COPPER CANYON'S RECLUSIVE ENDURANCE RUNNERS—THE TARAHUMARA—FACE PRESSURE WHEN CONFRONTED BY MEXICO'S UNDERWORLD

 

Run like the wind. We've all heard the phrase, but perhaps those who best embody it are the Tarahumara Indian tribe of Urique, in Mexico's Copper Canyon.

Originally inhabitants of Chihuahua, the Taramuhara have lived five hundred years in the Copper Canyon region in the Sierra Madre Occidental Mountains, retreating from their original home in central Mexico when Cortés and his Spanish invaders arrived. Not willing to wait around for trouble, the Taramuhara beat feet, literally, and ran as fast and as far away from danger as they could. This took them to the remote and difficult to access area now known as the Copper Canyon or Canyons in northwestern Mexico.

RARÁMURI

In their native language, they call themselves the Rarámuri, the light-footed ones. Their unique physical abilities were largely unknown to the outside world until 2009 when the book, Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes and the Greatest Race the World has Never Seen, made them famous. In remote communities where there are no roads, horses or burros, the only mode of transport was by foot, thus they ran everywhere.

Author Christopher McDougall wrote, "When it comes to running ultra-distances, nothing can beat a Tarahumara runner—not a racehorse, not a cheetah, not an Olympic marathoner." In his book, he describes a Tarahumara champion who once ran 435 miles and another who won a 100-mile ultramarathon in Leadville, Colorado, with casual ease.

Said fellow Leadville veteran Henry Dupre to "The New York Times," They run so beautifully that they seem to move with the ground. Like a cloud or fog moving across mountains."

Dupre also tagged the Taramuhara as "the kindest, happiest people on the planet," and "benign Bodhisattvas." 

DEFYING CONVENTION

Intriguing, no? Being among one of the world's most primitive Indians and among the world's best long distance runners, they defy convention. First of all, they prefer to run barefoot. In races, however, they are known to wear simple huaraches which they assemble from used tires that they bind together onto their feet with one long strap of leather. 

2006 estimates put their population between 50,000 and 70,000. Most still practice a traditional lifestyle, including inhabiting natural shelters like caves or cliff overhangs. Their diet is corn, beans, and squash, but they still do nomadic grazing of goats, sheep, and cattle. Almost all Rarámuri migrate from one place to another during the course of a year. 

SPANISH INVASION

Even though they initially escaped the Spanish invaders, by the 17th century, the temptation of gold and metals goaded the Spanish into establishing mines in the fierce country of the Tarahumara, making occasional slave raids to obtain mine workers. The Jesuits followed on their heels, expanded their missionary work, and founded a mission at the southern end of the Tarahumara territory. By 1648, the tribe had had enough and waged war against the invaders, destroying one of their missions. After this attack, they split into two groups. The northern group waged war against the Spanish but were defeated while the Jesuits, in the south, reported the Tarahumara were extremely resistant to evangelize. Their tenacity worked and by the mid 1700s most missions in their region ceased to operate. 

THE LEADVILLE TRAVEL ULTRAMARATHON

Fast forward. McDougall's book shone a spotlight on the Rarámuri with the1993 Colorado race, the Leadville Travel ultramarathon—attended by a worldwide crowd—set the stage for the Tarahumara's first act in 300 years. The Leadville ultra forces racers to run and climb one hundred miles over scrabbly trails and snowy peaks in Colorado's Rockies. It's closer to mountaineering than marathoning, says McDougall, and it continues all day and into the night. Runners grind along at 15 minutes a mile as they head towards Hope's Pass, a 12,600 foot peak. 

In "Runner's World," McDougall wrote, "Along with Polar-fleeced top guns at the starting line were a half dozen middle-aged guys in togas, smoking butts, and shooting the breeze, deciding if they should wear new Rockport cross-trainers they'd been given or their homemade sandals from scavenged tires from a nearby junkyard." 

According to McDougall, most opted for the sandals. And, he continues, they weren't stretching or warming up or showing the faintest sign they were about to start one of the most grueling ultramarathons in the world. In fact, most, he said, were nursing hangovers. 

MYSTERIOUS LEGEND

Their curious appearance matched the mysterious legend—they defy every known rule of physical conditioning and still speed along for hundreds of mile. The Tarahumara didn't work out, or stretch, or protect their feet. They chain-smoked fierce black tobacco, ate a ton of carbs and barely any meat, and chugged so much cactus moonshine that they were either drunk or hung over,  it's estimated, one-third of the year—one on their backs for every two on their feet—as explained by Dick and Mary Lutz in their book, The Running Indians. 

"Drunkeness is a matter of pride, not shame," wrote Dick and Mary Lutz. "And yet," the Lutzes insist, "There is no doubt they are the best runners in the world."

Running With the Ramámuri

SURPRISING THE SCIENTISTS

Leadville would test the Lutzes' claim, and once the starting gun sounded at 4.am., a sea of taller heads quickly swallowed the native runners who faded into the middle of the pack behind the world's most scientifically trained ultra runners. But as the sun rose and the course began the climb to Hope's Pass peak, the Tarahumara began to ease forward.

Not only were the Tarahumara gaining but they seemed to be getting stronger, said Joe Vigil, legendary American track coach who was at the ultra Leadville.

"They had such a sense of joy," Vigil would later say. And they had reason to be happy. At the finish line with a time of 20:03:33, 55-year old Victoriano Churro, farmer and oldest Tarahumara attendee, won the race at 20:03:33, followed by Cemido Charcarito in second, and Manuel Luna in fifth. The three Tarahumara were still bouncing along on their toes as they crossed the line. A year later, another Tarahumara runner won, Juan Herrera, finishing at 17:30:42.

Victoriano Churro, Winner Leadville 1993

VANISHED

Then, they vanished from the ultra running scene in the mid-90s, retreating to their canyon bottom homes and taking their miraculous distance running secrets with them. But one runner, the Caballo Blanco (White Horse), set out after them. The mysterious Blanco went to the Copper Canyons years ago to live among the Tarahumara. 

Blanco spoke with McDougall. "They eat beans, they drink a home-brewed corn beer which takes four pints to get you drunk, and they use it as a beer-based economy instead of cash. It can lead to good amounts of inebriation but they are also extremely hard workers.

"The Tarahumara," he continued, "just farm and party and run for fun, all the while staying in remarkable condition."

In 1971, physiologist Dale Groom ran cardiovascular tests on the adults and children, and concluded, as he'd write in "American Heart Journal," that probably not since the days of the ancient Spartans has a people achieved such a high state of physical conditioning. 

VITAL STATISTICS

Groom checked the pulse and blood pressure of Tarahumara runners during a five-hour race and found their blood pressure went down while running, and their average heart rate—in the midst of banging out eight-minute miles—was only 130 beats per minute. But what most impressed him was something that didn't register on his instruments: After running 50 miles, the Tarahumara didn't even look beat. They stood around and chatted while Groom pumped the diastolic cuff. 

Joe Vigil coached 19 national collegiate championship teams. Three advanced degrees hang on his office wall. He said nothing he's ever seen on the track or in physiology books left him prepared for what he witnessed at Leadville in 1993. The harder the Tarahumara fought their way through the Rockies, the more rapturous they became. Glee and determination are usually antithetical emotions, he said, yet the Tarahumara were brimming with both at once. It's as as if running to the death made them feel move alive. "It was quite remarkable," he commented. 

Heart disease, high blood pressure, and lethal cholesterol are virtually unknown among the Tarahumara, Vigil would later learn. So are crime, child abuse, and domestic violence. 

MAKING INROADS

In 1994, Caballo Blanco gave up his real name: Micah True. He was a gringo, though for a long while no one could pin a nationality on him. He said he'd had his own encounter with the Tarahumara at Leadville. He'd heard about their incredible performance the year before and wanted to see them in action for himself. But instead of competing, he offered himself as a guide. He teamed up with a Tarahumra runner over the back half of the course, he says, and "we spent the next ten hours together. Even though we didn't speak the same language, somehow we could joke and communicate."

Caballo Blanco aka Micah True (Runner's World)

After the race, he was as obsessed as Vigil with learning the Tarahumara secrets, and since nothing anchored True to his home in Colorado but an old Chevy pick-up and a one-man landscaping business, he could just hang out. But the tricky part, he learned, would be gaining access. The Tarahumara, for very good reason, refer to most outsiders as "white devils." They may let researchers monitor their hearts, but not look into them.

"I  did have one thing working for me," True aka Caballo Blanco said. "When you act out of love, good things happen. It's a law."

A NEW KIND OF RACE

The next part of this story is of a different kind of race—that of hauling a 50-pound backpack of marijuana across the border into the New Mexico desert.

With its remote location and few viable roads, the Copper Canyons have become an attractive hideout and throughway to the border for cartels. The best seller, Born to Run, had a staggering impact on the amateur-running world and its fame gave a painful twist to a formerly uplifting tale.

Copper Canyon (From WorldNomads.com)

Drug traffickers took notice and now exploit the very Tarahumara trait—endurance—that has been crucial to their survival. Cartel operatives enlist impoverished Tarahumara Indians to make a grueling odyssey running drugs by foot across the border into the U.S. 

UNLIKELY JOURNEY

Camillo Villegas-Cruz, 21, is languishing in a U.S. federal prison in California on the edge of the Mojave Desert. His unlikely journey from young athlete to drug mule shows a young man from a little-known tribe as just one of many being used by the cartels. The Taramuhara, catapulted into the limelight by a runaway best seller, are being ground down by forces out of their control, including Mexico's all-consuming drug war, a disastrous economy, and an unrelenting 70-year drought.

American defense lawyers on the southwest border say Tarahumara drug runners are a growing segment on their court-appointed clients. According to "Newsweek," Ken Del Valle, a defense attorney in El Paso, says he's represented more than a dozen of the tribe since 2007, all in similar backpacking cases. Statistics are impossible to come by as law enforcement doesn't differentiate between Indians and other Mexicans, but Del Valle says it is precisely the Tarahumara's aptitude for endurance running that makes them so heavily recruited. 

HARSH LANDSCAPE

But even in the best of times, many Tarahumara live on the edge, eeking out just enough to survive. Now farmers can't get most food crops to grow, and last winter an usual cold spell killed off much of what they did plant. That left them desperate—easy prey for wealthy drug barons looking for mules. 

Mexico's Copper Canyon Region

"It's tragic and disgraceful," says McDougall in a "Runner's World" article. "This is a culture that has tried its best to stay out of this mess, the messes of the world, and now the messes have come and found them."

"I can't even weigh the cultural impact of what the drug industry is doing to the Tarahumara," says Randy Gingrich, an American based in the city of Chihuahua for 20 years. He spends much of his time in the Sierra Madre and his NGO, Tierra Nativa, battles threats to the Tarahumara and other Indian tribes that come from miners, loggers, drug dealers, and the occasional tourist scheme.  He related that one former drug baron forcibly evicted Tarahumara from their ancestral homeland so he could build a giant Astroturf ski slope overlooking the 6,000 foot Sinfrorosa Canyon. The project fell through when the trafficker died in a plane crash.

But this is just one single situation in the manipulation of the Tarahumara that was dismantled by an act of fate. The drug trafficking will not stop. And unless the rains come and the economy recovers, young runners will continue to be coerced into tragic positions that may well lead to years in prison north of the border.

An unfitting end for a race that has tried to avoid the temptations of society, and live a life in peace. 

IF YOU ENJOYED THIS POST CHECK OUT—Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya, on Amazon. My website is www.jeaninekitchel.com. Books one and two in my Mexico cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown, are also on Amazon. And my journalistic overview of the Maya 2012 calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed: Demystifying the Prophecy is on Amazon.

 

CHOCOLATE'S COLORFUL HISTORY TRACES BACK TO ANCIENT MEXICO

The devilishly addictive treat like no other—chocolate—came from Mexico. Anthropologist Sophie Coe knew it, studied it, and wrote about it in The True History of Chocolate. In her book, Coe draws on botany, archeology, and culinary history to present chocolate's complete and accurate beginnings. "Essential reading for anthropologists as well as scholars in a variety of other disciplines, and Coe's book brings serious pleasure reading to lay readers who are cooks, eaters, and students of food ways," said a review in American Anthropologist.

CULINARY ANTHROPOLOGIST

Sophie Coe's interest in the food and drink of pre-Spanish peoples of the New World first inspired her to write America's First Cuisines in 1994. During that research, she discovered the important position given to chocolate in Mesoamerica. She became smitten with a love of chocolate's history since 1988 while preparing a paper titled "The Maya Chocolate Pot and Its Descendants" for a seminar. 

Unfortunately, Coe died before the book was finished. Having amassed thousands of pages of reference materials and having outlined the first eight chapters, so near and yet so far, she couldn't complete the task. Her husband, famed archeologist and Maya scholar Michael D. Coe, promised he would see it through to publication. 

MICHAEL COE STEPS IN

Cacao Pods After Harvest

In the introduction, Michael Coe explains that writing about food and drink has only become a 'respectable' and scholarly subject in recent decades, at least in the Western world, As a consequence, culinary history was left to amateur enthusiasts, he wrote, who usually promoted one food, drink, or cuisine.

Coe goes on to say that is especially the case with chocolate and the cacao from which it was manufactured. This is because the substance's origins lay in the cloudy area of New World pre-history and ethnographic-history. Sophie Coe's book on the subject is fascinating because as a culinary anthropologist, she looked at her subject with a worldwide view. And along with husband Michael Coe, archeologist, we the reader could not have a better pair to guide us through the long, fascinating world of cacao and its origins.

Sophie Coe (By SophieCoePrize.com)

Sophie had spent hundreds of hours in both American and European libraries tracking down all possible references to chocolate and cacao as well as vast amounts of time in her husband's enormous Mesoamerican library for her research. With her scientific background and a doctorate in anthropology, she left no stone unturned.

After her death in 1994 Michael continued to organize her notes. Even though the first chapters had been outlined, the book did not see the light of day until 2003. The second edition came out in 2013 bearing a wealth of new information not only on cacao and chocolate, but what it meant to ancient Mesoamerican cultures, thanks to the recent decipherment of Maya hieroglyphic texts. 

CACAO FOUND IN BURIAL SITES

Cacao Glyph in Mayan

One thing that was determined in the decade between the book's first and second publication was this: the royal and noble occupant of every Maya tomb went to the next world accompanied by Mesoamerica's most valued drink. This is known due to numerous pyramid site excavations in recent years that have given archeologists an abundance of insights into the importance of chocolate to these civilizations.

The cacao tree, named Theobroma cacao in the 1700s, is picky. It refuses to bear fruit outside a latitude of 20 degrees north or south of the equator. Nor is it happy with this tropical range if the altitude is too high— it will shed its leaves. It's a magnet to rodents of all kinds—squirrels, monkeys, rats—who steal the pods for the sweet white pulp around the seed. 

Cacao Pod's Pulp Surrounded Seeds

FINICKY CACAO 

It gets diseases: pod rots, wilts, and fungus produced extraneous growth called witches' brooms. A botanical problem child for sure. A young tree can begin to bear fruit within its third or fourth year. At first it was thought that it needed the shade of taller trees to produce, but actually, cacao also needs the litter underneath found on rainforest floors of old leaves, dead animals, and rotten cacao pods to create a rich soil base. 

Cacao Grove 

The young pods, green in color can turn yellow, red, or green when ripe. They cannot open on their own and need humans or animals to do the deed. Animals were originally drawn to the sweet pulp surrounding the acidy bean, and would break the bean out of its pod-like shell for the meat.

It takes four steps to produce cacao 'nibs' or kernels so that the beans can be ground into chocolate: fermentation, drying, roasting or toasting, and winnowing. For three thousand years, this is how the production has gone. 

CACAO'S ROOTS

Though not one hundred percent certain, it's thought the species Theobroma cacao originated in the Amazon River Basin below the eastern slopes of the Andes. Researchers do not believe it was used by South Americans. It's thought that it could have been transported as an already domesticated fruit plant from South America to Central America and Mexico, with the discovery of the intricate chocolate process made by Mesoamericans. 

Map of Mexico Cacao Country (By eps.com)

COLUMBUS'S ENCOUNTER

It's well known that the first European encounter with cacao took place on Columbus' fourth Atlantic voyage when his son Ferdinand came across a Maya trading canoe with cacao beans in its cargo in 1502. 

Coe states it was known that chocolate was used among the Aztecs both as a drink and currency. And, he writes, Spanish invaders derived their earliest real knowledge of cacao, and the very word cacao, not from the Aztecs but from the Maya of the Yucatán and neighboring Central America. 

In fact, one thousand years before the Spaniards landed on their shores, the Maya were writing 'cacao' on magnificent pottery and vessels used in preparation of chocolate for their rulers and nobles, both living and dead. 

THE OLMEC CONNECTION

Calakmul Noble Gestures Towards Foaming Chocolate

But before the Maya, there were the Olmecs. Their complex culture flourished in Mexico's humid Gulf coast lowlands near Veracruz about 1500 to 400 BC. Prodigious builders of massive ceremonial centers, they left behind their famous collossal stone heads—multi-ton portraits of their kings—along with exquisite jade carvings. Sadly they left behind no writings that ethnographers were able to decode. They did have a script, and scattered hieroglyphs were left on inscribed serpentine blocks, but it is currently indecipherable. Linguists however did decipher a data point to an ancestral form of a family of languages, Mixe-Zoquean, still spoken by thousands of peasants near the lands covered by Olmec remains. It is thought that at the height of their influence over less advanced cultures, the highly civilized Olmecs used 'loan words' that are still in use to this day. 

And one of those loan words happens to be cacao, from the Mixe-Zoquean language and originally pronounced kakawa, linguists say. 

Colossal Stone Olmec Head Near Veracruz

So it might be said, Coe continues, that the Olmecs first domesticated the plant or at least discovered the chocolate process. Hershey Foods, U.S. purveyor of chocolate, got involved with discovering chocolate's history by scraping archeological ceramics used for liquids and detected alkaloids found in Theorbroma cacao as far back as 38 centuries, which pre-dates the Olmecs. 

16th Century Indigenous Woman Prepares Chocolate

Sedentary village culture in Mesoamerica, it was discovered, did not begin near the Gulf Coast lowlands but the Pacific coastal plain of Chiapas and adjacent Guatemala. Excavations show the first pottery producing culture of Mesoamerica, dubbed Barra, dedicated sophisticated neckless jars, so delicate they must have been used for the display of valued drinks rather than cooking, archeologist say. Radio-carbon dates were from 1800 to 400 BC, and the Barra were pre-Olmec. Some of the pieces found the compounds and/or alkaloids of cacao, proving positive for the tell-tale theobromine. 

Excavators for Hershey's lab found a stone bowl in San Lorenzo (Olmec) region dating to 1350 BC to be positive for theobromine, meaning that the Olmec kingdom knew of chocolate, had a Mixe-Zoquean word for it, and could well have been adapted from another emerging culture in Mesoamerica eventually passing that cacao knowledge on to the Maya. The Maya not only consumed the chocolate but revered it. Maya written history and art displays chocolate drinks being used in celebration and to finalize important transactions. Carvings on pots discovered in royal burial tombs show drawings of a drink being prepared, undoubtedly chocolate. 

A MAYA TRADITION

Despite chocolate's importance in Maya culture it wasn't reserved for the wealthy and powerful but was readily available to anyone. Pre-conquest, it was prepared in a number of ways: as drink, gruel, powder, possibly even as a solid substance like we know it today. In many Maya households, chocolate was served with every meal, it is believed. When used as a drink it was thick and frothy and often combined with chili peppers, honey, or water and the Maya liked to drink it hot. They also liked foam in their chocolate, not unlike a fine cappuccino, and would create it by pouring the liquid from one vessel to another like a Starbucks barista. They were as creative as modern chefs.

Ethno-historic accounts point to widespread use throughout Maya culture, in betrothal and marriage ceremonies, especially among the wealthy. In this way, chocolate drinks occupy the same niche as expensive French champagne in other cultures. In the Quiché kingdom, there were three lords whose function was to give wedding banquets. Quiché specialist Dennis Tedlock noted one of the things people did at these festivities was to 'chokola'j,' or drink chocolate together, a possible source of our English (and Spanish) word chocolate. 

A GIFT FROM THE GODS

The Aztecs took chocolate admiration to another level. They believed cacao was a gift from their gods. Like the Maya, they enjoyed the caffeinated kick of hot or cold and spiced chocolate beverages served in ornate containers, but they also used the beans as currency. In their culture, cacao beans were considered more valuable than gold. 

Cacao Beans As Currency

For Aztecs, it was an upper class extravagance though lower classes enjoyed it occasionally at weddings or celebrations. And Moctezuma II supposedly drank gallons of chocolate each day for energy and as an aphrodisiac. It's said he also reserved some beans for his military. 

CORTÉS AND CHOCOLATE

Cortés was introduced to chocolate by the Aztecs of Moctezuma's court. After returning to Spain, cacao beans in tow, he supposedly kept his chocolate knowledge a well-guarded secret. One story claims that the friars who presented Guatemalan Maya to Phillip II of Spain in 1544 also brought cacao beans along as a gift. No matter how chocolate got to Spain, by the late 1500s it was a much-loved indulgence by the court and Spain began importing chocolate in 1585. 

By 1639, a colonial source said of Mexico, "The business of this country is cacao." The Yucatec Maya had even learned how to grow cacao trees in the damp environment of cenotes, and the Spanish haciendados saw cacao pods dangling from sinkhole roofs in a form of 'silvi-culture.'

EUROPE GOES WILD FOR CHOCOLATE

Though it took a while for the European palate to embrace chocolate due to Spain keeping cacao a secret for so long, Europeans got a taste of it little by little while Phillip II was king. It was the highlight at his daughter's wedding to Louis XIII of France. Her gift to her husband was chocolate. Drinking hot chocolate became a fashionable trend in France before spreading throughout Europe. It's craze was nudged along by a pirate-botanist, William Hughes, who spent a good deal of time in the New World. A natural historian, he began to document plants and the foods he came across. In 1672 he wrote the first plant book on the New World titled The American Physician. In it he outlined a recipe for hot chocolate, adding ideas on what could be added to it, including rum or brandy.

William Hughes in the New World (By AtlasObscura)

Chocolate was ready for its close-up. And for the past 400 plus years, its popularity has skyrocketed. So we can thank the Olmecs, the Maya, the Aztecs, the traders and growers and marketers of chocolate for our long tasty love affair with a delectable and lovely treat.

If you enjoyed this post, check out Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya, on Amazon. My website is www.jeaninekitchel.com. Books one and two in my Mexico cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown, are also on Amazon. And my journalistic overview of the Maya 2012 calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed: Demystifying the Prophecy is on Amazon.