They’re Sole Survivors in Race for Life

There’s a large schoolhouse in Juan Herrera’s village in the rugged mountains of northern Mexico that appears oddly out of proportion, considering there are less than a dozen dwellings in sight.

Each weekday morning, however, about 180 Raramuri children come streaming out of the woods and down from the hills to attend class. For many, it’s a five- or six-mile jog. And some of them go home for lunch and return in the afternoon.

More commonly known as the Tarahumara Indians in Mexico, Raramuri--the name of their tribe in their own language--means “those who run.” Their ancestors, legend has it, hunted deer by chasing the animals until they dropped dead.

“Americans just don’t understand how incredibly unfit we are,” says long-time ultra marathoner and coach John Loeschhorn, who helped prepare Herrera and three other Raramuri runners for the recent Angeles Crest 100-mile race. “These people aren’t supermen, they’re just physically fit and we aren’t. They have no vehicles, no electricity and they live in stone huts or even caves. They do no training, their life is so hard. They run 10 miles a day to stay alive.”

Loeschhorn, a training officer with the Anaheim Police Department who speaks “passable” Spanish, was approached last year by a Santa Ana couple who had been trying to help the Raramuri runners raise awareness about their people’s plight.

Three years ago, Ernesto and Inez Robles saw television coverage of Herrera’s victory in a Colorado ultra-marathon when he was still running in native robes and huaraches, traditional sandals made of leather straps and tire treads.

They introduced themselves at a race in Wrightwood last year and invited Herrera to stay with them. They eventually visited Herrera’s hamlet, Chojuita, and soon after started an organization--Tarahumara, a Friendly Hand--to help the impoverished people of the village. The four runners, all from Chojuita, have been staying with the Robleses for more than two months.

An estimated 60,000 Raramuris live in the bleak Sierra Tarahumara mountains, where temperatures can reach 113 degrees in summer and dip to minus-4 in the winter. They cling to existence on a diet of corn and beans.

“Juan lives in a stone hut with his wife and five children and all they have is a piece of sheet metal on the fireplace to cook on,” Ernesto Robles said. “There are three little wells for a village of 900 that produce something like 2 gallons of water an hour.

“It’s so desolate where they live that there’s no way to get any kind of job. So they plant corn and beans and if it rains, they have something to eat. If not, they’re in trouble.”

A four-year drought turned chronic hunger into famine and in the poorest villages, infant mortality rate rose to more than 50%. Almost all the children suffer from some form of malnutrition.

In July, the Robleses took $3,000 they had raised and headed to Chojuita with the idea of making some physical improvements in the village, but ended up spending the money on eight tons of corn and two tons of beans.

“They divided it up among every household in the village and they all got like 18 kilos of corn and eight or nine kilos of beans,” Robles said. “Now, we’re trying to raise enough money to build and stock a chicken farm. That’s our goal, to try and make this one village self-sufficient.”

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The Raramuri play a game that is both beautiful and diabolical in its simplicity.

A single runner, or groups up to four, challenge another village. One competitor picks up a sort of wooden ball and throws it. All runners run to where it lands and someone--it doesn’t matter who--picks it up and throws it again.

Competitors run with torches at night. And the game proceeds until someone quits or collapses. “I’ve seen games that went one whole day, a whole night and into the next day,” Herrera said, with Robles acting as translator.

Herrera says he is 28. He ran his first 100-mile race four years ago because, “I just wanted to find out how far 100 miles was, to see what I felt like at the end.” The other three runners who worked with Loeschhorn are Rafael Sanchez, 30, Martimiano Cervantes, 45, and Sebastian Cruz, 32.

“Those ages might be approximations, though,” Loeschhorn said. “They don’t have the same fascination with age and time that we do. You ask them their age and they sort of put their heads together, work it out and come up with something.

“It’s not like they have a driver’s license or you can drop over to the county seat and look up a birth certificate.”

Robles wanted the Raramuri runners to have the benefit of race strategy, running shoes and the newest nutritional products, but Loeschhorn believes his attempts in the first two areas--tactics and footwear--got mixed results. The Power Bars and Gatorade were clear improvements over the Raramuris usual race fare: a handful of corn meal mixed with water.

“We had run the whole course in bits and pieces, so they were at least familiar with the trail,” he said. “We had introduced them to the food that would be available, so they could see how it affected them as they ran.

“And I tried hard to instill the concept of pacing, but it’s hard enough to get gringos to understand pacing, so given their culture’s lack of interest in time and the language barrier, it was even more challenging.”

All four runners developed knee pain midway through the race and only Herrera, who also was suffering from stomach problems, was able to finish. And he finished in strong fashion, passing 12 runners in the last 40 miles.

“When all four developed knee pain, I thought the shoes were a bad idea,” Loeschhorn said, “but they had trained in shoes for months and declined to go back to the huaraches when we offered them halfway through the race.”

Sanchez, who quit after 45 miles because of knee pain, doesn’t plan on going back to strapping tire treads to his feet, however.

“The huaraches hurt my heels and legs more than the shoes,” he said. “When we go home, we will practice running in shoes.”

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When they return to their wives and families--all have five or more children--later this month, the Raramuris will have many fascinating stories to tell about a land of plenty, where there are buildings bursting with stack after stack of exotic foods.

“You should have seen their faces the first time I took them to the supermarket,” Robles said.

“We’ve introduced them to almost all forms of food available here. They absolutely love hamburgers, but, really, they seem to like everything but flour tortillas.”

The Robleses bought a video camera and the pictures of a trip to Sea World and the beach with the Raramuris bring a smile to Ernesto’s face no matter how many times he watches.

“When Shamu comes flying up in the air and splashes back into the pool, their eyes are like saucers,” he said. “Then when they saw the ocean for the first time, they were so afraid. I mean big-time afraid. These grown men were running and screaming in fear from the waves.”

It’s a land of wonder, but the Raramuri never forget why they are here.

Here, they run to raise consciousness about their hungry families, helping their community in ways they never could by staying home and scratching in the parched earth.

At home, running is a way of life; here, they run for their people’s lives.