Listener F. Irigoyen sent a message about this book about the Raramuri's amazing sport rarajipari:

Dear Friends:

You surely have read or at least heard of “Born to Run: a Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World has ever Seen” a bestseller book by Christopher McDougall. McDougall’s pen describes the feats of Tarahumara runners at the Leadville, Colorado ultra-marathon intertwined with his mythical search of “Caballo Blanco”, an elusive gringo who lives among the Tarahumara and has leaned to run like them. The breathtaking narrative does justice to the incredible endurance and
resistance of the Tarahumara runners. Born to Run though says little about the race the Tarahumara regularly perform in their mountains and canyons. Their sport and a cultural event that in many ways define the Tarahumara people in their homeland, their sport rarajípari —the kick-ball race— is as the athletes that run it an amazing thing. For this reason Don Quixote Editions is publishing in
Kindle® format Rarajípari, the Tarahumara Indian Kick-ball Race. This book will let you know in detail the most strenuous sport regularly practiced in this planet.

The book authors are the book’s best warranty: Fructuoso Irigoyen, MD., who lived ten years among the Tarahumaras and is author of "Cerocahui, una Comunidad en la Tarahumara", and Jesús Manuel Palma, a full-blood Tarahumara who has devoted himself to study the language and costumes of his own people.

Check it out today at the Kindle Bookstore (Amazon.com) Disponible también en español.

http://www.amazon.com/Rarajipari-Kick-Tarahumara-Indians-ebook/dp/B0092IUWFE/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1347039764&sr=1-3&keywords=rarajipari

A story on the Daily Beast website discusses the peril that the Raramuri face from organized crime in the Sierra.

"Camilo Villegas-Cruz is wistful when he talks about happier times, running in the shadowy depths of Sinforosa Canyon, in Mexico’s lawless Sierra Madre. A member of the Tarahumara Indian tribe, renowned for their agility and running endurance, Villegas-Cruz grew up competing in traditional rarajipari races, in which contestants kick a wooden ball along a rocky trail. But by the time he was 18 years old, he was running an entirely different kind of race—hauling a 50-pound backpack of marijuana across the border into the New Mexico desert."

Read the full article here

Dear friends - we have been under attack by international spammers who have registered a huge number of fake accounts for the purpose of posting junk advertising to the Radio Tarahumara website.

I have deleted a large number of these accounts, but it is possible that we have disabled some valid accounts in the process.

If you find that your account is blocked, please contact us so we can reinstate your account.

Warmest Regards,

The Radio Tarahumara Web Team

We are pleased to welcome volunteer translator Cynthia Medina to our project team. Cynthia will be helping us to get some of our site translated so more people can enjoy the articles and information posted here.

We offer thanks to Travis Wheatly for this wonderful slideshow of photographs of Raramuri from the 1960's - before the railroad!

Enjoy this article and photographic slide show from the New York Times about the Raramuri.

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/08/an-ancient-culture-in-mountainous-mexico/

Glad to see you are all enjoying the site and the music.

Best Regards,

Steve McNabb
Site Administrator

Greetings!

I have been contacted by student Arthur Cortez with a number of questions about Raramuri Culture. I only run the machines that keep this site running, so I don't feel qualified to answer his questions, but I thought the Radio Tarahumara community might be able to help him out.

His questions were regarding:

• Geographic location
• Traditional clothing
• Traditional food
• Raramuri music
• Interesting facts or cultural practices
• Traditional stories and cultural mythos (creation stories, etc)

I found this article and thought it was interesting. It mentions that Rarámuri runners seem to be "immune to the injuries that plague the rest of the running world."

Enjoy.

Click here to read the article

We are back! Our server was offline for a while during our move, but we are pleased to once again be broadcasting the voice of the Rarámuri to the world.

Thank you for all your kind words and we look forward to receiving your Rarámuri photographs and music.

Please use the Contact us feature to send us an email.

Thank you for listening!

Steve McNabb
The Radio Tarahumara Project