ABOUT THE SIERRA: INDIGENOUS CULTURES:
Profile of Augusto Urteaga

His house is modest and charming, full of books, posters, handicrafts, a few pieces of good wooden furniture. In back is a large walled garden, with a tangerine and a lemon tree, where he grows vegetables: chard, zucchini, lettuce. There are is a convent next day and the sounds of chanting drift over its high walls. It is an island of calm in downtown Chihuahua.

He prepares me a cup of strong, freshly ground coffee. He shows me photos of his relatives: his son, now twenty-eight, an educational psychologist, his mother who was the first Peruvian woman to study in the United States (education, at the University of Ohio). Sitting under a poster by Leonora Carrington, of a woman with the head of an owl, he speaks of coming to Mexico thirty years ago, as a young man, to study anthropology at the National School of Anthropology, then located in the National Museum of Anthropology.

He worked in that museum, one of the great wonders of the world, when its collection was new: labelling exhibits and organizing displays. The School was then small and housed on the top floor of the museum building. Mexico City was effervescent, full of the energy and dreams of the student movement.

I had the idea that they were no longer indigenous, genuine — that nightmare we anthropologists have to always be looking for, something more original, it is nonsense.

In the late eighties he came to Chihuahua, where his former wife had family, and, with several others, founded the Chihuahua campus of the National School of Anthropology, intended as a center for studies of the entire north of Mexico, and not just Chihuahua.

"Lately I've been issuing expert opinions, peritajes — forensic anthropology — which is a kind of anthropological report to demonstrate the indigenous culture of pueblos which have agrarian conflicts or conflicts over the forests or over territory or natural resources, in some cases, mines, or water, which is very valuable. I have done various peritajes in very different communities, and with very different results, as well. Because the peritaje is a report which the anthropologist prepares for a court, in this case an agrarian court. And the judge decides if this is good or if it is bad, and if it should be considered as evidence. Also, and I don't know why, ..... written law.... over the common law, or the indigenous law. .... the indigenous governments, how they practice justice, ....

Not long ago I was in a Rarámuri community, half an hour from Creel, which is called San Ignacio de Arareco. I know the area, I always go through Creel, I see my friends, I see the Jesuit priests, people who work with these communities, very open, almost all of them of the tendency of liberation theology. And so we have a lot in common, and we can talk for hours and hours. They have nice homes, the convents and churches are very comfortable. When you go out to work in indigenous communities, and then come back and find a good bed, a good fireplace, good coffee, sometimes good wine, you can talk until dawn.

And so I passed by Creel, and passed by San Ignacio, and it’s a town organized around tourism. There’s a small lake there which is called Arareco, leaving Creel on the way to Samachique and Guachochi. I always thought of it as a very acculturized indigenous community, very modernized, and I had the idea that they were no longer indigenous, genuine—that nightmare we anthropologists have to always be looking for, something more original, it is nonsense. And there I discovered that they are still just as indigenous as anyone else. What they’re doing there is taking advantage of progress, of tourism, turning it to their own advantage. And so there have been a lot of changes in their way of thinking, their way of acting, their customs. Almost all of them are bilingual, but when they speak to each other, they speak in Rarámuri, in lengua. And they have internet, and email; they have an office in downtown Creel, which is a tourist office, where they organize tours for tourists from different countries, they have cabins next to the Lake of Arareca, very beautiful...., which they administer themselves. They have trucks, or vans to take the tourists around to different places, to the waterfalls, to the barrancas, to some hot springs. The place is very beautiful. What you see from the highway is superficial, they go on living as indigenous, only they have had to learn to live alongside Creel, where there are tourists, government offices, federal, state, municipal, and they take advantage.

The conflict has to do with corruption on the part of the agrarian section of the Mexican government, which had sold this land to a North American real estate consortium

They charge rent for the cabins, for camping, for taking photos or videos, for attending their fiestas. And they organize their fiestas so that during one part of the fiesta people can take photos but then they have their own fiesta, apart, alone. And at their meetings which they have every week, at the church, they are very traditional. Traditional meetings at which they only speak in lengua and they don't invite mestizos or chabochis, as they call them, or rarely do they invite outsiders. I had the fortune to be invited by them to do a report on the land situation, to do a peritaje for them. They have a lawsuit in the agrarian courts.

And so for me it was a very interesting experience. I had done peritajes in communities which were very remote, very traditional, where you travel for fourteen or eighteen hours on very bad roads and in complicated conditions. And there, I had all the comforts, I stayed in one of their cabins, the indigenous authorities gave me the use of the truck to go everywhere, we spoke to everyone of the land which was in conflict. The conflict has to do with corruption on the part of the agrarian section of the Mexican government, which had sold this land to a North American real estate consortium. People from Sante Fe, Tucson, Albuquerque, and Monterrey, and they bought certain parcels of land in San Ignacio, which is where the Barranca de Cobre begins, it is a place where you can see the whole barranca and below the hot springs. And I think they want to build a five-star hotel there. And so there is a lawsuit between the indigenous and those who bought the land, individuals, North Americans. And so my work consisted in interviewing some elders, the authorities, the traditional healers, and supporting them. And so it was very comfortable field work (in English) because I had all their support.

They invited me to their traditional meetings at the church, and so I gave them reports on what I was doing. I got a translator, who is a friend of mine, who lives in another community; he is an indigenous poet, and musician, and he is a very good friend, I trust him a lot. I went around everywhere with him. I made tape recordings in Rarámuri, interviews, and he translated them into Spanish. And then we came here to my house and we worked for three weeks getting the work together. We made a lot of corrections on the translations he had done in the field. He taped the translations. But then after listening to the recordings in lengua, he made some changes. It is a very good work. And so I made my reports to the meeting, every week, and he made the translations. And when I made the report for the agrarian courts, and he did a written translation, in Rarámuri, and we gave it to the people in the two versions. And the people agreed with it. And that's what I’m doing with the agrarian courts. The matter is not yet resolved, the judge’s final decision is still to come.

I discovered that just because they are next to a tourist zone, they don't stop being Indians.

It was an experience that I found very interesting, first, because I discovered that just because they are next to a tourist zone, they don't stop being Indians. Although they dress like we do. Their customs are the same as always, except in a formal way. And I discovered that they still get married, in their own way, they keep their traditional family systems, and they name their indigenous authorities the same way as any indigenous community, by consensus. They do not vote, either by written ballot or by raising their hands. They do it by talking and they go on talking until everyone is convinced; consensus means that everyone agrees. All the indigenous authorities are chosen this way. And if they don’t agree, no one is chosen until they do.

And I could see that they do their fiestas, their ceremonies, the same as any indigenous pueblo. The indigenous healers are still authorities. They take charge of counselling the people, marrying them, rendering justice, curing them, in the traditional way, with herbs, with specific rituals and therapies. It is a medical system parallel the official one. And the healers “clean” the fields, with ceremonies. They always prepare tesgüino and pour tesgüino on all the ground, and annoint the animals with tesgüino, annoint the people with tesgüino to clean them. And once they have cleaned the people, they drink the tesgüino that is left over. Of course some of them get drunk, because it is a beer made with corn. But you have to drink a lot to get drunk. But they don't always get drunk, just on certain occasions, and with this they clean the fields, to sow, and this is an offering to God. At Yumari, they pray to God, the women dance, the men parade, the singer chants so God will be happy and the harvest is good. It is a very interesting ritual, very special for the Tarahumara.

Aside from this, they also make a lot of handicrafts. The women work at making baskets, ceramics, masks, weavings, clothing, which they sell in Creel. They sell it for very low prices, but they have organized themselves as a group and now they don't sell each one for herself but as a group and the prices have gotten better and, in short, they have been achieving a certain modernity. They are doing something very interesting, which is to hang on to their territory, and keep it clean, they don't want trash there, and so there are latrines, and they talk to the tourists and explain to them where to put the garbage, they burn the garbage or they get it together and take it to Creel and take very good care of what they have left. Because these are places where when the railroads were built, the forests all around were cut down. Now they don't have the forests. Although it looks like they do, these are not forests that can be exploited. It's not possible. And so the tourism serves as a solution. They have forest, but it’s only good for gathering firewood, so they can cook with wood, make corrals for their animals, and fences around their houses, and every so often they build their houses with wood, the way they used to.

The official policy is in favor of tourism; it is one of the most lucrative industries in Mexico. In almost any part of Mexico, the indigenous have no say and the tourist facilities belong to the government.

Basically they have held on to their culture, their beliefs, their traditions, but evidently they have taken what they can make use of from the western world. The official policy is in favor of tourism; it is one of the most lucrative industries in Mexico. In almost any part of Mexico where there are indigenous people and there are pyramids and temples and archaeological zones, the indigenous have no say and the tourist facilities belong to the government.

Here in the case of the Tarahumara in Creel, the indigenous are occupying space, and opportunities for tourism, but they have organized themselves to take advantage, and this certainly implies a change for them. They have to have guards at the entrance to the territory of San Ignacio, and these guards let them work their livestock, or go to their fields to grow crops, but they are the guards who take care of things, and who charge the tourists. They have people dedicated to tourism, who do the tours, who drive the vans, who use radios, cell phones, computers.

And the idea I used to have, that there were indigenous people who dressed like indigenous just to get dollars, now I don't think so. I want to continue to go there, I have some acquaintances among them, to observe a little more of the situation. I found it surprising, that they with their vans and email accounts and progress maintain their indigenous identity.

Coloradas de la Virgin is a community which is very isolated, very threatened, very complicated. There is a situation there which doesn't exist in San Ignacio. It is completely planted in fields of poppies and marijuana and all of it goes to the United States. And this is a situation which ... the mestizo. All of them are growing. They grow and there is a lot of violence, a lot of corrupt cops who pay the indigenous to grow for them. And then the indigenous have fewer resources than the mestizos who have guns and trucks. Their guns are much better than....trucks, to take out the drugs...

Coloradas de la Virgen, compared with the area around San Ignacio, for example, is a traditional zone, very isolated, where the indigenous are very indigenous. Modernization is very different here, it means corruption, it means violence, it means drug trafficking.

Pino Gordo. There they are gentiles, there is no church, there is no school, there is no clinic, there is not a single Mexican flag. These are people who never wanted to be baptised. And I worked there with them....agarramos the first instance. we still have to present results... this is what I've been doing recently, these are the roads which I have taken, which I never in all my life would have imagined.

How did you come to take this path, so far from Peru?

I had a certain admiration for Mexico, for its nationalism, its governments, the Mexican Revolution, the Mexican cinema.

I came to Mexico to study. I was studying at the University in Peru but I didn't like it. I had certain family problems, problems with the situation in Peru. We were living under a very terrible military dictatorship, this was at the end of the 1960s, a century ago. Fortunately, a friend was applying to go to school in Mexico, he showed me the papers, we made a copy of the application, we filled them out together, they asked for documents, and I was accepted, to study anthropology in Mexico City.

At that time the National School of Anthropology was in the Museum of Anthropology in Chapultepec, and I had seen it in photos, and maybe I had read something somewhere. I had a certain admiration for Mexico, for its nationalism, its governments, the Mexican Revolution, the Mexican cinema. My mother had liked Mexico. In short, I was lucky.

I arrived and began to work, in the Museum of Anthropology. The school was then on the upper floor of the museum, now it has moved to a bigger location but at the time it was very small. I began to work on the displays, even cleaning the display windows, I was very happy. I was young, I watched the tourists through the glass, there were pretty girls, and I worked in the section of ethnography.

My first work was to get to know the ceramics, the costumes, the kitchen utensils, the textiles, embroideries. It was a good apprenticeship, we had to put the exhibits in order. The museum was founded very rapidly and so the collections were all mixed up, sometimes we didn't know where they came from, a dress, a piece. I had to make the labels, the catalogue, etc.

In the basement were the offices of the museum, on the ground floor the displays, the rooms of ethnography and archaeology, and upstairs the school. And so in the afternoon I attended the school. In short I lived in Chapultepec.

These were the days of the student movement of 1968, but I arrived at the end. There was a lot of enthusiasm, people were very mobilized. There was some of everything: marijuana, rock, Mexican songs, poetry, meetings, demonstration, everything. The world was young and I liked that a lot, and so I stayed. I had a job and I studied. Later I had a son, I graduated, I finished my thesis, I went on studying, and I stayed.

I have worked in many places in Mexico. I lived in the capital. I know practically all of Mexico, from doing field work, research, in different parts. Oaxaca is beautiful, the Yucatán, Quintana Roo, Chiapas. The center, too, Guanajuato. I haven't worked in Zacatecas, but in Hidalgo, near Mexico City. The life of an anthrologist is to travel a lot, and walk a lot.

So I stayed here, teaching classes, going out to the Sierra a lot, for long periods, three months at a time, carrying a backpack, cans of food, a sleeping bag, crossing the arroyos, gathering firewood to be able to sleep, until I finally began to meet people, and I stayed in the schools, or sometimes with a priest who was around, with some mestizo family, with the indigenous.

I came to Chihuahua because the mother of my oldest child was from Chihuahua. She died a year and a half ago, she was very young. She lived fifty-seven years and I am fifty-four. Her family was here and since our son was a child, we brought him here to know his grandparentds, his uncles and aunts, his cousins. So I knew Chihuahua.

Later I worked here for a while as a journalist. I was a reporter for the left in those days. Here in Chihuahua there were a lot of social movements in the 1970s. Popular movements, campesinos movements, and in the sierra, armed movements. In the 1970s Chihuahua was a very happening place, both socially and politically. So I came here often and I had friends.

At the end of the 1980s, some of us wanted to create a school of anthropology in northern Mexico. And so we founded this school of anthropology which was the first one in northern Mexico. It is in Chihuahua but the idea was for it to serve all the northern part of the country and the border. For financial, administrative and also personnel problems, ... in the north. ... The school belongs to the National Institute of Anthropology administratively. ...The school teaches, although we also do research. That’s why I’m here.

There was a project in the Sierra, with the Tarahumara, to do an analysis of how was their life, their health, education. And I came to know the Sierra. This project lasted for one year, but then it was for two years, then it stretched out to three years, and after that I did everything I could so it would go on forever.

I fell in love with the Sierra, I wanted to stay here, to live here. I got tired of going back and forth so I decided to stay. It’s been good for me. This is the short version.

So I stayed here, teaching classes, going out to the Sierra a lot, for long periods, three months at a time, carrying a backpack, cans of food, a sleeping bag, crossing the arroyos, gathering firewood to be able to sleep, until I finally began to meet people, and I stayed in the schools, or sometimes with a priest who was around, with some mestizo family, with the indigenous.

Now when I go to the Sierra, I know who to go to, my compadres, comadres, and they welcome me to their homes, bring firewood, prepare food. I spread out my sleeping bag. And so I live with them, so something happens for me which is difficult for the tourists to see, to be able to live with them, to help them in the fields, carry firewood. I help with whatever I can, the goats, bringing them food, clothing, whatever they need. I’ve also been giving human rights courses.

What specifically does that mean?

I take teaching materials and I give them a course on their rights as indigenous peoples, and I give them information about indigenous rights in different countries. more advanced, the struggle of the indigenous.... what is being said in Mexico about the indigenous.... experiences. There are also workshops about the conservation of the environment, sustainable development, also workshops for women, given by women, about health, pregnancy, prevention of pregnancy, breastfeeding. And I’ve had good experiences.

I’ve also given courses to children, we draw, we organize fiestas, for example we do theater: the children play the roles and make their costumes. This is really community organizing work, one learns a lot, they are weeklong courses, ten days, with good attendance. ....to get to know other indigenous as well, who are smaller and less well known than the Tarahumara, but they too are indigenous.

A great deal of the work which I do is to compare the works about the peoples of the southwestern United States and northern Mexico, such as the Sierra Madre.

That’s something that impressed me a lot the first time I read about the matachine dances of the Tarahumara; they reminded me of the Yaqui dances that we used to attend on the reservation near Tucson.

Mexico is a country of  many indigenous groups. In the north there are different kinds of indigenous, those of the desert and those of the sierras, who also differ among themselves and from the people of the south and center.

There are groups like the Yaquis or the Mayos who live on the coast, who are also related, and when the North American historians and anthropologists arrived, their studies were very useful to us here in the north of Mexico. Mexico is a country of indigenous peoples, but we have many indigenous groups, so in Mexican nationalism, there is a kind of standard Indian, taken from the center and south of Mexico. And in the north there are different kinds of indigenous, those of the desert and those of the sierras, who also differ among themselves and from the people of the south and center.

And so it was in the center, since Mexican is a centralized country, that they came up with the standard Indian, which they make the model for the whole country. And so those of us who work in.... we have to distinguish between the Indians of the north of Mexico and the ones from the center and south of Mexico. For example, I was in Chiapas recently, and in Chiapas there are twenty indigenous groups, with twenty different languages.

So what does it mean, the indigenous of Mexico, it should be the indigenous (plural) of Mexico, with their specific cultures, which are many, and this is what anthropology is about.

And this is struggle is not only cultural, it is not only among specialists, folkloristas, it is also a political struggle. It is a political policy because when you speak of the rights of the indigenous of Chiapas, they are not the same as the rights of the indigenous Tarahumaras, they are different. Which makes it hard to say exactly what indigenous rights are.