Running for Their Lives: Mexico's Teenage Raramuri Tim MacGabhann - Al Jazeera
go to original February 17, 2016

'Raramuri runners can turn up to an ultramarathon and win 20,000 Mexican pesos ($1,106),' says Carlos Ortega. (Eduardo Herce/Al Jazeera)

Athletics coach Carlos Ortega saw only fleeting glimpses of the "floating running style" he has been trying to teach his young trainees, but that did not mean he was disappointed with the teenagers' showing at a race meet in early December in Chihuahua City, northern Mexico.

"Losing is important, too," Ortega told Al Jazeera, optimistically. "Unless you build character, success will go to your head and losing will cut to your heart."

With the help of funding from the Fundacion Telmex, Ortega has taken a team of 25 teenage runners from the Raramuri indigenous group for their first competition against better-trained, better-equipped, and better-off teenagers from Chihuahua.

Sometimes known as the Tarahumara, the Raramuri numbers between 80,000 and 125,000 people scattered throughout tiny villages in 65sq km of the south-eastern Sierra Madre mountain range.

More exact measures are hard to come by, since the Raramuris' geographical isolation and traditional cosmology means a deep distrust of many facets of life outside their mountain home. Indeed, the Raramuri word for the outside world - chabochi - conflates the words modern, foreign and devilish.

The contrast between the city kids, with their smart running gear, and the slighter-framed runners from the mountain - some of whom run barefoot, or in their school shoes - is obvious. But the Raramuri appear unfazed by the differences, standing apart, quiet and watchful as they wait for the starting whistle.

Read the rest at Al Jazeera

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