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)