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 Playing It Close To the Edge In The Haunted Sierra Madres. By Tim Vanderpool RANDY GINGRICH IS living proof that death can be a tough gig. Death of a forest, death of a culture, death threats, death of innocence--they're all daily fodder in Mexico's haunted Sierra Madre Mountains, just like the scent of ripe Chihuahuan poppies and the crack of gunfire. It's a ruggedly remote highland where the pale rider wears a narcotraficante's poison grin, totes a clear-cutter's buzz-saw and doesn't take kindly to complications. Depending upon your perspective, Gingrich could be considered a complication en extremis. He heads the Sierra Madre Alliance, a group aiming to protect the mountains' incredibly rich ecosystem from an exploding, NAFTA-enhanced lumber industry, and roughly 60,000 Tarahumara Indians from Mexico's pervasive drug trade. Up in the Sierra, those twin demons are inextricably entwined. Not surprisingly, both are also accomplished by essentially the same set of goons. Whether stripping land to cultivate marijuana and opium, or to extract wood, the net effect is destruction of a remote world considered the jewel of Chihuahua.
In response, the Alliance and its sister group, the Advisory Council of the Sierra Madre, or CASMAC, have helped train the Tarahumara to fight back in Mexican courts. They've also helped the Indians develop crucial government connections, particularly with Mexico's version of the BIA, called the Institucion Nacional Indigenista, or INI. But the nightmare faced by the Tarahumara and their benefactors is unrelenting. More than 150 Indians have been killed over the past decade. Gingrich himself has repeatedly raced north across the border for safety. The strain of that struggle is obvious today, as he leans over his soup bowl in a downtown Tucson cafe. Old-timers might recall him as an impish, carrot-topped UA student who was always fronting for one cause or another. Now he exudes that dampened fire-in-the-belly peculiar to exhausted activists--the faltering flame waiting for an idealistic rekindling. To Gingrich, that would mean more cash, to help his Alliance continue helping the Tarahumara.
"There are all kinds of different forces that come in from the outside to corrupt the Tarahumara," Gingrich says. "It's never-ending, and it's creating so much stress, building so much tension in those communities." That tension often translates into Indians killing each other, "usually vengeance killings over dumb arguments." The strain also leads to rivalry between villages, exemplified by a battle between the small settlements of Pino Gordo and nearby Coloradas de los Chavez. "The people in these towns are all inter-related," Gingrich says. "But they get into feuds over controlling each other's land." Such skirmishes are then exploited by criminal syndicates, he says, resulting in many families losing their share of communal property. "Many times these people are blatantly defrauded," he says. "It's common for the druglords and others to control the indigenous communities through these tactics. It really corrupts the Tarahumara culture." While INI tries to intervene, its efforts usually rely on the interest of one or two key officials rather than a consistent policy, he says. "The INI has good people, and they are a positive force in Chihuahua. Unfortunately, they're dictated by Mexico City a thousand miles away. And outside of INI, none of the other agencies will really take the time to get involved." ALL THIS CHAOS forces the Alliance to keep its goals crystal clear or collapse in similar confusion. "Number one, we want to stop the logging," Gingrich says. "We also want to establish a federal certified reserve, a 1.3 million-acre protected area." That sanctuary would eventually become part of an envisioned 3 million-acre Sierra Tarahumara Biosphere Reserve, serving as a model for protecting old growth forests, biological diversity and cultural integrity, with indigenous inhabitants becoming trained stewards. "Third, we want to provide economic alternatives for these people that don't involve the timber industry, or cultivating marijuana or opium," he says. "For example, we've begun helping them market their artwork through a pair of dealers in Sante Fe." There have been other signs of hope for the Tarahumara. Capable Indian leaders, or promaturas, have emerged in many villages, Gingrich says, and they're on a definite learning curve concerning legal and technical strategies. But the obstacles remain enormous. Caciques still coordinate clandestine clear-cutting, using the economic fall-out to enhance their own power. The degradation of human and animal life continues apace, both through the logging and through illegal hunting. "It's horrible," Gingrich says. "We've seen rare species on the edge of extinction. For example, we're already losing the last of the thick-billed parrots, and others are close to that point." Tight-knit Tarahumara culture could likewise disappear, along with devoted activists like Gingrich. Indeed, this Tucson visit is part of a whirlwind journey to bolster the Alliance's marginal $150,000 budget. Like countless other non-profits, it's been crunched by increased competition for funds from long-standing sources like the Packard and Homeland Foundations. Belt-tightening means further reductions in the already small Alliance staff of 11 full- and part-timers, based in Chihuahua City. To Gingrich, endlessly chasing money just distracts him from the war at ground zero. "That's the worst part of it," he says. "We're pretty close to the edge sometimes, when I'm not sure we're going to make it financially. And there's so much to be done."
For more information concerning the Sierra Madre Alliance,
or to make a contribution, contact the The Wild Bird Store, 3526
E. Grant Road, Tucson, 85716. For more information call 322-9466.
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While international development money has encouraged logging
with massive road-building projects into the mountains, narco-barons
lead a terror campaign against the Indians, driving them from
their communal lands or co-opting them into harvesting drugs.
As he sees it, the alternative is just more of the same, in a
land where the status quo remains deadly. Unfortunately, the grim
reaper has grown more sophisticated. These days, blunt violence
is accompanied by raw power tactics. Political bosses, or caciques,
are installed in many communities, where they act as defacto brokers
for the narco/lumber interests. But their strategy is both time-honored
and deceptively simple: divide and conquer.
