The Sierra Madre Mountains of Northern Mexico are vast, rugged and beautiful. Ironically, that same beauty belies the underlying suffering of the region's inhabitants.

90,000 Tarahumara, 20,000 Tepejuan, 5,000 Pima and 5,000 Guarajillo Indians occupy the valleys and plateaus of an area comprising the largest canyon system in the Western Hemisphere.

The people of this region are subsistence farmers plagued with drought, poor soils and inadequate agricultural techniques. Their economic opportunities are few. Their greatest natural resource, the vast forests of the Sierra Madre, is being systematically overtimbered with little of the profits returning to the traditional inhabitants of the region.

The Sierra Madre is the largest drug growing region in North America. Marijuana, cocaine and opium are grown in the hidden reaches of the formidable canyon system. Lack of other economic opportunities drives many of the Indians into the illegal drug trade.

Health problems are rampant. The region’s maternal and infant mortality rates are the highest in Mexico and the fifth highest in the world. An Indian mother can expect to lose as many as half of her children to infectious diseases and malnutrition. Congenital deformities such as cleft palate and clubfoot routinely go untreated. Adults are plagued by tuberculosis, alcoholism, and trauma.

Time has shown the world's Christian community that there is a special place in God’s heart for “people groups”; that is, individual ethnic groups defined by their language and culture. There are over 7,000 people groups in the world—each precious in God’s sight—many of which have never heard the name of Jesus Christ.

Mexico Medical Missions focuses primarily on the Tarahumara Indians of northern Mexico. While the Tarahumara do believe in a creator god, their god depends on human efforts and ceremonies to sustain him. They believe that this god chose them as his special people but that this “honor” also means that they are relegated to a life of poverty and suffering. They fear lesser spirits that can attack their health and welfare. The Tarahumara even fear the rainbow, which they believe steals their children.

Not surprisingly, the Tarahumaras have adopted a fatalistic mindset. Accordingly, in order to improve their health and economic circumstances, Mexico Medical Missions must deal with the spiritual condition which keeps them in bondage. We tell them of a Creator God who is not distant and cruel, but rather who loves them and cares for the smallest details of their lives. We teach them that this God is more powerful than the spirits that afflict them and that they truly can become the chosen people of a loving God—if only they will believe in His Son, Jesus Christ.

The Copper Canyon Region of the Sierra Madre
The land of the Tarahumaras is a vast region of canyons known collectively as Copper Canyon (though the actual Copper Canyon, itself, or Barranca del Cobre, is a specific canyon along one part of the Urique River). The Copper Canyon region includes more than 20 huge defiles, 5 which are longer and deeper than the United States' Grand Canyon. While the Sierra Madre's canyons are equal in beauty to the Grand Canyon, they are very different in nature. Grand Canyon is desert-like while Copper Canyon is subtropical and mostly wooded, appearing a verdant green during the rainy season (June to October). The rims of the canyons are around 7,640' in elevation, with warm, rainy summers and cool, dry winters. The canyon bottoms average about 1,600' elevation, with hot, rainy summers and warm, dry winters.

The main canyons of the Copper Canyon region are:

  • Copper Canyon and Urique Canyon, with Cusarare and Tararecua Canyons as branches.
  • Batopilas Canyon
  • Huapoca Canyon
  • Oteros Canyon, with Chinipas and Septentrion Canyons as branches.
  • Sinforosa Canyon