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The Mixteca, a remote mountain range in southern Mexico, is one of the most isolated and impoverished regions in the world. Named by the Aztecs as "The Place of the Cloud People," the region's rugged landscape has insulated its people from the outside world since before the conquest. Still today, pre-Columbian languages like Mixteco, Trique, and Asmuzgos are spoken more widely than Spanish, and cars, electricity and indoor plumbing are recent introductions, if they exist at all. Home to four distinct ethnic groups and a dwindling population of the descendants of colonial Mexico's African slaves, the Mixteca remains a place deeply rooted in its past. But today, the region is in transition. Erosion and environmental degradation have turned much of the Mixteca into an "Ecological Disaster Zone," and migration to the United States is tearing families, and entire communities, apart. Some villages have lost as much as 80% of their population to the north and have become little more than ghost towns. For more on this project visit: |
