Cultural "Encystment" as a Cause of the Mormon Exodus from Mexico in 1912

Abstract

THE PHENOMENON of racial and national solidarity among immigrants is well established and has been the subject of considerable study.1 Intense feelings of ethnic pride and transported loyalties seem to be the rule more often than the exception with first-generation immigrants. Lowry Nelson observed that such feelings have obtained among Mormon groups in Canada and other alien settings.2 A study of the journals and writings of Mormon settlers in Mexico in the late nineteenth century suggests that, here too, racial, political, and religious attitudes marked the Mormon colonists and set them apart from their adopted Mexican environment. It is the contention of this article that the unwillingness of most Mormon colonists to compromise their traditional loyalties contributed to an uncomfortable cultural isolation and abetted the causes