Carlos Casado Company

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The Carlos Casado Company is an international agriculture company based in Argentina. By the 1920s it owned three million acres of land in the Paraguayan Chaco, the largest tract of privately owned land in the world. In 1926, it sold 463 387 acres[1] of this land to the Corporación Paraguaya, founded to facilitate Mennonite immigration to Paraguay. The Corporación Paraguaya resold this land to the Mennonite immigrants who formed Menno Colony, Fernheim Colony, and other Paraguayan colonies.

The company was most directly involved with the first Mennonite settlers in Paraguay, the Canadian Mennonites who founded Menno Colony. José Casado, the head of the company at the time, spoke fluent German and was well-positioned to promote his land. He met with the 1921 delegation of Bergthal Mennonites searching for a suitable homeland and organized a tour of the Chaco for them. The delegates, who received the tour in April when conditions in the Chaco are at their best, were impressed. Before the delegates left Paraguay, José Casado gave them a letter charging them to “change these lands…into a garden…so that you and your followers can be blessed, through your efforts and live in peace and good fortune.”[2] In September, Casado visited the Mennonites in Manitoba to further promote settlement in the Paraguayan Chaco.

Before the Bergthal delegation left Paraguay, it received assurances from Paraguayan President Manuel Gondra that a railway would be built to the site of their new settlement, 200 kilometers into the interior from Puerto Casado, the outpost of the Casado Company. At the time, the Casado Company owned and operated a narrow-gauge railroad that went only the first 72 kilometers towards the settlement site. It was, however, never settled whether it was the responsibility of the Paraguayan government or the Casado Company to complete the railroad and it never was completed. This came as a great shock and caused much hardship to the Mennonite immigrants who started arriving in Puerto Casado at the end of 1926. Samuel McRoberts, who financed the migration, blamed Casado for the incomplete railroad.[3] Between 1926 and 1928, the company did extend the railroad from 72 to 104 kilometers.

The new arrivals remained stuck at Puerto Casado for 16 months while they conducted the work necessary to settle their land. In the meantime, the settlers had considerable interaction with the company's many employees and establishments. All purchased goods from the Casado store and some found temporary employment in the tannin factory. The company's doctor served them until the Corporación Paraguaya acquired its own doctor in September 1927. The Corporación Paraguaya (on behalf of the Mennonite settlers) purchased from the Casado Company much of the equipment, animals, and some of the labour power needed to venture into, survey, and settle the Chaco. The settlers also made great use of the company’s narrow-gauge railway, which extended 145 kilometers from Puerto Casado by 1930, the nearest it ever got to Menno Colony. Mennonites from all of the Paraguayan colonies continued to interact with the large agricultural holdings of the Casado Company throughout the years, purchasing goods, equipment, and farm animals from it.

See Also

Notes and References

  1. ↑ Stoesz and Stackley (27) and Stoesz (33) erroneously provide much smaller figures, mistakenly describing the smaller amount of land initially sold to the Mennonites as the amount of land purchased from Casado.
  2. ↑ Stoesz, 28.
  3. ↑ Stoesz, 38-39.

Bibliography

Fretz, Joseph W. Pilgrims in Paraguay: The Story of Mennonite Colonization in South America. Scottdate: Herald Press, 1953. pp. 14-16, 24, 37, 43, 218.

Friesen, M.W. Canadian Mennonites Conquer a Wilderness: The Beginning and Development of the Menno Colony, First Mennonite Settlement in South America. Translated by Christel Wiebe. Historical Committee of the Menno Colony, 2009. Pp. 15, 25-32, 43, 56-57, 60-61

Loewen, Royden. Village among Nations: "Canadian" Mennonites in a Transnational World, 1916-2006. University of Toronto Press, 2013. Pp. 34-76.

Quiring, Walter. “The Canadian Mennonite Immigration into the Paraguayan Chaco, 1926-27.” The Mennonite Quarterly Review 8, no. 1 (January 1934): 32-42.

Stoesz, Edgar. Like a Mustard Seed: Mennonites in Paraguay. Scottdate: Herald Press, 2008. Pp. 26-41.

Stoesz, Edgar and Muriel T. Stackley. Garden in the Wilderness: Mennonite Communities in the Paraguayan Chaco, 1927-1997. Winnipeg: CMBC Publications, 1999. Pp. 18-27.


Author(s) Gerald Ens
Date Published 2025

Cite This Article

MLA style

Ens, Gerald. "Carlos Casado Company." Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. 2025. Web. 10 Apr 2025. https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Carlos_Casado_Company&oldid=180468.

APA style

Ens, Gerald. (2025). Carlos Casado Company. Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Retrieved 10 April 2025, from https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Carlos_Casado_Company&oldid=180468.



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