World War, Revolution and Religion

Maria Antonieta Poblete was the daughter of a “Hacendado”, the owner of a sugar plantation in the Tenancingo Valley of Mexico. In the 18th Century and earlier all fertile land in the valleys of the Federal District was owned by hereditary families, which had received it from the Crown of Spain after the Conquest. In the first decade of the 20th Century Maria Antonieta was in school in Toluca, the city just north of her home in Malinalco. As the privileged daughter of a “Hacendado” she would have continued her fine education in the Catholic Girl’s School had the Mexican Revolution and tenacious, Mormon missionaries not intervened and changed what should have been her life.

The revolution began for land reform, as the Mexican government had confiscated land from the people and given it to the plantation owners to plant more sugar cane. Land is also why the Mormons were in Mexico. They had purchased land from the government in order to practice polygamy, which was against the law in the United States. Mormon missionaries were sent by the church hierarchy in Salt Lake City to convert Mexican citizens and exhort them to come to the states of Chihuahua and Sonora where the Mormon Church had established colonies.

Maria’s story is taken from journals that she kept most of her life and from the memories of her childhood. The story follows the history of the three world events that appear in conjunction during the first decades of the 20th Century. There seems to be a connecting thread that follows Maria Antionieta throughout her life and it is posited that this may be the connecting principle of the Universe. This story of Maria’s shows the connection of World War I, the Mexican Revolution and the Mormon’s in Mexico.