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Outside Magazine Septmeber 2000

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Drop Dead Gorges (cont.)

Even more than Americans, Mexicans have long been enamored with outlaws like Villa. Born Doroteo Arango in San Juan del Río in the northern state of Durango in 1878, Villa committed his first recorded crime when he was still in his teens, killing a ranch owner who had assaulted his sister. Afterward he fled to the Sierra Madre, became a bandit, and grew famous for his ability to elude the law. Americans probably know Villa best for his brutal raid on Columbus, New Mexico, in 1916—a response to the U.S. government's support of one of Villa's political opponents—in which 18 Americans were killed. The U.S. Army chased Villa deep into Mexico, but never caught him.

My first brush with the ghost of Villa occurred 300 miles south of the border in a tequila bar in Creel, a logging town of about 4,000 in the Sierra foothills where Villa hid during the 1910s. Here, a burly truck driver told me that Villa still lives on in the rugged individualism of the people of el norteño, northern Mexico. Here, you still see bumper stickers that read "Viva Villa! Viva Mexico."

Creel is the northern gateway to Copper Canyon; Batopilas, 85 miles south, is the region's southernmost town. Today the canyons are mostly inhabited by the Tarahumara, who are known for having maintained their ancient traditions of dwelling in caves, growing corn, and weaving pine-needle baskets, as well as for their ability to run amazingly long distances.Over the centuries, the Tarahumara have fended off the invasions of Spanish conquerors, Mexican colonizers, miners, pot growers (parts of the area are now home to a bounty of marijuana fields and cranky Mexican drug lords), and logging companies. The Mexican government now wants a finger in the Copper Canyon land-exploitation pie, too. A $385 million federal project, dubbed the Copper Canyon Master Plan, is already in the works to build enough roads, lodges, and cultural centers to transform the area into a mass-market vacation spot by 2006. (Currently, Copper Canyon draws about 370,000 tourists each year, most of whom merely pass through Creel on the Chihuahua al Pacífico Railway.)

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