"When you run on earth and with the earth you can run forever", Pray a rarámuri proverb.
«First a boy was hung with the cords of his tennis. Then, At two years one of his brothers did. And then, just another two years later, The third brother was hung », It narrates with a low and sweet voice, Margarita González González, Governor Rarámuri of the Guachochi community.
As an epidemic that is desolate fields where humans traffic drugs and souls, Tarahumara indigenous people take their lives for a poverty anguish bite, the misper of immigrants who returned without ever leaving, Violence brought by Chabochi (white man) And the certainty that sometimes nothing awaits them that it is not a bastard winter that forgot some summer. «Sometimes, When they see that the harvest will not bear fruit are killed by the desperation of knowing that they will have nothing to eat », Explains one of the state police officers they call to unravel meat and muscles of the trees branches.
The wave of suicides of this native town, forgotten like so many in this Mexico in a hurry to get to the present, had a first voice of alarm early in 2012. Then, The organized front of indigenous peasants denounced that «indigenous women when they have been able to feed their children four days; and his sadness is so great that even 10 from December to 2011 fifty men and women, thinking that they don't have to give their children, they threw themselves into the ravine ".
They don't have to give their children, They threw themselves into the ravine
That news shakes some headlines and consciences until he forgot, Like so many, Without the coming years, the unnatural condemnation of preferring to take his life without allowing a misfortune, an oversight or a disease does it before. "We often see newsletters that announce that there have been suicides in the mountains", confirm in the South Prosecutor's Office of Chihuahua. "We are going to the communities every month to attend some suicide case", State agents explain. "Generally, as with homicides (There is a high murder rate also caused by high alcohol consumption), We find a lot of coldness. They do not cry their dead because they are very cold and shy », Maria comments, A ministerial agent. «Yes they suffer, But they carry it inside », Dr. Barrero explains that he has more than 30 years exercising your trade in the Sierra. "Poverty rot everything", The doctor affects.
In the Rochéachi community, Next to a thin stream, A woman from 30 years in the card and 600 In the face washes some rags. Beside, His daughter of just over two years with some obvious signs of misery in his fragile skeleton limits himself to crying without enough strength to sound his crying. "My husband left two months ago and has not returned". Where did he go? "I don't know". Do they have food? "Little", she replies.
Further back, A ranch appears in which two elders, the parents of the young woman of the stream, They await the door while she peels some corn. They don't look at each other, They do not talk and do not touch each other when they are asked to pose for a photo. In the background there is another mud cabin with a large bed that almost occupies everything. There lives a peculiar family of three children in which two of them are the parents. She has 16 years, the 15 and the baby of both more than 24 months. Are you the daughter of the lady who is in the river? "Yeah". Has your dad left? "Better". Why? "I only hit my mother's beatings", A girl responds with 15 years he gave up for the first time almost at the same time that his mother gave birth for the last time. "They are very poor and vulnerable communities", state agents say.
A pregnant woman with her belt was hung when her husband was with another
«Some young boys commit suicide for jealousy and heartbreak. Last year in the community a pregnant woman hung up with her belt to know that her husband was with another », Remember Margarita. "They are people who prefer to die to endure the rejection of their community", explains Dr. Barrero.
That uprooting, Affective and social, of a semi -fledged town, Nature lover and lost in an elongated piece of time in which they have a hard time locating themselves, It is also part of this routine that sometimes ends in suicides. "The migrants who return on many occasions do not respect the authority of the communities and are mained", Alejandro Hernández explains, Governor of the Papachichi community.
Hernández refers to the flight that many young rarámuris undertake to neighboring cities, Sometimes even the capital Chihuahua, In search of a future. «They return very changed. Some bring earrings in their ears and stop dressing traditional clothes », The governor says. It seems that the return to the icy winds of the mountain, where the days are born dead, entails a depression that has recently caused some suicide among the returnees. They cannot be part of the urban world of the Chabochis, where sometimes they are exploited and discriminated against, And they also have no incentive to continue being part of their traditional communities in which nothing emerges and with which they no longer identify. «We are worse than years ago. Many leave and return very badly », The governor of Guachochi also maintains. «People have to go looking for jobs to cities and when they return they bring other knowledge. Some consume drugs », Cayetana Bustillos points out, Radio Xetar announcer, «The voice of the Sierra Tarahumara», A broadcaster that broadcasts in Spanish and Rarámuri.
The important thing in its worldview is to dance to maintain the balance of the world
The drug is another threat. The Sierra de Chihuahua is part of the golden triangle in which the drug groups dispute routes, Warehouses and sown. "I don't want the kids to get into drugs but there they pay them well", Summarizes the governor of Paphajichi. Here, however, Rarámuri's own culture is exercising brake on the collection of hitmen by drug traffickers. «The Tarahumaras have another conception of the world, They are not interested in money or work. If they need one thing and get it they leave the job to enjoy it. They are a week with the drug traffickers and then leave. The important thing in its worldview is to dance to maintain the balance of the world », They explain in the Southern Prosecutor's Office of Chihuahua.
But, as always, No truth is absolute and some young people enter that market of the new times in which the worldview of the global village dictates that happiness is now achieved with mobile phones and refrigerators that cool. «We give our advice and when someone does something wrong we try to teach him, Before punishing him, so that it does not do it again », Some governors tell us that they have their own police officers with arches and not with firearms.
Maybe, as one of the many and rich myths of the Tarahumara culture dictate, a people also cheerful and loaded with religious and cultural beliefs of great value, "God made the rarámuri and the devil to the Chabochis". It is probably unfair to load all the weight of the guilt of indigenous ills to white men, And probably the domain of these has given us a logical space and time to the "light feet" to continue running through the mountains. "We must respect them and they must respect us", The governor of Paphajichi summarizes that as they say in his town «doing Yumari (dances) We lengthen our lives because we make God happy with us ». Those who do not get it have no choice, then, to tie your necks to the branches of the trees.
I published this article in the El Mundo newspaper before.
