wfn.org | Methodist pastor helps feed Tarahumara Indians in Mexico

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

May 29, 1998	Contact: Linda Bloom*(212) 870-3803*New York
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By United Methodist News Service

A United Methodist pastor and activist against hunger has begun
supplying food to Tarahumara Indians in a remote area of Mexico.

The Rev. Ray Buchanan, director of Stop Hunger Now, said the food
project will help address the malnutrition and disease that have
resulted among that population after five years of drought in the barren
Copper Canyon region of northern Mexico.

The indigenous mountain people are "the most needy of the needy," he
told United Methodist News Service in a May 28 interview.

Buchanan learned of the situation during a Volunteers-in-Mission (VIM)
rally in Dallas in January, sponsored by the North Texas United
Methodist Annual Conference. Several people who did mission work in
Mexico asked if he could help with hunger needs there. 

On a recent needs assessment trip, Buchanan and Terry Jones, North Texas
VIM coordinator,  drove across the border to Juarez, Mexico, and met
with six local evangelical ministers who showed them their mission
projects. At the last church, they met a pastor, Thomas Bencomo, who was
working in a Tarahumara village.

The next day, the pair left Juarez in Bencomo's pickup truck. During the
journey, the truck carried 45 sheets of tin,  650 pounds of food and
nine to 11 people at any one time, according to Buchanan. They drove 14
hours the first day, 11 hours the next and then over a difficult road to
reach the village of Raramuchi.

Exploited by the Spanish, who started to use them as slaves in the l6th
century, the Tarahumara eventually were pushed back into the mountains.
"Now, they're in one of the most remote, inaccessible areas of the
country," Buchanan explained.

The village of Raramuchi, nestled on a plateau surrounded by spectacular
scenery, is composed of one- or two-room log homes, most with tin roofs.
But many Tarahumara still live in caves or in rock houses built under
overhanging rocks, Buchanan said.

As the first "gringos" ever to visit there, Buchanan said he and Jones
initially were regarded with suspicion. But they were greeted with
warmth after showing the needed supplies of rice, beans and corn that
they had carried with them.

Last year, six to 10 villagers died as a result of hunger and
malnutrition, they learned. "I didn't see any child that didn't have
worms, have TB and was obviously malnourished," he added.

"The land is so marginal to begin with that with the five years of
drought, there's no crops," he explained. "They don't have the skills to
go into town and make a living."

Stop Hunger Now has provided Bencomo with money to buy a larger truck
and provide food regularly to the village for the rest of the year.

The North Texas Conference also is assisting, according to Buchanan, and
it has raised money to buy 10 burros. The animals are necessary to take
relief supplies to even more remote areas where no roads exist. "The
biggest needs are really further back in the mountains," he said.

For more information about the work of Stop Hunger Now, call toll-free
(888) 501-8440.T

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United Methodist News Service
(615)742-5470
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