Title: On the Front Lines of the Chaco War (1932-35): Locating Mennonite Settlers Amid Twentieth Century Latin America’s Largest Interstate Conflict.
This session will focus on telling the story of the Mennonite settlers in Paraguay as they dealt with the Chaco War. Ben Nobbs-Thiessen provides insight into the issues of peace and war in relation to the Mennonites who settled there.
Speaker Bio: Ben Nobbs-Thiessen (PhD, Emory University 2016) is the Chair in Mennonite Studies and an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Winnipeg. He also serves as editor of the Journal of Mennonite Studies and is a co-director of the Centre for Transnational Mennonite Studies. His research explores the movements of Mennonites and other migrant communities across the frontiers of the Americas and has involved archival research and oral history in Bolivia, Paraguay, Mexico, Canada, and the United States. His first book, Landscape of Migration: Mobility and Environmental Change on Bolivia’s Tropical Frontier since 1952 was published with UNC Press in 2020.