the pond

The Tarahumaras (they call themselves Raramuri) are a group of indigenous people who live in in the high sierra mountains of central Mexico and are quite possibly the best runners in the world. Living in such desolate, rugged country where the villages are often separated by many miles, the Tarahumaras have integrated running into nearly ever aspect of their society. The author describes meeting a Tarahumaran man who was jogging down a steep mountain path looking for his lost goat. The author had seen the goat a few miles back and the man went bounding off down the trail. A few hours later the same man came jogging back up the steep path, having just climbed well over 2000ft with the goat across his shoulders. The man is neither winded nor sweaty and the author asks to take his pulse. He finds it a steady 70 beats per minute. The Tarahumaras have been known to hunt deer by simply chasing it on foot for days until the deer collapsed from exhaustion. When the author asked a Tarahumaran why they were running, he invariably got the reply, “to get there.”

A semi-nomadic people they grow crops of corn and beans but will migrate from the plateaus to the valleys during the cold winters. They have no typical dwelling structure and utilize caves, overhangs, and rough houses made of stone or wood. Their society is made up of smaller social groups called ranchos that are in turn composed of five or six families. Scattered across 80 square miles or more, these ranchos will democratically elect a governor who, in conjunction with shamans, settle disputes, heal the sick, and counteract spells cast by powerful wizards. The tarahumaras practice a form of social welfare called korima where the “more fortunate are expected to take care of the less fortunate in times of need.”

An integral component of Tarahumaran society is a fermented corn beer, called tesguino. This drink is used extensively during the so called “beer cult.” In all, the Tarahumaras usually have 90 or more prolonged festivals during the year and each festival requires the preparation of enormous quantities of tesguino. The author estimated that in all one third of the year is spent preparing, drinking, and recuparating from tesguino. The author speaks rather derisively of the “beer cult” as being a “strange and sad phenomenon” that is “costly” in terms of grain and time. He does note that beer drinking is integral to the social relationships in their society and often debts are repaid in cups of corn beer, drunk on the spot. One of the many types of festivals the Tarahumaras have revolve around the game of rarajipari where two teams of the Tarahumaras both run a grueling course of mountain trails kicking a small wooden ball along with them. Some of these races can last two or three days straight. Friends will run along with them carrying torches at night, and the runners will wear rattles around their waists to keep themselves from falling asleep.

In the 1974 Olympics two Tarahumaras men represented Mexico in the 26.5 mile marathon. They lost by several minutes, but no one had told them the length of the race and when they reached the finished line they kept running until someone could explain to them that the race was over. They stopped, amazed that the marathon had ended and exclaimed “Too short! Too short!”

When the article was written there were about 40,000 Tarahumaras living scattered throughout the mountains. The tourism trade was bringing increased pressure to take part in capitalism, and gold mining companies had tricked some of them into forfeiting their land by taking advantage of their inability to speak Spanish. A new highway was being built, a new church going in, inter-marriage with Mexicans was on the rise, and change seemed inevitable.

Today there are between 50,000 and 70,000 Tarahumaras. They have become more integrated in modern society, but the codes and traditions that mark their culture have remained largely intact. They are being slowly usurped from the valleys as the more fertile land is taken for permanent agriculture by Mexicans, and they are retreating further into the high plateaus of the Sierras. The majority of them have officially converted to Christianity, but still maintain many of their traditional religious customs. Some groups still hold the belief that every soul is reincarnated three times and the final life is always a moth. Once the moth dies the soul is gone forever. Modern archaeologists have noted that the Tarahumaras are some of the most honest people ever studied and suggest that years of selection have actually altered the brain to exclude the capacity to lie.

Clearly, no culture is capable of existing indefinitely without change. But the Tarahumaras seem to be successful in managing how that external change is integrated into their indigenous customs. There are more tennis shoes being worn by the Tarahumaras, but they don’t dedicate any more of their time to working for money to buy those shoes. It’s an uneasy middle ground, for sure, and cultures often disintegrate when they attempt to coexist in both the capitalist structure and the traditional subsistence lifestyle. In the modern system time is used to earn money, and the money then used to purchase the necessities of life but in the subsistence mode time is used directly to procure what is needed. Rather than working for the railroad to earn money to buy corn, it is grown. And as tourism and television bring the external material complexities nearer to the Tarahumaras they must strike a balance between the acquisition of material possessions and the ability to exist in their landscape.

The relationship between the Tarahumaras and their landscape is vital to the protection of their society from unwanted external influence. The rugged mountain trails that made them exquisite runners are also their best defense. The small area of arable ground available to the Tarahumaras also limits the amount of crops they can grow, which in turn limits the capacity for wealth accumulation. Combined with the tribal welfare system there is almost no desire to permanently accumulate wealth. There are relatively few jobs available in the region, and the Tarahumaras seem to naturally eschew long term employment. Perhaps their instinctive honesty also makes it difficult for them to take part in modern capitalism where it is integral to be able to both lie and discern when others are lying. Often when reading old National Geographics I come across a portrait of an indigenous culture and when I research their current situation I often find that they have declined steadily in the last 30-50 years. Yet the Tarahumaras seem to be growing and resisting many of the changes that contact with external forces bring. Their land, their honesty, their beer, and their amazing ability to run seem to be, at least for the moment, keeping them one step ahead of assimilation.

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