The Tarahumara have retained a traditional lifestyle and resisted colonisation over three and a half centuries of European contact. Now tourism threatens their existence.
New Wave Colonial Invasion
The Raramuri, or Tarahumara as they are called by outsiders, are a society of approximately 60 000 people living on their traditional lands in Chihuahua, Mexico. European invasion has reduced their traditional lands by fifty percent, although the Raramuri still retain their customary language, clothing, material culture, spirituality, stories and songs.
The Raramuri have resisted settlement of their lands by both European and Mestizo peoples since the 1700's. Last century the non-indigenous population of the region doubled, when mineral resources were depleted and the invaders turned their attention to stripping forests of timber and cultivating drug crops in the rich soil of Sierra Tarahumara.
With this new wave of invasion the Raramuri have been forced to leave the fertile lowlands and take refuge in the mountains to the west. This has altered their economy, as their traditional farming practices have had to move away from agriculture and towards pastoralism in the poor soil of the mountain country. The Mexican Ejido system, a semi-feudal tenant-farming arrangement, has subjugated many Raramuri families to the colonial economy. As a result, some indigenous knowledge systems have been compromised. For example, tenant farmers are forced to abandon their Uto-Aztec calendar and adopt the western calendar in a lifestyle dictated by modern agriculture.
Aboriginal Cultural Tourism
However, they have still been able to maintain a degree of political and economic independence, which is the source of their largely successful resistance to assimilation. They have been able to participate in the colonial economy and adapt foreign technologies within their own cultural framework. However, in the last ten years the assimilationist policies of the colonial government have increased exponentially as new roads are built on Raramuri territory. Traditional land and culture is a rich mother lode tapped by the colonial government in the burgeoning tourism industry, resulting in massive pressure on the indigenous population. The government is stripping the Raramuri of its culture for profit, in the same way that it stripped the land of mineral, agricultural and timber resources.
The spiritual and cultural rituals of the Raramuri that have kept them strong and united for thousands of years are now reduced to the status of exotic curiosities for tourists, and as a result they are dying out. The outcome of this will be a spiritual wasteland, as the final frontier of mysticism is invaded, mined and reduced to a few isolated items of culture cultivated for tourism. It is uncertain how long the Raramuri will be able to hold out against this latest wave of invasion.
