MORE ON COPPER CANYON
Well, we have been back at our northern home – The Summer Estate – for just less than a month now. It has been cooler than normal - all that Canadian air. And it has been rather wet as well. As many of you know, we need to return at the beginning of April so that Mrs.T, a.k.a. Mother Nature, can see her flowers, particularly the wild ones, emerge. We have included a picture of the house in the woods – note the trees are behind schedule – and photos of a few of the flowers; most of blooms are less than an inch across.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9151458@N07/sets/72157633342597615/
With the house essentially in order – routine maintenance and a few repairs - between plantings Rebecca decided to write more about our vacation to Copper Canyon. Besides the grandeur of the canyon complex, learning about the Tarahumara, the peoples indigenous to that area, added immensely to our understanding of Mexico and its cultures. You will find R's story to be quite illuminating. It is a bit lengthy.
This is a story of the Tarahumara Indian people who live in the mountains and canyons of northern Mexico. It is based on things told us by guides and information in tourist pamphlets as well as our own observations; it may or may not be accurate, but I have tried to keep it as true as I can and reined in my tendency to occasionally exaggerate. (I try to keep an eye on that. –dt)
The Tarahumara Indians are a slight people – short like the Maya but not as stocky. In their language their name means 'the people who run'. According to our guide Poncho, the record was one woman who ran some 60 miles before she got tired and stopped. Evidently the men have more sense or less determination and don't run much these days. In fact, unfortunately, the Tarahumara men, sharing a weakness of most indigenous people, seem to devote themselves exclusively to drinking alcohol. Indians in Mexico are universally poor, poorly educated, and generally put upon.
The government gives them subsistence and provides schools and minimal social services, which the Indians ignore for the most part. The government had been providing the subsistence to the male head of household, but found that they drank it up leaving their families to literally starve. The government decided to give the money to the women and then the men beat them until they handed it over. Oh well. Now the children get free breakfast and lunch at school. This seems to be working fairly well, at least for the younger children attendance is up.
The one means of income the women have is weaving lovely baskets out of native plants that grow wild. Ah, you might think a traditional craft - well not exactly. According to Poncho, in the 1960's an aid worker from the UN decided something should be done about the Tarahumara's desperate poverty and taught them to weave baskets. Well however that may be, the ladies do weave lovely baskets.
We were told that these Indians live in caves. (For those familiar with the area, think Old Man's Cave. –dt) In fact the first place we stopped to buy baskets was actually such a cave, was a stone overhang from the mountain wall. The grandmother who "lived" there had a firepit in one corner, a rude cot, and shelves to hold her wares. (No sanitary arrangements were in sight and no one inquired.) Now some of the Canadians on the tour were from Missouri (That means 25 of the other 28 people. –dt); they maintained that she did not actually live there and the whole thing was a setup to sell her baskets. I prefer to think of her as an historic interpreter, such as you see at Williamsburg. (We think she lived a short ways up the road in a rather rudimentary house. –dt) At any rate I bought a few small baskets. I did note that she was quite able to speak enough Spanish to quote prices, and she made change quite efficiently. The Indian ladies we talked to were invariably friendly and good natured but quite firm when they did not want to do something in which case instead of refusing they pretended not to understand what you were saying.
The Tarahumara men do still hunt. As the population has been exploding they have pretty much wiped out the deer population in the mountains and canyons where they live. They have also made serious inroads into the snake population. The only large mammals left in the area are mountain goats which they are unable to catch and wild burros which they do not hunt. It has been speculated that they will soon start on lizards if they have not already.
Traditionally as they reach puberty the Indian girls were personally evaluated – as it were - by the chief of the tribe who then gives them to be a wife to whomever he decides upon. They were chattels in every sense of the word. Women gave birth to ten or twelve children about half of whom died of starvation, pneumonia, or exposure when they were very young. Things are slowly improving: the birthrate is going down and the survival rate is going up. But still these people live a very precarious existence. Especially the women.
Everywhere you go you see the women with children hanging on to their skirts while they weave baskets. (They can weave them blindfolded. –dt) These baskets are the real deal, not made somewhere in Asia and sold by the Tarahumara. They make baskets out of the leaves of a succulent plant related to the Yucca, which is dried and cut in strips. The plants grow wild and there seems to be no shortage of them. There seems to be an established price for different sizes of baskets - the prices are very reasonable - and the ladies do not bargain. Everywhere we went and at every train or bus stop the ladies were there displaying their baskets and weaving more while waiting for customers.
The story goes that maybe 80 or so years ago a Catholic priest came upon three or four girl babies who had been left out for the animals to eat. He was horrified and rescued them. He recruited some nuns and started a boarding school for Tarahumara girls. This priest was a real dynamo: begging for building supplies; building the school; recruiting nuns; caging food for the girls; and going from village to village trying to convince the Indians to let him have their spare girls. Although dead these many years, he is still revered today.
The boarding school today has 100 little girls ages 4 to 14. They are taught by five nuns, who are each responsible for 20 girls. Boys can and do attend the school but do not board. The girls come from about 50 villages in the general area of the school. And there is fierce completion for the 2 places per village. Our guide for the school said that if there were 1000 places they could easily fill them. The girls are sent home twice a year, for Christmas and Easter. After the first time they go home, most of the little girls beg the nuns to let them stay at school. It is heart wrenching. You think these girls are losing their traditions. And yet, they are being given instead a new life full of possibilities.
The girls take cold showers every morning. The nuns tried to give them hot showers but they refused. I thought a lot about this and wondered if perhaps they thought they were being cooked, probably their only experience with hot water. I am a great fan of hot water myself; in fact I insist upon it. The school was neat and orderly. The girls do chores around the school following a strict schedule. We saw the beds where the girls slept two to a bed. Each bed was neatly made but they had stuffed animals of different kinds on them.
The girls skipped about smiling shyly at us. I asked one if I could take her picture because I thought her traditional Indian dress contrasted with her Barbie backpack, but when the nun translated the request she hid her face. "I think you'd better not," the nun said firmly, protecting her charge even from potentially wealthy donors.
Compulsory public education in Mexico ends at age 14. But it is compulsory in name only, far too many children do not go to school. (Public education is not totally free; there are several relatively expensive fees. –dt) Only about 1% of the Tarahumara children graduate from the public schools at fourteen and that 1% are almost all boys. In contrast virtually all the girls at the boarding school graduate. When they graduate the Catholic church has guaranteed continuing free education for these girls up to a BA degree at the university. One fifth of the girls who graduate continue their schooling to get their college degree. The sad thing is they do not go back home. There is no place for them in their traditional tribal way of life. So we departed the school, leaving a healthy donation and a little piece of our hearts.
When we got to one of the deepest canyons there was a tour where we could go down and visit some of the Tarahumara and see the caves they really lived in. There were several of them in one spot. The caves were rock overhangs and the Indians had boarded up the front. There were chickens scratching around in the dirt and miscellaneous items in front. And what looked like a roof, but wait, it was a solar panel! The Indians had figured out how to get electricity down at the bottom of the canyon. Sure enough - when I looked out over the canyon that night I saw two little lights where the caves were, but thank goodness no satellite dishes. Dan and I did not go down to visit the caves. It was not the 263 steps going down there that daunted me it was the 263 steps coming back up. As a matter of fact, I thought Poncho looked at us significantly when he explained that this trip might not be a good idea for the less fit.
I have always loved stars. I remember my father teaching me how to find Polaris, the North Star, and different constellations. Growing up in the country there were lots of stars. As we moved to the city there were far fewer to be seen. The surrounding lights blotted them out. In Philo out in the country again I am happy to see a lot more stars. In Bucerias there are quite a few. When we went to Copper Canyon the sky was blanketed with stars! It was easy to see how the ancient peoples saw pictures in the night sky. And if you are an intermittent sleeper, as I often am, you could come out at intervals and see the stars marching across the night sky. It was glorious! Robert Frost wrote a poem "Take something Like a star". The last few lines explain my feelings well:
It asks of us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may take something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.
Here are some more pictures of Copper Canyon, the Tarahumara, and a few baskets. You will also see a picture of the last puzzle of the season; it did not get finished and it will not be in rotation again. Also, you will see a new wall hanging; it is by the same artist who did the tapestry we have at the condo.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9151458@N07/sets/72157633347493499/
I don't know if Mrs. T will be writing more about the Copper Canyon. But I am sure she will regale you about additional adventures between times tending her flowers, trees, and fish.
Dan and Rebecca
www.casa-de-terrible.blogspot.com
