Methodist pastor helps feed Tarahumara Indians in Mexico
5/29/1998 News media contact: Linda Bloom · (646) 369-3759 · New York by United Methodist News Service A United Methodist pastor and activist against hunger has begun supplying food to Tarahumara Indians in a remote area of Mexico.
The Rev. Ray Buchanan, director of Stop Hunger Now, said the food project will help address the malnutrition and disease that have resulted among that population after five years of drought in the barren Copper Canyon region of northern Mexico.
The indigenous mountain people are "the most needy of the needy," he told United Methodist News Service in a May 28 interview.
Buchanan learned of the situation during a Volunteers-in-Mission (VIM) rally in Dallas in January, sponsored by the North Texas United Methodist Annual Conference. Several people who did mission work in Mexico asked if he could help with hunger needs there.
On a recent needs assessment trip, Buchanan and Terry Jones, North Texas VIM coordinator, drove across the border to Juarez, Mexico, and met with six local evangelical ministers who showed them their mission projects. At the last church, they met a pastor, Thomas Bencomo, who was working in a Tarahumara village.
The next day, the pair left Juarez in Bencomo's pickup truck. During the journey, the truck carried 45 sheets of tin, 650 pounds of food and nine to 11 people at any one time, according to Buchanan. They drove 14 hours the first day, 11 hours the next and then over a difficult road to reach the village of Raramuchi.
Exploited by the Spanish, who started to use them as slaves in the l6th century, the Tarahumara eventually were pushed back into the mountains. "Now, they're in one of the most remote, inaccessible areas of the country," Buchanan explained.
The village of Raramuchi, nestled on a plateau surrounded by spectacular scenery, is composed of one- or two-room log homes, most with tin roofs. But many Tarahumara still live in caves or in rock houses built under overhanging rocks, Buchanan said.
As the first "gringos" ever to visit there, Buchanan said he and Jones initially were regarded with suspicion. But they were greeted with warmth after showing the needed supplies of rice, beans and corn that they had carried with them.
Last year, six to 10 villagers died as a result of hunger and malnutrition, they learned. "I didn't see any child that didn't have worms, have TB and was obviously malnourished," he added.
"The land is so marginal to begin with that with the five years of drought, there's no crops," he explained. "They don't have the skills to go into town and make a living."
Stop Hunger Now has provided Bencomo with money to buy a larger truck and provide food regularly to the village for the rest of the year.
The North Texas Conference also is assisting, according to Buchanan, and it has raised money to buy 10 burros. The animals are necessary to take relief supplies to even more remote areas where no roads exist. "The biggest needs are really further back in the mountains," he said.
For more information about the work of Stop Hunger Now, call toll-free (888) 501-8440.
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