The Silver of the Sierra Madre
The Silver of the Sierra Madre

Author: John Mason Hart

Publisher: University of Arizona Press

Published: 2022-07-12

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 0816550050

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In the great barranca known today as Copper Canyon, the small mining town of Batopilas once experienced a silver bonanza among the largest ever known. American investors, believing that Mexico offered an unexploited cornucopia, began purchasing mines in the Sierra Madre, seeking to expand their hold on natural resources outside U.S. borders. From 1861 until the Revolution of 1910, the men of the Batopilas Mining Company ruled the region using their wealth, armed might, and extensive connections. The technology, industrialism, and politics their interests brought to this remote community tied the Tarahumara, Yaqui, Mayo, and other peoples of the barrancas directly to the economies of the United States and China. Local society was revolutionized, and a dramatic tapestry of human interactions was created. Based on many volumes of mining company records, The Silver of the Sierra Madre exposes the mentality and methods of mine owners John Robinson and Alexander “Boss” Shepherd, vividly detailing their exploitation of the people and the natural resources of Chihuahua. Hart aptly demonstrates the human and financial losses resulting from President Porfirio Díaz’s development programs, which relied on foreign investors, foreign managers, and foreign technology. This unprecedented work also provides a highly interesting ethnographic and social description of one of the least-known areas of Mexico. It is a tale of power and desperation, respect and arrogance, adventure and tragedy, and, ultimately, triumph and survival.

In the Sierra Madre
In the Sierra Madre

Author: Jeff Biggers

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2023-12-11

Total Pages: 195

ISBN-13: 0252056973

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A stunning history of legendary treasure seekers and enigmatic natives in Mexico's Copper Canyon The Sierra Madre--no other mountain range in the world possesses such a ring of intrigue. In the Sierra Madre is a groundbreaking and extraordinary memoir that chronicles the astonishing history of one of the most famous, yet unknown, regions in the world. Based on his one-year sojourn among the Raramuri/Tarahumara, award-winning journalist Jeff Biggers offers a rare look into the ways of the most resilient indigenous culture in the Americas, the exploits of Mexican mountaineers, and the fascinating parade of argonauts and accidental travelers that has journeyed into the Sierra Madre over centuries. From African explorers, Bohemian friars, Confederate and Irish war deserters, French poets, Boer and Russian commandos, Apache and Mennonite communities, bewildered archaeologists, addled writers, and legendary characters including Antonin Artaud, B. Traven, Sergei Eisenstein, George Patton, Geronimo, and Pancho Villa, Biggers uncovers the remarkable treasures of the Sierra Madre.

In the Shadow of the Mexican Revolution
In the Shadow of the Mexican Revolution

Author: Héctor Aguilar Camín

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 0292704518

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Héctor Aguilar Camín and Lorenzo Meyer, two of Mexico's leading intellectuals, set out to fill a void in the literature on Mexican history: the lack of a single text to cover the history of contemporary Mexico during the twentieth century. A la sombra de la Revolución Mexicana, now available in English as In the Shadow of the Mexican Revolution, covers the Mexican Revolution itself, the gradual consolidation of institutions, the Cárdenas regime, the "Mexican economic miracle" and its subsequent collapse, and the recent transition toward a new historical period. The authors offer a comprehensive and authoritative study of Mexico's turbulent recent history, a history that increasingly intertwines with that of the United States. Given the level of interest in Mexico—likely to increase still more as a result of the recent liberalization of trade policies—this volume will be useful in affording U.S. readers an intelligent, comprehensive, and accessible study of their neighbor to the south.

The Guarijios of the Sierra Madre
The Guarijios of the Sierra Madre

Author: David Yetman

Publisher: UNM Press

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 9780826322340

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David Yetman's first foray into Mexico occurred in 1961, where he developed a lifelong fascination of and appreciation for the countryside and the people who lived in it. In southern Sonora, the author explored the environs surrounding the town of Alamos, located in a tropical deciduous forest. Thirty years after that first journey, and after the author's continued explorations of Mexico, Yetman launched a mini-expedition of sorts back to Alamos, searching for the Guarijíos, a reclusive people in a reclusive land, thought to be extinct until 1930. Yetman takes the reader on an engaging journey into Guarijío territory, incorporating interviews and his own observations into the story he unveils about their history, their struggle for land during the latter decades of the twentieth century, and the ways in which they live. A strong undercurrent of natural history infuses the writing as the author skillfully weaves his own interest in ethnobotany into the shared interests of his hosts, developing a picture of their lifeways through their uses of plants that might otherwise go unnoticed and also through the natural environment in which they have survived for generations. The Guarijíos of the Sierra Madre is an enduring work that seeks to understand human relationships to land, to larger dominant societies, and to each other through the eyes of a people who have maintained their cultural identity in the face of immense change.

Mexico's Sierra Tarahumara
Mexico's Sierra Tarahumara

Author: William Dirk Raat

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 9780806128153

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The Tarahumara, "people of the edge", live on the boundaries of civilization, in the mountains and canyonlands of Mexico's Sierra Tarahumara. There, in southwestern Chihuahua, terrain terminates at the edge of canyons; there mountains border the sky. In these pages, words by W. Dirk Raat and images by George R. Janecek are testimony to the endurance of the Tarahumara people. Today, roughly fifty thousand Tarahumaras continue living in ways similar to those of their ancestors, retaining many customs from their pre-Columbian past. At the same time, as outsiders modify the environment in an effort to subsist - and to profit - the Tarahumara have adapted their culture in order to survive. Contemporary Tarahumara culture is a product largely of the Jesuit era, from 1607 to 1767. The native people responded to the Spanish either by trying to live beyond the influence of the Church or by becoming Christianized Indians and seeking Church protection. This distinction still can be seen. However, even those who became Christian did not succumb to attempts to eradicate traditional religious and cultural practices. Rather they incorporated Christianity into their own world view. The nineteenth century saw the arrival of gold and silver miners and of American promoters seeking to extend their commercial empire into northern Mexico. The twentieth century has witnessed the Mexican Revolution and the emergence of the "mestizo age". In the canyon homelands of the Tarahumara, railroads and electricity have facilitated extensive timber and copper mining as well as increased tourism.