Out of the Sierra A story of Rarámuri resistance

A displaced Indigenous family adjusts to radical disruptions to their way of life in this moving debut study. Drawing on a decade of field work among the Rarámuri people of Chihuahua, Mexico, Blanco begins by recounting the Rarámuri origin myth, which in her telling gains powerful metaphorical significance, since in that account, the Rarámuri were likewise displaced--by white settlers stealing their land--leading their deity, Onorúame, to create the Sierra Madre mountains for them to hide in. There, in both myth and reality, as Blanco reports, they established a mutualistic and consensus-driven culture. She goes on to profile the Guttierezes, a Rarámuri family who in 2005 were forced by drought to leave their communal life in the Sierras for the town of El Oasis, where they struggled to preserve their traditions in the face of poverty, hunger, discrimination, extortion from drug cartels, and other challenges. Through vivid character portraits and novelistic storytelling, Blanco captures what it's like for the Rarámuri to endure such severe cultural upheaval--"to exit a system that is bound with the natural world and enter one that is actively working to destroy it." It's a potent examination of the nearly impossible choices Indigenous peoples are forced to make. (June)

An affecting work of "participatory research" delves into the life of an Indigenous Rarámuri family who was forced out of their native region in Mexico by environmental degradation and colonization. In 2009, Blanco, then on a yearlong Fulbright fellowship to collect oral histories of the Rarámuri people living around Chihuahua City, Mexico, met and befriended the Gutiérrez family. Displaced to El Oasis, a "settlement filled with subsidized housing for Indigenous peoples," in the city several years before due to drought in the northern Sierra Madre, the family had fallen on hard times, as many similar families had. Martina and Luis had moved to live near other family in the city, and in the process, they had to give up the traditional practice of korima, the sharing economy that had sustained them since ancient times, and accept the capitalist market system, which ensured their impoverishment. Working as a day laborer, Luis was often extorted out of his wages, while Martina contributed by sewing. After school, the children were often required to ask for money or sell gum and other items among the cars at KFC. The oldest son, Jaime, became addicted to meth, "scouring the house for extra coins, shaking and nervous between pills, and one of the daughters, Lupita, who was sent to boarding school, ultimately got pregnant and was kicked out (though her boyfriend was allowed to stay). The cycle of poverty finally broke when Martina joined a cooperative market to sell Indigenous goods, saved money (a fact kept from her husband), and bought a piece of land to build a house. Throughout the poignant, sometimes heartbreaking text, Blanco intimately captures the details of this family's practices and dreams, making the narrative read as fluidly as a novel. A painstakingly recorded, sensitively presented work of a unique "lived experience" in northern Mexico. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.