An Ancient Culture in Mountainous Mexico

The community stew at the Virgin of Guadalupe celebration in Cusarare.

This series called Tarahumara or Raramuri by photographer Ruben E. Reyes caught my attention because a struggle between old fashioned and modern cultures is something that I am very familiar with. Reyes is a documentary style photographer that has traveled the world capturing different cultures of societies. In this series he is trying to show the lives of the indigenous Tarahumara people of Northern Mexico. This society, which is located at high elevations in mountains in Northern Mexico, is known for their old fashion way of life. They reside in these mountains because their ancestors fled from the Spanish centuries ago. Despite the image that people of Mexico may have of the Tarahumara people, Reyes is trying to show that this culture is also struggling with modernization. 

In the Lens blog entry about Reyes, the author states that Reyes grew up about 50 miles outside of the mountainous area yet was still called "gringo" (a word used to describe people of Caucasian decent). Reyes has explains that this society has a culture of its own and has not been "Mexicanized" yet in 2009, when he went to photograph, there were modernized updates to their old fashion ways. As is stated in the caption, this photograph was taken during a community stew as they were celebrating the Virgin of Guadalupe (a very important religious figure in the Mexican culture). We can begin by noting that the entire action of what is being photographed is now very uncommon. Many Mexican people no longer follow traditional religious practices, such as community celebrations, but have rather converted to Catholicism. 

One of the differences that was described in the Lens Blog entry is the clothing. Reyes notes that people would wear loin cloths as every day clothing but now hooded sweatshirts and jeans are becoming increasingly popular. When  paying close attention to the details of this photograph we can note that Reyes includes both the old fashioned and modern ways the Tarahumara people are dressing. Most of the little boys in the photograph are wearing hooded sweatshirts, a coat or jeans. For us, dressing like this is not something that is out of the ordinary but it is different when these boys are compared to the girls that are in the center of the photograph. Naturally, our eyes gravitate to the brightest parts of the picture which is focused on the women and the soup brewing at center. Both of the older women are wearing skirts and wrapped in cloth, rather then coats. By placing a little girl wearing a jacket over a hooded sweatshirt in the middle of the two women wrapped in cloths, we can note that the modernization is changing by generation and not gender. The younger the subject in the photograph, the more modern they are dressing and the less interested they seem the the celebration to Guadalupe. 

When I first began looking at this series by Reyes, I was immediately caught by its subject matter before an image. Maybe it is my own experience with a similar, yet, less drastic struggle in cultures, that has intrigued me about his work. The more I studied this one image, the more I saw how Reyes strategically structured all subjects in this photograph. Even though this image stands strong on its own in terms of subject matter and structure, I do not believe the true intentions of Reyes' work could be illustrated by just looking at this picture. Even though sometimes a photograph should be able to speak for itself, sometimes I think a little background information it is necessary in order for the purpose of the piece to be recognized. 

-Vanessa Sanchez