Visualizing a Puerto Rican Mennonite Woman in Pennsylvania: Photographs, Oral History, and Fiction

Abstract: This article demonstrates how individual and collective oral narratives of Puerto Rican Mennonites in central Pennsylvania defy the hegemonic discourse that aims to erase them. After the 1940s, many Puerto Ricans arrived as migrant farmworkers to the area of central Pennsylvania known as Dutch Country. The region has many Mennonites and Amish, who are seen as the archetypal “Dutchies”: conservative, Protestant, agricultural, white. Ramona Rivera Navedo’s oral history challenges this perspective, as she narrates the experiences that shape her identity as a Puerto Rican Mennonite. Rivera Navedo demonstrates how women problematize race, gender, and ethnicity inside the confines of their religious community. Her narrative is compared with a fictional version of At Every Gate a Pearl: God at Work with Puerto Ricans in Lancaster County , by Shirley Boll. Rivera Navedo’s story, and two examples of the graffiti of tomateros (tomato harvesters), shows the desire of this community to be recognized for its contributions. This article argues that there is a need to recognize this community and its history, one that will shift the bounds of traditional historiography and literature about the region and religion.