LA Times article about the Mormon community in Mexico [View all]
This Mormon break away group has a violent and dicey history. Mitt Romney's grandfather and great grandfather were part of this group and Mitt's father was born in Mexico as part of this group.
Massacre of U.S. citizens puts spotlight on Mormon community with deep roots in Mexico
The roadside killings of nine U.S. citizens in northern Mexico has brought renewed attention to the scattered communities of Mormons who settled in the country more than a century ago to escape persecution. The three women and 14 children whom assailants ambushed Monday as they drove toward Arizona from the town of Bavispe in Sonora state included descendants of a fundamentalist Mormon community that has lived in the country for decades.
Early Wednesday, criminal investigators in northern Mexico said a suspect had been arrested and was under investigation for possible connections with the deaths. A Mexican official had earlier said the killers might have mistaken the family for members of a rival drug cartel. Some of the victims shared the last name LeBaron. They were related to a prominent fundamentalist Mormon family by the same name, said Daniel LeBaron, a cousin of one of the victims, Rhonita Maria Miller. Daniel LeBaron lives in Colonia LeBaron in Chihuahua state, a community established by fundamentalist Mormons in 1944 that has close ties to the LeBarons of Bavispe.
The LeBarons are among “a handful of major groups of fundamentalists,” said Patrick Mason, a historian of Mormonism at Utah State University. But, he added: “The LeBaron name in recent decades has been most often linked to violence. Unfortunately, this incident only adds to that association.”
The family is perhaps best known for a series of killings perpetrated in the 1970s and 1980s, in both Mexico and the United States, by Ervil LeBaron — once called the “Mormon Manson” — and a group of his followers.
Lots more at: https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-11-06/mormons-mexico-lebaron-fundamentalist-history
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