The Failed Assimilation of the Tarahumara in Postrevolutionary Mexico‪.‬

In a 1927 report on the condition of the Tarahumara to his superiors in the Secretaria de Educacion Publica (SEP or Education Ministry), education inspector Jose Macillas Padilla argued that the problems the SEP needed to address in order to successfully implement their education program in the Sierra Tarahumara of Chihuahua were enormous. He noted that many Tarahumara were enduring conditions akin to slavery at the hands of local mestizos. He reported that the indigenous people often received only a miniscule amount of liquor, soap, or salt for an entire day's work. The lack of good roads, the hostility of the climate, the sterility of the land, and the distance that tribal members lived from one another also posed serious problems. Macillas suggested that instead of trying to congregate the Tarahumara into Spanish-style settlements--a formula that had seldom been effective over the preceding three hundred years--a troupe of traveling teachers should be formed to instruct the Tarahumara throughout their seasonal migrations. (1) His suggestion fell on deaf ears. Three years after the SEP's initial penetration into the Sierra Tarahumara, education inspectors were just beginning to comprehend the difficulties that blocked their proposed indigenous education program and the Herculean effort that would be necessary to transform the region. Macillas' report on conditions and accompanying suggestions certainly outlined some of the major problems that educators would face, but it had several shortcomings. First, Macillas, like many of his colleagues, failed to realize that the Tarahumara did not live great distances from one another for cultural reasons alone. The hostility of the climate and the sterility of the land necessitated that they do so. Thus, until the Tarahumara were granted better lands or provided with better roads, schooling alone could not overcome their migratory lifestyle or their preference to live in widely dispersed settlements. To congregate them into tighter, more centralized communities would drain resources and subject them to abject poverty and starvation.