Californication meets Tranpacificism

So! That was a wild and crazy trip, ‘eh? We left on our grand,
week-long journey on July 1st, arriving in the city of Creel.
Creel is in, or near, the la Barranca del Cobre, or in English, Copper
Canyon. This is the largest canyon in North America. What, “Grand
Canyon,” you say? Yeah, the lame-os would say that we only know about that,
not only because we’re ethnocentric, but more importantly because we’re
“ameri-centric” (which should properly be “US-centric,” so as to not be
ethnocentric, ya know? But then again Lonny has met people who don’t
know who Jews are in the U.S., so that argument falls a little weak on me.

But anyways!

What were my original expectations for this trip? My Appropriate Technology (AT) professor,
Lonny Grafman, has an associate in New Mexico who has been doing work with the
TaraHumarans in México, helping provide them with
AT, and supposedly we might have come in to help do the same. Or at least, if not do work
with or for them (heck, I’d even be down to do some more adobe! Excepting my wrist
problem.), to meet them, and help establish a relationship with them.
((Continue on to see how it really went..))

So it went from a week with them, to a few days with them, then to a few hours with them,
finally .. yeah, I think you can guess, we didn’t end up meeting them at all. D’oh! I was a
little sad about that at first, that was what was making for an exciting and way interesting
journey and adventure. It was a cool trip in a lot of ways because of everything else, but
all the “else” comprise a lot of experiences I have had before– like staying in a hotel,
being in new towns, camping, dealing with people, etc. None of which I can’t learn from,
mind you, but I’ve never really had much experience with any indigineous peoples before. I
was lucky enough to meet a few aboriginals (Australian natives) when I was in Oz, and I
greatly cherish those experiences, but they were short and seemingly very different from what
I may experience here. From what the rumors say, the Tarahumara (the anglicized/spanishized
version of their true name, the Rarámori) don’t even speak spanish! Only their own
native tongue, which may contribute both to their distrust of foreigners, and the fact that
they have been able to keep many aspects of their culture intact for all of this time. Oh,
quick segway.

I mentioned this in my mass mail, but have been neglecting you, poor weblog. The Tara-Humara
are a native american tribe that lived in the United States, near the border with Canada.
This was about the time when the U.S. government was putting NativeAms in reservations, and
potentially doing other, more horrendous, things to them. As the story goes, at this point
the Tara-Humara asked México for permission to live there (here). Apparently México was
down, so they moved here, to the state of Chihuaha (yes, like the dog breed), where they’ve
been living ever since. Apparently they have a website too, which I have linked to above,
but have yet to see. I also have a document Jen in my group sent out, if it seems useful and
appropriate I’ll put it up somewhere, probably under classes/parras or some such (Stay tuned).
Creel was an interesting place. _VERY_ touristy, I have to say I was quite surprised, as it
was quite a change of pace from our experiences here, in Parras de la Fuente, where I have
met.. maybe 2 other foreigners in total? There were gringos and whiteys everywhere in Creel!
Wowza! Which was additionally weird because the others in my group made it seem like prices
for souvenirs/trickets were actually cheaper in Creel than here! Wild, ‘eh! Indeed.
Unfortunately I’ve been cheap lately, since I was getting close to my planned budget (more on
that later?), which is also too bad because I wanted to buy crap for people. But I’ve still
got much undisbursed from my Asia trip (mainly India), so..!
Copper Canyon was also pretty awesome, and on our way to a little town called Batopilas, we
passed by a few more canyons, which are supposedly in the same vein/system as Copper Canyon.
(Not sure exactly how that works though). Wow, what a magnificently huge beast, this canyon
be! I swear it. There’s an interesting picture of a mask from a soveniur shop near our
hotel their, I’ll try to post those pix up soon.. What else..?
We returned to near Creel to camp, which was interesting. We met with a fellow who has been
doing work with the Tara-Humara for ~30 years, both with AT, preserving their seed stock, and
potentially in other ways too. He’s the one that was supposed to take us to visit them. And
I guess he speaks their language in addition to english.. wow, tri-lingual! Killer..
Speaking of which, “Chi-ma-lo huaca tú” is “What’s your name?” in their language.

Well, I feel like wrappin this up now, so as a finale.. we took a quick pit stop at a little
convenience store in or near the city (pueblo?) of Cuahtemoc, and guess who ran the store
there? They were white, which first caught my attention, then I was reminded–they’re the
Menonitas (Menonites) that we were told we’d encounter. Woa! That was a wild experience
too! It was weird to meet white people, and then to realize they lived there, and spoke only
a little English and a little Spanish! I feel weird being in México and speaking a “little”
spanish, but! Hmm. I think they speak German fluently, and they had come over.. at some
point, during some persecution in Europe, as I recall. They’re supposedly a people like the
Amish, but their convenience store did not reveal that to me. I dunno, it was all ever so
interesting nonetheless. I, or Lonny, might have asked them a question about their religion,
not really sure. Regardless of how it started, they asked us about our religion, if we were
christian. We replied no, and as I’ll get to in a future entry, trying to speak spanish
alters what I say, so I just replied (in spanish) “a religion of India,” Lonny replied
“judeo,” Jewish, which confused her, she didn’t seem to know what that was. What?! Weird!
Armeda quietly replied “Pagan,” I don’t remember if they heard that, or if she just ended up
saying she was something different, but it prompted the response: “But you all know each
other, right?” as she was surprised that we knew each other, and potentially were travelling
together, even though we didn’t share the common thread of religion. Indeed, it was true,
though we were all of different religions, we were together. Which it may be argued leads to
conflict and other problems, but! Life is definitely more interesting with diversity! -@

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...