Word: lande
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...began at a Mennonite caucus in Canada where the church members decided that they would look for a new promised land, a remote country in which to found a farming colony. Such migrations are nothing new to the Mennonites, who number about 600,000 worldwide. Founded in 1525 in Zurich, Switzerland, and named for Menno Simons, a Roman Catholic priest who became their most famous leader, the group insisted on voluntary adult baptism, which earned it the hostility of both Catholics and established Protestant churches. Devout and pacifist, the Mennonites repeatedly had to flee persecution; some groups from Germany...
Bishop Henry Reimer, the Mennonites' spiritual leader, visited farm land in Missouri and Oklahoma before deciding on west Texas?in part because someone in Texas apparently assured him that his people would automatically receive U.S. citizenship if they bought land there. Settlers from both Canada and Mexico then sold their homes, pooled their savings and paid $455,000 down ($264 an acre, about $70 more per acre than the going price) on the $1.7 million, 6,400-acre Seven-O Ranch outside of Seminole, a town that calls itself "the city with a future." They drew lots for the land...
...Mennonites got their first crop in, but it was not much of a crop. For one, oil companies owned the water rights to the greater part of their land, and that limited their ability to irrigate. They could not meet a $225,000 mortgage payment. This month the ranch was put up at public auction, and former Owner Dennis Nix and his bank bought it back for $1,151,000. After losing most of their life savings, the Mennonites still face deportation, since it is considered doubtful that Bentsen's bill will pass...
...start farming," says Seminole Mayor Bob Clark. "They were just getting some bad advice?or someone was deceiving them." Says Reimer: "Rumors, rumors, all is rumors. But I cannot explain to them myself how it happened." Says Seth Woltz, a real estate appraiser who helped sell the Mennonites the land: "They had very few questions about the deal when we closed it. As far as their immigrant rights?what do I know about immigration...
...declared Bishop Abel Muzorewa, one of the four members of Rhodesia's biracial "interim" government, in a stem-winding speech to a group of black and white voters at the close of the country's historic ten-week election campaign. His vision of his violence-racked land's future was important, for he is soon to become the first black Prime Minister of Rhodesia, or Zimbabwe-Rhodesia as it is henceforth to be known. Last week voting for the first time on the basis of a universal balloting, the country's black population elected 72 members of a new parliament...