The+Tarahumara+Indians

=The Tarahumara People= Mark Lyche

Overview
The Tarahumara (pronounced: tara - oo - mara) or Rarámuri, as they call themselves, are indigenous people of North Central Mexico. The Tarahumara are one of the largest indigenous groups in North America and have been known to be some of the most amazing, best long distance runners in the world.



When the Spanish explorers arrived in the Americas in the 1500's, the Tarahumara chose to retreat into the canyons to avoid the unfortunate future of many of the native people of the Americas, such as the Mayans, Aztecs , and Incas of Peru. This initial reclusion from the colonization of Mexico has been said to have shaped and evolved the way the Tarahumara still live today. These people fled towards what is the present day state of Chihuahua, and more specifically into the Copper Canyon, or Barranca del Cobre, in the Sierra Madre Occidental. The Copper Canyon is one of the most inhospitable places in all of North America, with the total square miles exceeding the size of the Grand Canyon in Arizona and valleys within the Copper Canyon that are 1000 feet deeper than the Grand Canyon. At the top of the canyon walls (9,000 ft.), the temperature can vary up to 60 degrees during a single 24 hour period. At the bottom of the canyon, flash floods are common and can be devastating to crops and potentially fatal if a person is caught in one. However, there may often be droughts within the canyon, making even the production of a daily meal a difficult task.



Language
The Tarahumara people actually call themselves the Rarámuri, which means “runners on foot” in the Tarahumara native language. The Tarahumara language is a branch of the Uto-Aztecan family, which is sometimes referred to as Yuta-Nawan. Just as there are many different dialects of the Spanish language, such as Castellano, Andaluz, and Rioplatense, there are also different dialects of Tarahumara even though there are many fewer speakers. In total there are approximately 70,400 speakers of Tarahumara, most of whom live in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Within the state there are five different dialects spoken: Central, Lowland, Northern, Southeastern, and Southwestern. The Central dialect has the most speakers with approximately 55,000 and 10,000 of those speakers are monolinguals. The language is used for education, religion, business transactions and within the Tarahumara household by both the young and the old. Very few speakers of the Tarahumara language also read or write that language, so Spanish has become the method of orthography.

The Tarahumara language uses the same five vowels as English; however their consonants are much different. This is a graph from Wikipedia.com showing the place of articulation for each of the Tarahumara’s six consonants.
 * ~ **labial** ||||~ **alveolar** ||||~ **palatal** ||||~ **velar** ||||~ **glottal** ||
 * ~ **plosive** |||| p |||| t ||||  |||| k |||| ʔ ||
 * ~ **affricate** ||||  |||| t͡ʃ ||||   ||||   ||||   ||
 * ~ **fricative** |||| β |||| s ||||  |||| ɣ |||| h ||
 * ~ **approximant** |||| w |||| l, r |||| j ||||  ||||   ||
 * ~ **nasal** |||| m |||| n ||||  ||||   ||

The syntax structure of the Tarahumara language is fairly free, which is consistent with the other syntactic forms from their family of language, Uto-Aztecan. They primarily use the subject, object, verb order, however they may alter this order to stress the verb, subject, or object in a sentence. For example, they would use the SVO order to emphasize subject, OVS to emphasize object, and VSO to emphasize the verb. Here are some Tarahumara words and their approximate translation in English:

__**Tarahumara**__ .............................................................................__**English**__ Lechuguilla ................................................................................ Homemade Tarahumara tequila Kuira-bá .................................................................................... “We’re all one” Assag ....................................................................................... “Have a seat” Chabochis ................................................................................. Anyone who is not Tarahumara Rarájipari ................................................................................... Tarahumara running game Chuhuí ...................................................................................... “Ghost” Ariwará ..................................................................................... “Soul of the dead” Koyera ...................................................................................... Tarahumara hairband Sapá ......................................................................................... Human Flesh



Culture
media type="youtube" key="YquYYjLnLyQ" width="425" height="350" The Tarahumara hold respect for one and other, as well as honesty, atop their moral beliefs. For example, they do not have any physical form of currency. Instead they use favors for one another as the method of currency, somewhat like a barter system of favors. This displays their extremely high level of honesty and integrity. The Tarahumara live in small huts, stone or wood cabins, and caves in the sides of the cliffs that encompass the Copper Canyon. Their primary food source is corns, beans, and squash. However, the Tarahumara also grow apples, peaches, oranges, and papayas depending on the season. In the book //Born To Run,// by Christopher McDougall, he states that the Tarahumara also drink heavily a corn-based beer as well as their lechuguilla, a homemade tequila. Their religion is a mix of Mélange, which is an indigenous religion, and Roman Catholic Christianity. The presence of the Jesuits is how the Tarahumara learned the ways of Christianity. Many Tarahumara still wear the traditional clothing of their ancestors, which consists of loin clothes and wide headbands, but today many Tarahumara are dressed in blue jeans, button-up shirts, while the females wear dresses. One very interesting fact about the Tarahumara is that they have NEVER been recorded as having a single case of high blood pressure.

Running Abilities
The Tarahumara people are known to be the greatest long distance runners in the entire world. Their incredible running talents were first put on display in the 16th century when they successfully fled and outran the Spanish conquistadors. This is especially remarkable because the Spanish were equipped with a far faster mode of transportation, horseback. The Rarámuri now use their running capability for communication among villages, to hunt, and for pleasure. There is a game that the Tarahumara play, rarájipari, or foot throwing. They kick or “foot throw” a small wooden ball for long distances while running through the treacherous valley floor of the Copper Canyon. This game can last hours and even days. I recently read the book //Born to Run// by Christopher McDougall, which is a non-fiction story about the Tarahumara and their ability to run. In this book, McDougall states that during the rarájipari game participants will usually run over 100 miles. However, the Tarahumara do not run in shoes. They prefer to run in small leather sandals, called huaraches or just completely barefoot. What is particularly interesting about the Tarahumara is that they do not enjoy running competitively, unless they are playing rarájipari of course. The Mexican Olympic Committee has urged the Tarahumara to run in the Olympic Games numerous times, but they have always declined. The only two times that any Rarámuri has ever run competitively has been in 1993 and 1994, at the Leadville 100 mile trail run. In 1993 Victoriano Churro, a Tarahumaran man, won the race with a time of 20:03:42. The following year Juan Herrera, also a Tarahumaran, won with a time of 17:30:42. Spectators who had watched these two races claimed that the group of Tarahumaran runners were seen smoking ciggerettes at the break spots, while all the other runners were being attended to medically while eating PowerBars and drinking electrolyte filled beverages. In the book //Born To Run,// Christopher McDougall states that, "a Tarahumara champion once ran 435 miles, the equivalent of setting out for a jog in New York City and not stopping till you were closing in on Detroit."

The Tarahumara Today
Unfortunately, the Tarahumara’s native culture and land is becoming threatened by the increased presence of more and more people within the Copper Canyon. The amazing landscape of the Sierra Madres has brought an increasing number of tourists in the last fifty years. Since the canyons are so difficult to navigate, the Mexican government built a railway system eventually pushing the Tarahumara deeper into the canyon. Another dangerous factor to consider when in the Copper Canyon is the Mexican drug dealers or //narcotraficantes//. This area is impossible to police, which also makes it an excellent area for these Mexican Cartels to grow massive amounts of marijuana. If the Mexican gangs discovered anyone in the canyon near their marijuana crop, it would be much easier for them to kill that person right there than to risk anyone revealing their grow operation location. The marijuana grown in the Copper Canyon is eventually distributed to gangs in America such as the Mexican Mafia. Finally, loggers, along with their necessary trucks and roads have also penetrated deep into the Copper Canyon, spoiling the Tarahumara’s land for growing crops.

[|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarahumara]
[|http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/11/tarahumara-people/gorney-text][|http://www.mexonline.com/raramuri.htm][|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarahumara_language][]