Nelson said the Lord impressed upon him the importance of the full name and that leaving it out was “a major victory for Satan.”