Programs
The Sierra Tarahumara Diversity Project
The
Sierra Tarahumara, a major component of Mexico’s northern Sierra Madre
Occidental, is a spectacular region of high sierras and deep canyons extending
for nearly 1000 kilometers from just south of the United States border through
the northern Mexican states of Chihuahua, Sonora, Durango, and Sinaloa. Ranging
in altitude from around 200 meters to over 3000 meters, the region is
characterized by a tremendous diversity of tropical, subtropical, and temperate
flora and fauna, including a number of species found nowhere else in the world.
It also is an area of great cultural and linguistic diversity. Four of the most
traditional Native American societies in North America--the Rarámuri (Tarahumara),
Ódami (Northern Tepehuan), O’óba (Mountain Pima), and Warijó (Guarijío)--have
their homelands there, and each of these societies has its own distinct
language. In addition, the region includes numerous communities of
Spanish-speaking Mestizos, who now outnumber the Indigenous residents by a
factor of about three-to-one.
The
members of the Indigenous societies in the Sierra Tarahumara are subsistence
agriculturalists but they also depend upon a wide array of local plant and
animal species for their survival. Their adaptation, developed over the course
of several thousands of years, is oriented toward promoting rather than
depleting the region’s biodiversity. This adaptation is now seriously
jeopardized by the long-term environmental and social impact of large-scale
economic activities in the region, beginning with mining four centuries ago,
followed by ranching and lumbering and most recently tourism. Large-scale mining
operations, in decline for most of the last century, are underway again in the
canyons of southwestern Chihuahua, and tourism development, especially around
the Copper Canyon, is proceeding at a rapid pace. A network of paved roads,
constructed to promote tourism and to facilitate the extraction of the
region’s natural resources, now extends across much of the Sierra. These
activities have displaced Indigenous people from their lands, disrupted local
ecological relations, and contributed to severe deforestation, soil erosion,
drought, loss of many understory plants, and the extinction of several endemic
animal species, including the Chihuahuan grizzly and the Imperial woodpecker,
the largest woodpecker in the world. Sierra residents are seeing their
livelihoods under threat, and rapid change is also endangering their traditional
knowledge, the languages that are the vehicles of this knowledge, and the
cultural traditions that sustain their identity.
The
threats to the Sierra Tarahumara’s biological, cultural, and linguistic
diversity (“biocultural diversity”) are part of a global crisis. Increasing
numbers of scholars in a variety of disciplines are recognizing the urgency of
understanding the relationships among the diverse manifestations of life around
the world and identifying the consequences that transformations in these
relationships potentially will have for the future of humanity. They also are
realizing that biological diversity is much more closely tied to cultural and
linguistic diversity than previously thought. Although the negative impact of
humans on the environment cannot be ignored, many societies have developed
strategies that protect and promote biological diversity and the landscapes
within which they live. These strategies are based on sophisticated
understandings of the environment, understandings that are encoded, preserved,
and transmitted through specific languages. At the same time, these societies
depend for their survival on the continued integrity of their biological and
physical environments. Such considerations suggest that these different forms of
diversity are linked through coevolution and that the causes and consequences of
declining diversity in one area are directly related to those in the others.
The
Sierra Tarahumara offers extraordinary opportunities for contributing to a
deeper understanding of global biocultural diversity but only if research is
begun immediately. Despite its proximity to major urban centers in Mexico and
the US-Mexican border, the region remains largely unknown to the scientific
world; previous research has been sporadic and limited in scope. The ecological
significance of the Sierra Tarahumara and the urgent need for basic research
there are now recognized by scholars around the world. Mexico’s National
Comission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (CONABIO) has identified six
areas within the Sierra Tarahumara as priority terrestrial regions, and the
region forms part of the pine-oak forests of the Sierra Madre Occidental,
designated by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) as one of its Global 200
Ecoregions. Situated along the Continental Divide, the Sierra Tarahumara also
includes the headwaters and tributaries of major drainage systems in both
northern Mexico and adjacent areas of the United States. Threats to the
region’s biocultural diversity potentially will have very negative
consequences for areas all along the US-Mexican border.
To
address this need, a binational (US-Mexican), multidisciplinary, and
multicultural research project—the Sierra Tarahumara Diversity Project (STDP)—
is being developed to document and explore the linkages among the region’s
biological, cultural, and linguistic diversity. The project will also assess the
impact of commercial activities such as forestry, mining, and tourism on the
region’s environment and residents. It aims to provide a survey of the
region’s flora, fauna, and ecosystem dynamics, as well as of the
inhabitants’ traditional ecological knowledge and resource use and management
practices; a baseline of the state of both biodiversity and cultural/linguistic
diversity; and an analysis of the current threats to biocultural diversity, ways
in which this diversity is being depleted, and possible conditions for reversing
diversity loss. The project thus will contribute to both advancing basic
scientific research and planning conservation action.
The
project builds upon partnerships among several Sierra Tarahumara communities and
a number of Mexican and US institutions and organizations. The principal Sierra
Tarahumara participants to date are Rarámuri (Tarahumara) people from the area
of Norogachi, situated near the headwaters of the Río Urique and Río Conchos.
Contacts have also been established with Ódami (Northern Tepehuan) people who
live near the headwaters of the Río Fuerte, in and around the community of
Baborigame. At present, the
institutional sponsors of the project are the Smithsonian Institution’s
National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), the Comisión Nacional para el
Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad (CONABIO), the Centro de Investigaciones
y Estudios Superiores en Antrolopogía Social (CIESAS), the World Wide Fund for
Nature-Mexico (WWF), the Instituto de Ecología, A.C., and the non-profit
organizations Mexico-North Research Network and Terralingua: Partnerships for
Linguistic and Biological Diversity.
In
June and August 2000, Sierra Tarahumara residents and scholars held two STDP
planning meetings,and have now reached an agreement to begin the formal planning
and fundraising phase of the project. Initial activities will focus on the
development of a research project in the community of Choguita, located near
Norogachi, and the creation of a center in Norogachi to provide logistical
support for the STDP and opportunities for education and technical training to
project participants (both local and outsiders). The long-range research plan is
to progressively expand activities to other communities in the Norogachi area
and beyond, following the course of the Río Urique and documenting the patterns
and status of biological, cultural, and linguistic diversity along the
verticality dimension afforded by the river. Links to complementary projects
currently underway or to be undertaken in other parts of the Sierra will allow
for a comprehensive coverage of the whole region. (For a more detailed
description of project development to date, see the attached status report.)
Based
on these discussions, an initial set of guidelines for the STDP has been
established:
·
The project will focus on documenting the biological, cultural, and
linguistic diversity of the Sierra Tarahumara, exploring the interrelationships
among these forms of diversity, and understanding their linkages to the physical
contexts in which they occur, both today and in the past. Project activities
will begin in a few specific areas. Research results and methodologies developed
in these areas will provide models for extending the project to other areas of
the Sierra Tarahumara in the future.
·
Given its complexity, the project can only be undertaken through the
collaboration of scholars trained in a wide range of disciplines within the
natural, physical, and social sciences and the humanities, both among themselves
and with members of Sierra Tarahumara communities.
·
The project will encourage extensive exchange of information and
perspectives across cultural, linguistic, and disciplinary boundaries. Careful
attention will be paid to developing effective mechanisms for transcending these
boundaries. To the extent possible, project research will be conducted by teams
composed of both professional scholars from more than one discipline and the
members of local communities.
·
The project is premised on the assumption that the long-term residents of
the region are well-informed about the local environment and can provide
significant insights into local ecological processes. It thus will require
extensive documentation of local environmental knowledge and the exchange of
information and perspectives between professional scholars and local residents
and ways of linking local readings of the natural and cultural environment with
those of non-local scholars.
·
The project should complement rather than compete with projects and
programs already underway in the region and build upon the results of previous
research. At the same time, it should challenge long-standing misconceptions
about the Indigenous people there and develop new and more accurate models of
local social and economic organization in terms of which research and applied
projects can be developed.
·
Community members will be involved in all stages of the project,
including planning, field research, analysis, dissemination, and practical
applications of project results. They will be appropriately compensated for
their contributions, and funding will be secured to support their participation
in project activities that take place away from their home communities.
·
In addition to compensating individual members of local communities for
their participation in the project, the project will include extensive
consultation with local residents, government officials, and other interested
parties to determine how the project can be of benefit to local communities and
the region as a whole.
·
The project will support the efforts of local communities to perpetuate
their languages and cultures, protect the local environment, develop programs
for the sustainable use of natural resources, and create additional economic
opportunities for community residents.
·
The project will include education, training, and outreach programs for
local residents and students at institutions in Mexico and elsewhere.
Programming aimed at informing a broader, global audience about the project and
its results will also be a priority.
·
Participants must ensure that project activities are conducted in
conformance with all relevant laws and regulations and that the perspectives and
interests of all individuals who potentially will be affected by these
activities are taken into consideration in planning and implementing the
project.
Conclusion
Understanding
the complex interrelationships among the earth’s biological, cultural,
linguistic, and physical processes, and how these dynamics can be preserved for
the health of the planet, are among the greatest challenges facing humanity
today. Research on these interrelationships must take place within the framework
of a global perspective but can be accomplished only through concrete projects
focused on specific regions. By exploring these linkages in one of the world’s
most diverse and seriously threatened ecoregions, the Sierra Tarahumara
Diversity Project will contribute to the advancement of knowledge in a number of
scholarly and applied disciplines, the planning of conservation action in the
area, and the development of models for interdisciplinary and intercultural
research that can be adapted to similar projects in other parts of the world.