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It is a unique destination to enjoy the beauty of the Sierra Tarahumara, southwest of Chihuahua. I am referring to the Copper Canyons, so called because of their copper tones. They are made up of 7 ravines 4 times larger and 2 times deeper than the Grand Canyon of Colorado in the United States. A tourist brochure says that these ravines They take care of the Rarámuri or Tarahumara traditions, who after centuries have preserved their lifestyle because this region is their home.
The El Chepe train is the appropriate means of visiting them. It departs from Ciudad Juárez and ends in Los Mochis, Sinaloa, with 3 stations on its route.
For the inhabitants of this region, the reality is very different from what the advertising of the businesses that exist there paints it. The communities, including that of Bacajípare, have denounced since 2002 the enormous water pollution that they suffer due to the proliferation of luxury hotels. The social and environmental activist Marlene Ehrenberg has referred to this on many occasions. Among other establishments, they pointed out the Mirador, Posada Barrancas, El Divisadero hotels and the Parque Aventuras tourist complex, with its cable car and zip line. There it is also possible to camp, climb, hike, rappel, mountain bike, ride horses or raft down the rivers.
The residents reported that the water contamination caused multiple illnesses, mainly in children, environmental deterioration and unbearable odors. Again, in 2014, the indigenous governor of the aforementioned community filed a popular complaint with the Federal Attorney for Environmental Protection for the contamination of the springs. The latter forwarded the complaint to the National Water Commission. Nothing happened, while the discharge of sewage increased. Rarámuri groups have shown how the tourist developments
They throw them directly into the ravines, contaminating the springs and streams from which they traditionally supplied themselves with the vital element for their basic needs.
The Raramuri are not opposed to tourism as long as it is not a factor of environmental and social depredation, as it is today. On the subject, 5 years ago Ramón González Herrera, Julián Alberto Álvarez Hernández and Luis Daniel Azpeitia Herrera, from the tourism degree program at the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juárez, conducted a research in which they exposed the problems that must be resolved in Barrancas del Cobre if the authorities and businessmen want sustainable tourism. This requires the integration and participation of the communities in these activities; respect for their customs and traditions; care for the environment and a rational use of natural resources. Water as the key element. Something that does not exist now.
At the end of last month, representatives of the Rarámuri communities of Huitosachi, Bacajípare and Bosques de San Elías Repechique, denounced for the umpteenth time the problem that afflicts them: an increase in diseases due to malnutrition and a lack of drinking water. The culprits: hotels and tourist companies that pollute the streams and dry up the springs that are essential to cover their basic needs and their economic activities. Added to this are the tourists who travel through the forest on four-wheelers and razer-type vehicles, modifying and polluting the waterways.
As pointed out by Jesús Estrada, our newspaper’s correspondent in Chihuahua, this unique treasure is a National Park, but it has been completely handed over to the interests of various tourist promoters, marginalizing the traditional inhabitants, who only serve as cheap labor. Their complaints have been ignored at the state and federal level. In addition, due to the drought and the heat, the crops of basic foodstuffs in the region have been lost.
In addition to the above problems, Chihuahua has also faced a growing deterioration of its natural resources during this six-year term. This state has a high level of deforestation, supported by authorities and organized crime. It also has a huge concentration of water in the countryside, in favor of powerful economic-political interests, with the backing of official bodies. Ending these and other injustices is an urgent task for the next administration.
