Why Mormon church offshoots fled to Mexico

Families originally went to practice polygamy

PHOENIX – The family members attacked Monday in an ambush in Mexico highlight the history of fundamentalist members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- day Saints who originally fled from the USA to Mexico to practice polygamy.

The victims, including nine women and children who were slain, were members of a religious community in the state of Sonora and had dual U. S. and Mexican citizenship.

Mormon families from

Utah began settling in Chihuahua and Sonora in the mid- 1880s as the U. S. placed restrictions on polygamy. The practice of polygamy has mostly been abandoned in the communities in Mexico, experts said.

The Mormons did not want to abandon their wives and families, so they moved to Mexico, said Gordon Bluth, a Queen Creek, Arizona, businessman who was born in one such community in Mexico and has studied the history of Mormons in Mexico.

Under an agreement with the Mexican government, the Mormons purchased 100,000 acres of land and established eight colonias, or towns, in the states of Chihuahua and Sonora.

More Mormon families from the church’s fundamentalist wing began flocking to Mexico after the church officially banned polygamy in 1890.

Most of the families moved back to the USA after the Mexican Revolution erupted in 1910 but began to return after the war, Bluth said.

Bluth was born in Colonia Dublán, the same town where former Michigan Gov. George Romney was born and raised. He was the father of Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee who is a U. S. senator from Utah.

Bluth, 64, said he left Colonia Dublán in 1974 when he was 19 and moved to the USA. He said he still owns a pecan orchard in Colonia Dublán and frequently returns to the town. He said many of the people who live in colonias in Chihuahua and Sonora have roots in Mexico that go back decades.

There is a diverse mix. Not all remain fundamentalists and many still consider themselves part of the LDS church, he said. Most speak Spanish and English equally well, he said.

“When they speak Spanish, you can’t tell they speak English, and when they speak English, you can’t tell they speak Spanish. They have no accent in either language,” Bluth said.

Many of the families living in the colonias in Mexico have both Mexican and U. S. citizenship because their parents gave birth at hospitals in border communities in the USA or because they have at least one parent who is a U. S. citizen, he said. Their loyalties are more Mexican.

“They are Mexicans with ties to the U. S.,” Bluth said. “Just like there are brown people living in the U. S., these are white people living in Mexico.”

One of the eight colonias, Colonia LeBaron, was founded by Alma Dayer LeBaron in the 1920s. LeBaron was among the fundamentalist Mormons who moved to Mexico to evade U. S. law enforcement and continue practicing polygamy. One of his sons, Ervil, founded his own fundamentalist polygamist church, called the Church of the Firstborn, that took on a cult following in the 1970s. He ordered the killing of his rivals and justified violence with the religious doctrine of blood atonement. He was arrested and extradited from Mexico to Utah, where he was sentenced to life in prison. He died in 1981.

The Church of the Firstborn mostly dissolved after LeBaron’s death, and polygamy is no longer common in Colonia LeBaron or in other Mormon colonies, Bluth said.

The people who were ambushed Monday were traveling from Colonia Bavispe, in Sonora where they lived, to a wedding in Colonia LeBaron in Chihuahua, said Leah Staddon, a relative who lives in Queen Creek.

Although some of those killed shared the same last name of LeBaron, they belonged to a separate community called La Mora and had no ties to the Church of the Firstborn, said Cristina Rosetti, a Salt Lake City- based scholar on Mormon fundamentalists in Mexico.

“They are Mexicans with ties to the U. S. Just like there are brown people living in the U. S., these are white people living in Mexico.” Gordon Bluth, a Queen Creek, Arizona, businessman who has studied the history of Mormons in Mexico