June 15, 2009
I love to run, and I’ve run with different people in different cities for most of my adult life. One run I will remember for the rest of my life was with a 12-year-old Tarahumara boy in Ciudad Juarez. Of course, he could outrun me without breaking a sweat, despite my newer shoes and more consistent training. This was nearly four years ago, and I wrote a letter from the publisher [link] in Newspaper Tree about my delight in a soccer game with Tarahumara children who regularly met on Juarez fields. The runner was one of the team captains.
It was a respite from some of the more difficult things I witnessed in that city, and I ended up going over sporadically throughout the following year. Sometimes I played, or ran around the field, or helped construct soy tacos with avocado that my friend would bring, as many of the kids were hungry and malnourished. During that winter, my friends in El Paso donated coats for the teams, and that one day felt a little like Christmas.
We bounced around several city fields, as the team was constantly getting moved around for reasons I didn’t fully understand. The children named their team “Raramuris Pies-Ligeros”, and practiced regularly under the volunteer coaching of Raul Reyes Romero, known as “Rulo” to the team. The children worked hard, and went on to compete and place second in a city tournament in 2006.
This past January, I came back to Juarez for the first time in nearly a year. After crossing on foot, I got into my friend’s car and headed southwest, on the viaduct, or as she calls it, “el freeway de los pobres.” The road, which has been there decades now, is literally a drain for floodwaters, with massive potholes, uneven surfaces, two-way traffic, and no paint for lanes or crosswalks. Successive political administrations in Juarez have promised to fix this “road”, which obviously turns treacherous in the rainy season. During a past flood, a woman drowned when a wall of water carried her vehicle away. My friend told me I should write about it – one of countless stories that will probably never be told.
The viaduct eventually takes you to hills overlooking downtown El Paso, into the fringes of Juarez with unpaved roads and houses built from pallets and cardboard. We arrived at a neighborhood that sits just under the white letters visible from El Paso, “La biblia es la verdad. Leela.” It is the Colonia Tarahumara, or Rarámuri, as they call themselves, and some of the kids who used to play soccer still live there. We pulled up, in the shadow of a church, and saw a huge pile of wooden pallets that the maquilas dump in poorer neighborhoods. This is a small form of charity – when the maquilas don’t charge to dump in a certain neighborhood – as the people are grateful for wood to burn.
It was going to be a cold night, and all the women and children had gathered in their colorful skirts and sandals, ripping apart the pallets with their hands, and loading the pieces into wheelbarrows. The wheelbarrows had no wheels left, so two women would hoist up the wheelbarrow and carry it to deposit the wood at various houses. In front of each house, there were also piles of sticks and driftwood, the size I use just to start a fire, and that would burn out in minutes. Every day in the winter, kids and women climb up into the hills, next to the words that we can see from I-10, to scrounge for wood to burn.
All the residences face the church, located in the center of the community. It is beautiful and has windows made out of colorful glass shards from broken bottles, windows that form eye-like shapes, lending a sense of eerie watchfulness over residents who consider themselves Catholic, but are not particularly religious. During both of my visits, the church was locked and unavailable for shelter or warmth, and I was not able to see the interior.
Most of the kids I played soccer with have dropped out of school. Some are sniffing glue and other inhalants – a prevalent and particularly harmful form of drug use among kids in Juarez. None who finished “secundaria” entered “prepa” – there was just no real future for them, and they knew it. Some of the girls had had children at the age of 13 or 14.
Last month, I went back to Juarez, and back to this colonia. I finally caught up with my running companion, who didn’t want me to use his name, but was willing to tell his story for this article. He is 16 now. I arrived in the neighborhood early, and his mother Maria offered to wake him up. I began to talk to him, but he was barely conscious, and would not answer my questions above a murmur.
A small child of three, who looked two, was barefoot and absorbed in picking up bottle caps and other trash treasures tangled in the weeds. Maria watches him for his mother, who is a farm worker in Delicias picking nuts and jalapeños. The child is very thin and doesn’t talk yet.
Sociologist Silvia Méndez Hernández, of the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juarez (UACJ), did an extensive field study on the indigenous population of Ciudad Juarez. A summary recently appeared in a collection of essays entitled “Chihuahua Hoy 2008: Visiones de su Historia, Economía, Política y Cultura.” She traces the population as far back as 1950, when Tarahumaras first began appearing in the city to find temporary work. Today, she claims a total indigenous population of 6,864, with the largest population being Tarahumara, at 3,494 people.
The Mexican government estimates a total Tarahumara population of 106,000, the vast majority of whom reside in the Sierra Madre’s system of canyons, known to tourists as Copper Canyon. In Juarez, they live in four principal areas, with the most (350 people) living in the colonia where I visited. Additionally, there is Colonia Los Alcades in the southeast of the city, which was founded by an evangelical pastor Ricardo Barrón; La Cuesta II, with about 90 residents primarily from Guachohi; and an illegally established community at kilometer 30 on the highway to Casas Grandes.
Most Tarahumara men work in construction and carpentry, as general laborers, a continuation of the labor they have provided since the Spaniards arrived and they began working in the mines. They typically dress in blue jeans, and so are less conspicuous than the women, who continue to wear the traditional brightly colored clothing. Very few Tarahumara work in the maquiladora industry. Most women work informally, either as domestic workers, artisans, herbalists, or asking kórima, a Tarahumara word that is often translated as “alms”, but reflects more accurately a social tradition of mutual help.
There are a variety of social and governmental agencies that interact with the Tarahumaras, with varying degrees of efficacy. The Fundación Rarámuri, now known as Voces Indígenas, is a nongovernmental organization that was founded through the Catholic Church in 1998, and has a significant presence in the Colonia Tarahumara. Religious organizations have also been center in many of the communities; however, religion has also proved a point of contention in any inter-agency cooperation, with questions of faith (or perhaps power) impeding cooperation between two of the main communities, which are respectively Catholic and evangelical Christian.
Meanwhile, the Tarahumara continue to face obstacles on many levels – access to education, access to healthcare, lack of employment opportunity, discrimination, and drug and alcohol abuse. There is a pervasive distrust of political parties and of mestizos in general, which dates back from when Mexico was a Spanish colony and indigenous villages could not freely choose their representatives. However, all the families I spoke with voted in most elections.
Back in the colonia, I met the mother of one of the girls who also used to play soccer. Her name is Marta Cruz, and her daughter’s name is Marisela. The daughter is 18, and has a two-year-old son named Bryan. They live in a block house with electricity and water, and there is an adjacent room that serves as a small tienda de abarrotes or food store. Marta has been in Juarez for thirteen years, and provides an existence for her family that she tells me is minimal but sufficient. Business is slower though, and she no longer has the ability to help out other families in need. Her second daughter is also pregnant.
Bryan brings laughter to the house, and is a happy and curious little boy. I took several photos of Marisela with her child, after she asked to change into a prettier dress. Every fifteen minutes or so, we would be interrupted by small children who appeared at the window to buy a coke or snack from the store.
A few houses down, I met Juanita and another of her friends. Juanita is 55 years old, and has lived in Juarez 17 years. Our conversation in Spanish was punctuated by laughter and discussion in her native language with her neighbor. She makes handcrafts including baskets, rosaries, diaries, dolls, and purses. She sells very few now. Both Juanita and Marta were instrumental in providing food for the soccer team, as well as moral support, attending practices on the sidelines.
After a few hours of visiting, we went back to Maria’s house, to see if our team captain would join us for some lunch. He loves Chinese food. He was more alert, and joined us on the quest for an open restaurant. In my friend’s car, we wound our way back to downtown Juarez, passing a tank on the way. I’m the only one who glanced twice.
Ciudad Juarez is currently beset with troubles that are all too evident. The city is once again at the start of another media cycle examining the recent uptick in drug-related violence. I wanted to see how the neighborhoods that no one visits have been affected; how people’s lives have changed in a few short years. I have crossed paths with a wide variety of people in Juarez, and it is a hard thing to go back and visit, especially from a place of privilege that I so noticeably come from. I still think people in El Paso have a responsibility to try and understand the place we are living in though, and to ignore Juarez fundamentally blinds us to the larger reality of our region.
Some conceive of grand sweeping plans to combat poverty in Chihuahua – the building of huge new industrial parks, the tourism development in the Sierra Tarahumara that would include a mock Indian village [link], the consolidation of the drug industry in the hands of one cartel or even the legalization of such industry.
Others consider personal values – education, a minimalist lifestyle, kindness – replicated exponentially as a better place to start, goodwill harnessed and multiplied. I do not know which approach could best help the truly marginalized communities of Juarez – the indigenous being a seemingly permanent one.
I just know that these children have very few smiles now. The team captain told me he is not happy, and I didn’t know what to tell him, and could not give him any meaningful advice. He is a smart person, and he knows that his life is not going to change anytime soon.
The Chinese restaurants were all closed, so we ate burritos instead, and I drank a Sprite from a pretty polished bottle. After we finished lunch, they dropped me off at the downtown bridge. I had my running shoes on, and I jogged past the musicians and flâneurs. I was grateful that the bridge line was 30 minutes, so I could prepare myself to cross back into another world.