Category: Borderland Fears

• The "Mormon" Kingdom of Mexico

  This theory claimed that Mormon colonies in northern Mexico were not simply religious settlements, but the beginnings of a secret political and military base from which Latter-day Saints would someday return north and challenge the United States. It drew on real Mormon migration into Mexico in the 1880s, earlier American fears about Mormon militia power in Utah, and the unusual autonomy of the colonies in Chihuahua and Sonora. In rumor form, those facts became evidence of a cross-border “kingdom” with armed ambitions.