Tarahumara Journey

The Daycare
The Nanny

For at least 2,000 years the Tarahumara Indians have lived in the Sierra Madre mountains of northern Mexico, resisting outside intrusion by retreating, when necessary, to ever more inaccessible territory.   In this way the Tarahumara have been better able to preserve their traditions than most native people of Mexico.

In the spring of 1991, while working with Habitat for Humanity, I had a unique opportunity to spend three days with a traditional Tarahumara community.   During the three years I lived in Mexico, nothing impressed me more deeply, nor changed me more profoundly, than those three days with the Tarahumara.

I'd been working at the Habitat project in Chihuahua for about eight months when I received an unexpected invitation to spend Easter weekend in a tiny Tarahumara village called Ojachichi.  Going there would mean sitting in the back of a pickup truck for a bumpy six-hour ride up a dusty mountain road, but I eagerly accepted the offer.   Until then the only Tarahumara I had seen were those who came down from the mountains to sell their hand-woven baskets in town on market day, the men wearing distinctive wide headbands and the women dressed in brightly colored skirts.

What little I knew about the Tarahumara I had learned from Padre Camilo, the parish priest who served on our Habitat committee and who had worked in the Tarahumara region twenty years earlier.   According to Camilo, for many years the Church had to keep replacing the missionaries who went to the Tarahumara, because the Tarahumara kept converting the missionaries.

"The Tarahumara are a devoutly spiritual people," Camilo told me.   "In many ways, they were already better Christians than the Christians who tried to convert them to Christianity."

The Sierra Tarahumara, as the Sierra Madre is called in Chihuahua, is a geographical wonderland.   It is home of North America's tallest waterfall, Basaseachi, and also its deepest gorge, Barranca del Cobre (Copper Canyon), which is visited by tourists who ride the Chihuahua-Pacifico train.

Neither trains nor paved roads go to Ojachichi.   The lone dirt road is sometimes impassible for weeks, due to snow, rain or drifting sand, depending on the season.

Traveling up that mountain road, seated on my rolled-up sleeping bag in the back of a pickup, I marveled at the changing scenery that comes with the higher elevations.   Prickly pear cactus gives way to oak and pine, which grow less abundant as huge rock outcroppings multiply.

The road twists and turns, crossing riverbeds and skirting ravines, rising through terrain apparently devoid of human habitation, and finally emerges upon a narrow valley lined on each side by towering rock bluffs.   Here the road ends, in Ojachichi.

Gazing in awe at the majestic surroundings of this humble village, my first impression was that here, more than any community I have ever known, nature predominates.   Human impact seemed small indeed, beneath the open sky and the ancient, impassive mountain walls.

I imagined that a thousand years ago this place looked nearly identical to today, and that eons from now, after the last humans have long since vanished from the face of the earth, the few houses and cornfields dotting this valley would be gone, and all else would remain unchanged.

The village is home to some twenty families.   Of these, about a third live in simple one-room log cabins, and another third live in similar cabins constructed of adobe blocks.   The remaining families reside in caves at the base of the rock bluffs.

This was the first time I had ever observed the use of cave dwellings, and the sight elicited a powerful response deep within me.   In a flash of insight, I realized that in one way or another, every human being must "carve out a niche" in order to survive, and I understood that each and every single one of us is descended from a long line of survivors.

From the moment I set foot in Ojachichi, the images I perceived around me began triggering a multitude of thoughts and emotions.   I felt transported not only to a different culture but also to a different century and even an altogether different psychic realm.   Such feelings were heightened and intensified by the sound of constant drumbeats which echoed through the valley night and day.

The Tarahumara believe that God is pleased by music and dance.   To ensure the arrival of good spring weather for planting, in mid-February the men begin beating drums, sharing this sacred duty so that at least one drum will always be sounding for forty continuous days and nights.

The ever-changing rhythm of the constant drumming becomes part of the village ambience, generating an atmosphere of solemnity and expectation that reaches a crescendo the night before Easter Sunday, when all the drums sound in unison before going silent.

This traditional Earth-centered ritual coincides with a Christian holiday.   Whether Christian theology has subverted Tarahumara faith, or the other way around, is a question few Tarahumara would bother debating.   Father God the Sun and his wife, Mother God the Moon, are pleased by music and dance, not by religious argument.

Virtually every resident of Ojachichi has been baptized with a Spanish name such as Pedro, Jose or Maria, and for many of the villagers, ironically, this is the only Spanish they ever speak.   Most speak only their mother tongue, Raramuri.

The Raramuri language uses no letter 'd' and lots of letter 'r,' as in "Tarahumara Raramuri."   I never tired of listening to this beautiful language, which rolls softly like the warbling of a bird or the bubbling murmur of a brook.   I regretted not knowing how to speak more than a few words of Raramuri.   Most of my communication had to be on a nonverbal level.   I simply smiled a lot.

Villagers invited me into their homes for meals of corn tortillas and beans, staple foods of the Tarahumara and millions of others throughout Latin America.  I was honored by being served beer in a gourd bowl.   This corn beer, called tesguino, plays an important role in Tarahumara culture, symbolizing health, wealth and divine providence.   By sharing tesguino, community bonds are strengthened.  Early missionaries severely frowned on this custom, but both tesguino and Tarahumara community have survived.

There is neither telephone nor electricity in Ojachichi.   The only running water is the creek that trickles through the valley.   Firewood is the only fuel for cooking, and in some houses the only chimney is a hole cut into the roof.   These aspects of village life seem radically different from life in modern society, but they are merely cosmetic differences.   The most profound difference is the Tarahumara worldview.

In Ojachichi I saw many things which reminded me that I'm connected to my Tarahumara sisters and brothers, united by the same bonds shared by all humanity irrespective of culture, but at the same time I was fully and sometimes painfully aware of an undeniable gulf that exists between their world and the world of so-called modern civilization.

In some ways the Tarahumara world seems an exact mirror opposite of our modern world.   The Tarahumara are agrarian, not industrial.   Their concept of time is cyclic and fluid, not linear and fixed.   They live intimately with nature, not insulated from nature.   Their economy is based on cooperation, not competition.   They revere the web of life, not the market system.

Visiting Ojachichi households, the aspect of their lives I found most intriguing was the interaction I observed between adults and children.   This is also the aspect of Tarahumara life that I am most hesitant to describe.   I feel limited by my vocabulary, and also by my own cultural blindspots.

Recalling images of Tarahumara family life, some of the words that come to mind are love, tenderness, respect, patience, acceptance and security.   In Ojachichi I found myself wondering if heretofore I had known the meaning of these words in theory only, not in practice.

It began to dawn on me that what makes the Raramuri language so beautiful is not simply the lack of letter 'd' and frequent use of letter 'r'.   Their language is beautiful because they speak it softly, gently and lovingly.   In the Tarahumara world, this is the way that one human being speaks to another.

I thought of my own upbringing, in a household resembling "The Simpsons" tv show, and I understood why the Tarahumara say among themselves, "The tone of voice we occasionally use for scolding a dog is the tone of voice used by white people all the time."   I understood why the Plains Indians called white people "the growlers."

I was with the Tarahumara for only three days.   I listened to the rhythm of drums, drank some tesguino, and smiled a lot.

On my last day in the village, I rose early and went for a long hike up a nearly-dry creek, hoping to find a souvenir stone to bring back with me.   I saw two women standing in the middle of a cornfield, and later I met a donkey who seemed to be wandering like me, alone in the forest.   For hours I saw no other soul except an occasional bird flitting in the pines.

The mountain serenity helped soften the jumble of thoughts and emotions clattering inside me.   I felt a growing sense of sadness.   Certainly I was sad to leave this beautiful and magical place, but there was another, deeper sadness I could not name.   I searched a long time for a stone, then headed back to the village without ever finding one.

Again I saw the same two women in the same cornfield.   They were standing side by side in perfect silence, just as I had seen them two or three hours earlier.   This completely mystified me.   What could they be doing?   For a moment I considered approaching with a friendly Tarahumara greeting, "Cuira!" but fearing this might cause alarm or embarrassment, I decided to walk on.   Some mysteries must remain mysteries.

The time came to say goodbye to Ojachichi.   I prepared to climb into the back of the pickup for the long ride down the mountain.   In the circle of villagers gathered to bid farewell, I recognized the two women I had seen in the cornfield.   They spoke some Spanish.   Dare I ask them about the mystery that so puzzled me?   It was now or never.

Summoning my courage, I casually mentioned that I had noticed them in the field that morning, and hoping I wasn't being totally offensive, I asked in the most tactful Spanish I could muster, "What on Earth were you doing there?"

To my great relief, they smiled in response.   And they gave me an answer that blew me away: "Estuvimos sintiendo el aire. We were feeling the wind."   That precious answer is the souvenir stone I brought back with me.

It would be no exaggeration to say that I brought back, also, an altered perception of reality.   I looked at everything in a new light.   The familiar surroundings of my Habitat office no longer seemed familiar.   I tried to focus on my work, but my thoughts kept drifting to the Sierra Tarahumara, and for hours I'd sit at my desk and stare out the window, gazing at the clouds.

The sadness I had felt that last day in Ojachichi grew into a prolonged case of the doldrums.   I felt blank.  For days I hardly spoke a word to anyone.   I was grieving.

In Ojachichi I had caught a glimpse of what it means to be a human being living on planet Earth, and it grieved me to realize that most of us have absolutely no idea how it feels to really live as a human being on this planet.   We're too busy.   Our heads are full of too many words.   We've surrounded ourselves with endless distractions, and we've built impenetrable walls that separate us from our own humanity and our own sweet Mother Earth.

When did we lose the ability to live in the moment?   We don't even know how to breathe, sit, stand, walk, talk, look, listen or love unless we work at it really hard, aided by books, gurus, therapies, drugs or professional counseling of some kind.   How'd we get so turned around?   What happened to our sense of balance?

I asked myself these questions as I looked with new eyes at the world around me.   I'm not the first to compare a traditional culture with our own and wonder, "Which way of life is more civilized?"

I realize now that dealing with my grief, working my way through the difficult stages of depression and anger, was a continuation of a journey that began thanks to those three brief days with the Tarahumara.   Inwardly, this journey has led to serious soul-searching, and outwardly it has inspired me to study and learn Native American history and the tragic history of the conquest.

I believe Native American spirituality can teach us crucial lessons which we are in desperate need of learning.   I also believe that any effort to study Native American spirituality without also studying Native American history would be incomplete, at best.

By confronting even the most painful details of this history, we can begin to dispel some of the lies/myths that blind us both culturally and spiritually.

One such lie/myth, for example, is the false notion that a primitive Native American culture was defeated by an advanced European culture.   If the Europeans were more advanced in anything, they were advanced in barbarity.

As historian David Stannard points out in is excellent book, American Holocaust, the Spain of 1492 "was for most of its people a land of violence, squalor, treachery, and intolerance.   In this respect, Spain was no different than the rest of Europe."

Stannard documents the social inequality, rampant crime, famine, rioting, disease, superstition and ignorance prevalent in Spain, France, England and the rest of Europe during the 15th thru 18th centuries, when these supposedly advanced nations were invading and destroying the civilizations of America.

By studying Native American history, we gain not only a deeper sense of respect and admiration for the richness of Native American culture, we also gain insight into our own culture.   We begin to question our old ways of thinking, and slowly we begin to see the world around us in a different light.

At some level we all know that if we are to survive, we MUST regain our sense of balance.   But where, and how, do we begin?

"Feel the wind."

Originally published in Synapse, Summer 1999