The following article was written by Cathy Luchetti, who visited Wa’Chahuri in 2005. Cathy is the author of several books including Women of the West.
Copper Canyon, Chihuahua, Mexico.
by Cathy Luchetti
As the moon shone down on the pebbled riverbank and the campfire sputtered, a terrible sound rose up from the tangled pine hillside — the squealing of wild pigs as they attacked one of our dogs. The howls and grunts splayed out into the night, then abruptly stopped.
Next morning, we were down to two dogs, five horses, three donkeys, and seven people making our way into the wilderness of an unnamed part of the Copper Canyon, a 25,000 square mile savage landscape in Northern Mexico, in a scene redolent of Klaus Kinski’s Aguierre, the Wrath of God.
We were bound for Wa’Chahuri, the ruins of an old Basque settlement deep in the folds of the mysterious Sierra Madre Occidental. A crumbling homestead of lime-washed adobes hidden in a grove of fragrant orange trees had sheltered the Ochoa family for nearly 200 years—they were Basque settlers fleeing the Spanish soldiers. They hid amid the caves of the secretive Tarahumaras, behind a deep river, at the end of a narrow canyon, and below impassible cliffs, attempting to escape the incursions of New Spain.
As our horses slipped and clattered down impossibly steep trails, the remaining dogs were tangled underfoot and emerged howling. One, the youngest, was unable to swim the deep pool that lay at the base of the canyon—so deep that the Spanish had given up and left the Basques alone. Assuming he would swim, we traveled on. His lonesome howls echoed down the waterway—when we returned, he was gone.
Once, the Wa’Chahuri rancho housed over 100 families. Today, the crumbling buildings, lit by kerosene lamp, with wood fires for cooking and swept dirt floors, maintain a dusty tribute to the elegant wooden chairs and keepsake bed stands of Old Spain.
This place is remote. Even in the reaches of the Copper Canyon—a series of five plunging barrancas in Northern Chihuahua that are deeper and longer than the Grand Canyon, this is one of the most isolated places imaginable, one of the hundreds of unmapped, unnamed canyons that lie below the rim. A six-hour train ride from Los Mochis on the Chihuahua Al Pacifico second-class train landed us at the lonely train station of Temoris, with the village itself an hour away by rickety bus. After that, an hour by cattle truck brings us to Batosegachi, a village so small it has only five houses and one burglar—everyone knows who, but won’t tell. Along the way we meet various trucks coming and going—they all stop and chat, wondering, as did the ancient Basque, where are the soldiers? The soldiers are looking for marijuana and the young men are growing it. The cat-and-mouse game continues daily, with soldiers chopping up the tiny, telltale hoses that snake up into the pine filled canyons. Usually, the terrain is so rugged they can only chop up the hoses and move on—a hose vendor’s bonanza.
At the bottom of the canyon, the temperature rises. Guayabas dangle from trees, succulent and seedy. Plump orange berries glimmer from nettle branches, delicious to snack on but hard to pluck. Limes flash green from the trees, and in the path, a huge boa, its head crushed by a rock, curls up like a lasso. Don’t the Indians want the skin? The meat? But the Indians eat only what they want. Often, they will harvest an entire field of squash and save only the seeds, throwing away pounds of nutritious flesh. Wa’Chahuri lies outside the realm of communication—no phone, no mail. Yet Lico and Mercedes, the caretakers, have known for hours that we are coming, thanks to the Indian runners who have spread the word. By the time we arrive, tortillas are baking and oranges sliced up for juice—the mainstay of our food for three days. Added to this are occasional eggs, continual beans, and tufts of spicy machaca, a pulverized dried meat that looks like tree bark and tastes like fiesta. The water, which we begin by filtering and treating with iodine, runs so clear that we finally drink it straight from the stream, despite the many cattle lurking behind trees. Copper Canyon cattle are used exclusively for rodeos. They are full-fleshed bulls, inquisitive, nimble, massively horned, and used in Texas rodeos until exhausted, usually about two years.
The hacienda nestles atop a steep hill, the only access is straight up a thinly running waterfall that cascades over the stone path. Chickens roost in a spreading oak and fall straight to the ground with a “thunk” each morning. Half of the buildings are deserted, and the rest are museum pieces, complete with 19th century carved furniture, ancient Indian metates, and stone tools. Buried in the attic are piles of schoolbooks used by the 30 or so children who once lived here. Printed during Mexico’s Socialist period, they hail “Socialismo” and the rights of the workers. Half turned to dust, tattered and ridden with rat dung, they are abandoned and shoved aside—no schools are here, and only a few children.
Nor are the Tarahumara Indians visible. Secretive and remote, they consider themselves superior to the gringos and mestizos who have invaded their canyons. They rarely socialize, and when they do, it is usually around a tesguinada—a corn liquor ceremony that lasts for several days, in which tesguino—a corn brew thick as oatmeal and fermented with baby feces—is drunk.
“Imagine creamed corn cut with grass clippings,” said our host, Skip McWilliams, founder of the Copper Canyon Lodges and owner of the vast rancho surrounding Wa’Chahuri. “The first swig, your teeth are filled with grass. You want to throw up. But this is rude, so you spit out the grass, take a second swig, and realize that maybe you’ll live. By the third gulp, you think you like grass. And after that, it’s all good.”
A full moon floods the canyon as we sit around a roaring fire, shivering in the October chill. The dark nights are filled with flickering recollections. Martin, raised by the Jesuits, with an engaging giggle and so much business savvy he now runs 3 hotels, describes his brushes with the spirit world. Gregorio nods seriously—his world is mules and horses, and he keeps his musings to what he knows. Everyone feels the mysterious presence of the canyon looming overhead, and especially, the vastness of the unexplored.
After three days, it’s time for the 20-mile ascent on horseback. All interest in walking falls away at the upward thrust of the Camino Real, designed for pack trains in the late 1800’s but so steep and rock-ridden it seems impossible to traverse. The horses somehow manage, despite one that wilts like a soufflé on the trail and lies stunned, as if dead, for about half an hour, then with much eye rolling and protest is pulled to its feet and continues. For novice riders, the precipitous 7000-ft upgrade is nightmarish—but not half so bad as was the staggering descent. Horses unused to the trail would simply have keeled over, every knee broken. Ours somehow kept going until our safe arrival at Batosegachi. I had practiced the Tarahumara word for hello, cuira, but never got to use it.
Perhaps next time.