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The Trans-Chaco Highway How It Came to Be What is so special about the construction of a road somewhere in South America in the middle of the last century? In fact, the construction of the Paraguayan Trans-Chaco highway is an exciting story, which Gerhard Ratzlaff has skilfully reconstructed. The story is about a highway about 500 kilometers long. Through a sparsely inhabited, marginal area in a country whose infrastructure is still underdeveloped today. The planning and implementation of this construction project was largely in the hands of the Mennonite communities: the approximately 8.000 Mennonite settlers in the Chaco, who need this highway simply to survive, and the Mennonites in North America, who came to the aid of their brothers and sisters in the faith with money, machinery, and know-how. The Ruta Trans-Chaco was indeed instrumental in bringing about the hoped-for economic development, for the Mennonite colonies in the first place, and through them for the entire country. Ratzlaffs book, and the extraordinary story it tells, will inspire all readers to contribute their money, time, and talent to development aid, motivated by Christian faith. Camilla Tabert Michael Rudolph

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9789995321925

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Gerhard Ratzlaff was born in the Chaco in 1941. He attended primary and secondary schools established in 1947 by the German-speaking Russian Mennonites in Neuland Colony. He went on to study at the Bible School in Filadelfia and continued his theological studies in Curitiba, Brazil and Buenos Aires, Argentina. After he graduated, he served as a teacher and missionary in Paraguay for four years. He then went to the US to study history at California State University where he specialized in the collection and preservation of Mennonite historical records. He has served as a preacher, senior minister, conference leader and a member of various committees and other organizations. For six years he was the South America representative on the Mennonite World Conference Executive Committee. He was teacher at the Mennonite Bible School (today part of the Evangelical University of Paraguay) in Asuncion for thirty years and the archivist at the historical library. Gerhard Ratzlaff, now retired, is married to Luise Voth. They have three adult children and four grandchildren. About the Translator Richard Ratzlaff was born and raised in Canada the son of economic refugees from the Chaco colonies. His father, also Richard Ratzlaff, was one of the founders of Neuland Colony. If the Trans-Chaco highway had been built five years earlier, Ratzlaff might have been born and raised in the Chaco, like his mother, Gerhard Ratzlaffs sister. He works as an editor at University of Toronto Press and is married to Erika Friesen.

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