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US victims in Mexico attack from Mormon offshoot community US victims in Mexico attack from Mormon offshoot community
(about 3 hours later)
MEXICO CITY — The nine women and children killed by cartel gunmen in northern Mexico lived in a farming community known as La Mora, where experts say residents identify as Mormons but consider themselves independent and separate from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. MEXICO CITY — The nine women and children killed by drug cartel gunmen in northern Mexico lived in a remote farming community where residents with dual U.S.-Mexican citizenship consider themselves Mormon — and many are descended from former members of The Church of Jesus of Latter-day Saints who fled the U.S. to escape the church’s 19th century ban on polygamy.
The community’s roots lie in the church’s banning of polygamy in the late 19th century, when families established colonies in remote northern Mexico to continue the practice. La Mora, population less than 1,000, lies in a desert valley ringed by rugged mountains about 70 miles (110 kilometers) south of the border towns of Douglas, Arizona and Agua Prieta in Mexico’s Sonora state.
Cristina Rosetti is an expert in Mormon fundamentalist groups and said Tuesday that today some La Mora residents still practice polygamy while others do not. Residents believe in the main Mormonism tenants, but there is little organized religious practice. While many La Mora residents identify as Mormon, they also consider themselves independent from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said Cristina Rosetti, a Mormon fundamentalism scholar and expert.
Gunmen killed three women and six children traveling in three vehicles from La Mora on Monday. Many of the families living in the area known for growing cotton and grain trace their La Mora origins to the 1950s — and some have much deeper roots.
The victims were U.S. citizens. A La Mora resident who spoke on condition of anonymity said his great grandfather settled there in the late 1890s or early 1900s after leaving the U.S. and was later run back across the border by Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa.
The great grandfather didn’t return, but the resident’s grandfather moved back to La Mora in the 1950s along with others, said the resident, who feared that he could be targeted by the cartel if he was identified.
Although many La Mora residents believe in mainstream Mormonism tenets, they also believe “they shouldn’t be forming churches, they shouldn’t be organizing under one leader. They should just be Mormon and live their Mormon life. That’s who the people of La Mora are,” Rosetti said.
Some of the families living there still practice polygamy while others stopped generations ago, she said.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints earlier this year launched a campaign for people to stop using the shorthand church names “Mormon” and “LDS.”
In explaining his decision to for a halt for to nicknames for the faith, church president Russell M. Nelson said the Lord impressed upon him the importance of the full name and that leaving it out was “a major victory for Satan.”
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This version corrects a word in the 6th paragraph, it is tenets not tenants.
Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.