Winters are fatal for Mexico's hardy Tarahumara

By Robin Emmott

CREEL, Mexico (Reuters) - Six babies with puffed up eyes and swollen bellies lie silently in an intensive care ward, too weak to cry because of hunger and tuberculosis.

They are victims of brutal conditions in northern Mexico's remote and snowy Sierra Tarahumara mountains, where doctors and aid groups say at least 90 indigenous people have died so far this winter from hypothermia, malnutrition and cold-related diseases.

To defend their 1,000-year-old culture from outside influences, the Tarahumara have headed deep into the 7,650 feet (2,300 meter)-high mountains and live in caves in secluded canyons during winter, when temperatures drop as low as 5 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 15 degrees Celsius).

Improved government health care has helped bring a slight drop in mortality rates in recent years but about 70 percent of Tarahumara children under five suffer from malnutrition and many families are reluctant to seek help.

"The children have to be at death's door before the parents or grandparents bring them to hospital. We never know how many die before they reach us," said Sister Marta Rangel at a Roman Catholic clinic, ringed by ice, in Creel, in Chihuahua state.

The babies in the clinic are expected to recover but Rangel said some may return in the same critical condition in a few months time. She said an 8-year-old girl here had brain damage after suffering prolonged hunger and tuberculosis.

Despite such suffering, the Tarahumara are determined to remain Mexico's most isolated indigenous people.

"We're happy this way, we live as well as we can," said Maria Guadalupe Rodriguez, a gaunt-faced mother with two barefoot children and a baby with chapped lips on her back.

Talking through an interpreter as she received government food aid, her breath visible in the bitter cold, she said her family's corn harvest had failed in the hamlet of Rikinapuchi, near Creel. She wore only a brightly colored tribal cotton dress, a thin shawl and open-toed sandals as a dusting of snow covered the ground.

This year's winter is milder than most but visiting doctors can still only stay warm by wearing two pairs of socks, thick sweaters and thermal underwear.

FORCED FROM THEIR LANDS

Spanish conquistadors drove the Tarahumara from their nomadic existence on Chihuahua's fertile plains 500 years ago.

Over the past century, lumber companies, miners, tourist development and drug traffickers have pushed them deeper into the steep pine forests of the sierra, where farming land is scarce and corn crops often fail.

In summer, the Tarahumara live in remote pine forests and high plains where they can grow corn. But in winter, they head back to the canyons and have to eat whatever they can find, including mice, roots and reptiles.

Even then, some Western influences do reach them. Alcohol is creeping into their festivities to replace their less-potent traditional fermented corn drink Tesguino, increasing winter deaths from hypothermia as Tarahumara men get drunk and collapse in the snow.