NOS Journaal - Peru 2025: Mennonites and Illegal Deforestation in Indigenous land

An extremely conservative community of Dutch origin is responsible for enormous deforestation in the Amazon. These are Mennonites, named after the Frisian priest Menno Simons. They live in isolation without television and telephone and see the cultivation of the land for large-scale agriculture as a divine task. They are cutting down more and more forests, much to the concern of Indigenous communities in several countries in Latin America. The presence of Mennonites in Latin America has grown strongly in recent years. There are now more than 214 Mennonite communities in these countries that collectively own almost 4 million hectares of land, an area the size of the Netherlands. Correspondent Nina Jurna went into the Peruvian Amazon where the rapid expansion of a Mennonite community is causing tensions with indigenous peoples.