The 1912 Exodus of Mormon Colonists From Mexico

Jane E. Holt

The 1912 Exodus of Mormon Colonists from Mexico

In the summer of 1912, nearly four thousand Americans living in Mexico flooded across the border into Dog Springs, New Mexico; Douglas, Arizona; and El Paso, Texas.  They were fleeing from the wrath of the Mexican Revolution. Twenty-five years earlier they fled south to escape from the United States government and its anti-polygamy statutes.

          The Edmonds-Tucker Act of 1887 was the strongest in series of anti-polygamy legislation passed by the U.S. Congress. This act compounded the sanctions of the previous acts (Morrill in 1862 and Edmonds in 1882). In addition to making polygamy a felony punishable by five years in prison and a $500 fine, the Edmonds-Tucker Act disenfranchised polygamists.  They were prohibited from holding public office, buying property, voting, or serving on juries. Worse still, it required plural wives to testify against their husbands (VanWagoner, 1989). 

The official posture of the Latter-day Saints (Mormons) was that plural marriage was a religious right protected by the Constitution. Congress and the Supreme Court disagreed.  The practice continued regardless of the legislation bringing many Mormon families into conflict with the United States government. It also created the greatest obstacle to Utah’s achieving statehood.  Mormon polygamy officially ended with the issuance of the Manifesto in 1890. Only marriages entered into before the Morrill Act of 1862 were allowed to remain legal in the eyes of the law.

Many polygamist families, tired of the harassment by federal marshals, left the United States to establish colonies in Mexico. Beginning in 1885, Mormon authorities began negotiating with the President Diaz of Mexico to allow settlement in the northern states of Sonora and Chihuahua.  By 1887 houses were under construction and farms were being cultivated. There were some land disputes with local Mexican leaders, but these were resolved and the settlers built their meeting houses, churches, mills, businesses, and homes out of sturdy materials intended to endure (Romney, 1938).

Polygamy was illegal in Mexico, but Pres. Diaz and his government turned a blind eye. Not all the colonists were polygamists, but the majority was. Other Mormons immigrated to Mexico to take advantage of property ownership opportunities (Hardy, 1963). 

          Life in the Mexican wilderness was fraught with hardship, but the Mormons did in Mexico what they did so successfully in the western states; they worked together and prospered. President Diaz liked the Mormon settlers. He recognized the general improvements they made to the infrastructure of the country; irrigation systems, schools, cultivation, roads, and the benefits of increased trade with the neighboring settlements. By 1912, the colonist’s population numbered 4,225 with property valued in the millions of dollars. There were eight colonies by 1912; Colonia Diaz, Colonia Juarez, Colonia Dublan, Colonia Pacheco, Colonia Oaxaca, Colonia Garcia, Colonia Morelos, and Chuichupa.