Playing barefoot, a team of Trique Indian boys became champions of the 2013 International Festival of Mini-Basketball, a youth basketball tournament that took place in Cόrdoba, Argentina. More than 900 children attended as part of 60 competing teams that came from eight Latin American countries including: Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Uruguay and Venezuela.
Although the Trique team provided the players with shoes, most were more comfortable playing barefoot after having grown up unable to afford footwear. These children have overcome significant hardships to get to this point, surviving poverty, hunger, and the absence of parents who have migrated out of Mexico in search of work.
Their coach, former professional Mexican-league player Sergio Zuñiga said “these kids are invisible in Mexico. They grow up eating one, maybe two meals a day…We are trying to bring them out of the shadows.”
These boys come from Oaxaca’s Academy of Indigenous Basketball where they take part in a program that began three years ago. In exchange for the valuable opportunities this program provides through basketball, the boys are expected to stay in school and maintain good grades, contribute to their family’s home by doing chores, and speak their native language.
Using the promise of participation in basketball, coach Zuñiga hopes to keep children attending school so that they may have the opportunity to finish high school and ideally go on to college. This combined with the skills gained through the cooperative team environment of basketball helps prepare these children to do more than live dependent on government support and sharecropping.
These children come from Oaxaca, the second poorest state in all of Mexico with 76% of the population living in extreme poverty and lacking access to basic needs like water, food, healthcare and education. This region, home to 33% of Mexico’s indigenous population, has also experienced conflict for nearly a decade due to these difficult living conditions and the social inequalities they represent. Under such difficult circumstance, basketball offers these children more than just recreation, it gives them hope of a better future.
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