Suicide rare among Tarahumara, say church, political leaders
2012-01-19
Posted by: badanov
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By Chris Covert
Suicide among the Tarahumara Indians of far western Chihuahua is rare, according to Chihuahua state and church officials.
News reports had surfaced last weekend saying that 50 Tarahumara Indians in western Chihuahua had thrown themselves over cliff in the Tarahumara region over despair from the lack of food.
The news was recounted by a local peasant leader, Ramon Gardea, in an interview on an independent Chihuahua television station last Sunday.
Later press reports have Gardea walking back the mass suicide aspect of the story saying the 50 Tarahumara deaths were a cumulative number for 2011 and did not occur as a single event.
Gardea is also quoted as distinguishing between despair and the lack of food.
"Spiritually, the Tarahumara are strong, " Gardea is quoted as saying.
Gardea's evidence of the large number of suicides rests in an apparent story that a number of Tarahumara families had been asking for money for funeral expenses.
Gardea's interview (in Spanish) can be seen here.
Gardea's contention was relayed by social media sites and picked up later by Mexican national media. Since Tuesday, however, Chihuahua state officials have vehemently denied the story.
So far no bodies of the presumed dead have been found.
According to a news story appearing on Milenio's website Wednesday night, suicide among the Tarahumara is rare. When it does happen, those deaths are the result of alcohol consumption, not depression due to economic circumstances.
Alcoholism is rampant in Tarahumara communities, according to a news article appearing on an Organizacion Editorial Mexicano (OEM) news story last Monday evening, running as high as 67 percent among adult males in some communities.
According to a published interview of an unidentified spokesman with the Chihuahua state attorney general's office (FGE), in 2011 for the 23 municipalities which comprise the Sierra Tarahumara region of western Chihuahua, 26 deaths occurred which were ruled suicide. Of those, three were deaths of Tarahumara Indians, and at least two of those were from excessive consumption of alcohol.
According to the article, the 60 suicides that were reported in a news release by an unidentified subprocuradoria or district attorney earlier in the week, were apparently the 2010 death by suicide statistics for the region.
Of the 26 suicides occurring in the Sierra Tarahumara, the remainder -- 23 -- were mestizos, which is a Mexican term for mixed race Mexicans. Those deaths were attributed to alcoholism, mental illness and other factors.
According to the Chihuahua FGE, no deaths have taken place in 2011 that can be traced to starvation.
According to the official, in the Sierra Tarahumara region, 1,200 individuals are suffering from malnutrition, while that number is doubled due to the current food shortage crisis.
The denials still do not address reports two weeks ago by Proceso, the Mexican leftist news weekly -- distributed by APRO, Proceso's wire service -- detailing a report which recounted no fewer than three Tarahumara Indian children dying from complications due to starvation while the reporter, Marcela Turati, was present around Christmas time. In that report, nothing had been discussed of the December 10th mass suicide Gardea retailed in his interview over the weekend
The report was graphic enough at the time, and dramatic, characterizing the food shortage a "Somalia-style" famine, a characterization which was parroted by some Mexican mainstream national media, such as Milenio.
The report also quotes a Jesuit priest and head of the Comision de Solidaridad y Defensa de los Derechos Humanos (COSYDDHAC) or Commission of Solidarity and Defense of Human Rights stating that starvation is a constant problem in the Sierra Tarahumara region, and that the current raft of media reports seem to have a partisan purpose.
A national election to elect a new president takes place in July, 2012.
However, even the Tarahumara diocese has warned against sensationalizing a food shortage. The Bishop of the Tarahumara Diocese, Rafael Sandoval Sandoval issued a press briefing Tuesday evening through an OEM news daily El Occidental.
According to Bishop Sandoval Sandoval, Tarahumara Indians "can always find meaning in life even in difficult circumstances."
"Hiding the truth and looking at the Tarahumara culture in an unreal way is always detrimental to the Tarahumara's culture," paraphrasing the translation.
"They are a people who resist and struggle to be self-supporting, to the emergency, go to get the necessities of life without some despair. (They) do not sit waiting, but walk to find food for his people still alive," according to Bishop Sandoval Sandoval.