How a century of a Mormon family's history led to a Mexican cartel massacre

In my 2018 book on American- and Canadian-based religious enclaves in Mexico, I researched the Latter-Day Saints community and the LeBaron Mormons of Chihuahua state, near the US border.Typically, these communities' members are somewhat reluctant to talk to outsiders, beyond proselytising.

Members of Utah's Latter-Day Saints community emigrated to Mexico in the 1880s to follow their religious beliefs by living in polygamous families, which was illegal in the United States.Polygamy was illegal in Mexico, too, but the government there offered a flexible definition of family and did not enforce its anti-polygamy laws.

LeBaron fled the Mexican Revolution for Utah in 1912, where he married two women – Maude McDonald and Onie Jones – and had what's been described as "a large family of sons."LeBaron and his big family returned to Mexico in 1924 to find that their Latter-Day Saint neighbours did not welcome their polygamy. So LeBaron established his own colony, called LeBaron, in Chihuahua, Mexico.

Judges in Mexico, however, sided with the LeBarons, whom they saw as productive members of the local economy. Ervil LeBaron was arrested and convicted for the 1972 murder of his brother Joel. That verdict was later overturned, but in 1981, a Utah court convicted Ervil of a different murder. He died in prison in 1981.

In retaliation, a cartel killed Eric LeBaron's brother Benjamín LeBaron and brother-in-law Luis Widmar in 2011.

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