Caballo Blanco Ultra Cancelled, a victim of progress

Last weekend organizers cancelled an ultra-marathon in the Copper Canyon shortly before it was scheduled to start. You can read the whole interesting story in the New York Times.

Josue Stephens, one of the organizers of the Caballo Blanco ultramarathon last week in Urique, Mexico, realized something was amiss when he was warned not to drive along the coastal route because so many people had been killed there recently. When he finally got to Urique, he saw armed men in bulletproof vests swarm into the local police station, take everyone’s guns and throw two officers into the back of a truck before barreling away.

“The craziest part was that there was a woman huddled outside the police station yelling: ‘Don’t take him! He’s my son! He didn’t do anything!’ ” Stephens recalled.

The threat of violence had always simmered in the background of the race, held every March in the Copper Canyon region in northwestern Mexico, known for its great natural beauty, its fields of poppies and marijuana plants, and the drug cartels that hold the local population in thrall. This year the violence finally came to town.

Last Saturday, after increasingly alarming episodes involving gunshots, grenades, terrified and often AWOL local officials, angry drug gangs, heavily armed government troops and an incident in which a town official was pulled from his truck and made to walk for hours back to town, Stephens and the other organizers made an extreme decision: They canceled the race the night before it was scheduled to start.

The town of Urique is on the river of the same name in the region known as the Copper Canyon. The area has always been popular with surreptitious farmers because of its remoteness. The terrain is steep, and difficult to traverse.

Ten years ago, the government built a road linking Batopilas, in the next canyon over, with a network of roads that led to the coast of the Sea of Cortez. The easternmost edge of that web of roads is in a remote part of Sinaloa called the Golden Triangle, famous for marijuana and poppy cultivation. The road west from Batopilas linked two remote areas known for the cultivation of illicit drugs. Each area was controlled by a different cartel. Shortly afterwards, the cartels began battling for control of the Juarez plaza.

Remember that the fight for the Juarez plaza also included battles for the drug-producing areas in the Sierra Tarahumara.

Batolopilas was soon populated by hard-looking young men who weren’t from the area. Tourists were afraid to go into town. We’d camp upstream if we entered the canyon at all.

Last year the government bulldozed a road connecting Batopilas to Urique. Now Urique is threatened by terrorists.

The cartels are logistics companies with armies. They move lots of product. Follow the roads.