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O'OB (PIMA) GROUP
The word “PIMA” was designates by the first Spaniards who established contact with the inhabitants of an ample territory which belonged to a good portion of the present State of Sonora before. The term “pima” means something as well as “it does not have”, “it does not exist”, “I do not know”, “I do not have” or “I do not understand”.
Pimas called themselves O,OB, which means “the people”, the town, but not any people but only the one that lives in their territory and speaks O´OB NO´OKI. The estimated current population is of 1,600 inhabitants, belonging 700 to Sonora and the rest to Chihuahua, almost the same percentage of men and women. Pimas are descended from the known prehispanic culture like Serrana.
Before the conquest, the O,OB were divided into three groups: the Ures, the Nebomes and the Yécoras. The first two already have disappeared as ethnic groups and the Yécoras, they still conserve some their own cultural characteristic, they live scattered in the Sierra Madre Occidental, to the southeastern of Sonora and to southwest of Chihuahua. Its territory is rough and high
 The O, OB town is located in the municipality of Temósachic, Chihuahua and the municipality of Yécora, Sonora; they are distributed in several populations and settlements: Juan Diego of the Pimas, the Pillars, Maycoba, Kipor, the Cieneguita, the Tierra Panda, the Dura, the Encinal and the Alisos.
In order to get to their territory, you must follow the interstate highway toYécora, the first settlement, Juan Diego de los Pimas is found at 280 km, in the Yécora town, as well as there also is a numerous group of pima people in the same Yécora town. To 60 km, one can arrive at Maycoba, where we found as much mestizo people as Pima people. At ones kilometers is found Kipor and later there are other towns.
Their territory is a mountain ground, where there are pine and oak forests, in addition to other vegetal species such as: pochote, palo blanco and others. Yécora has an altitude of 1500 meters, and depending from the inclination of lands where are found eroded grounds.
Pimas usually are settled down in little valleys where small rivers and streams have created alluvium layers which they fertilize the land. In flat lands there are pastures that take advantage of the cattle. Little by little, due to the furtive hunting, some animals have been disappearing like the deer (mule deer, white tail deer and pronghorn), the wild lamb, the wolf, the bear, coyote and puma.
In relation to agriculture, they essentially grow corn. Since prehispanic times, as much as pepper, onion, garlic, squash, tomato and beans. There are also fruit trees like apple and peach tree. Pimas farm with grub hoe and seeding wood or wooden rod and they usually buy or rent the animals, for the ploughing, from the Yoris. They complement their diet with domestic animals like hens, turkeys, pigs and donkeys.
The maximum average temperature is of 20° C, with an annual average temperature of 13° C. Raining season starts on June and ends until beginnings of October. In the winter show up the equipatas, lighter rains, and get to show up frozen snowfalls. The dry season goes of February to May or June. In the summer, rains are scare, which affects of drastic way the cultivations of the zone.
 The tribes of the center of Sonora had great mobility on the territory. They lived in caves and when the conditions of life became difficult in a place it was common that they changed their place of residence.
*** In 1533, took place the first contact of the Pimas with the Occident, the spanish expedition in the command of Diego Guzmán;
*** In 1536, hundreds of Pimas followed Cabeza de Vaca (Cow Head) to get away from the opata and eudeve invasions, both tribes made pressure over several settlement spots ( most of all on the region of Tónichi).
*** In 1584, it is the first written mention by part of the Spaniards, in Balthasar of Obregón’s writings.
*** In 1670, the Jesuit missionaries settle down missions in Yécora and Maycoba, beginning of the evangelization in O,OB territory. Considering geographic, ecological and cultural the differences, the missionaries differentiated between the High Pima (Pima Alto) or Pima from the desert and Low Pima (Pima Bajo)or Pima form the mountain. At the outset, some faction of Pimas and Tarahumaras revolted by the abuses of the missionaries. But in general the relation between Low Pimas and Spaniards was quite pacific.
*** After the Jesuits’ expulsion in 1767, the missions of the Low Pima were assigned to the Franciscan province of Jalisco. The borbonic reforms related to divide into plots of lands, it did not affect to Pimas, due to their isolation and a few missions, and rather it was a refuge zone with an acculturation’s slow process during all the colonial time.
*** In the XIXth century, the Pima area was almost abandoned; the incursions of the Apache bands put missioners, miners, yoris, and yet, Pimas in danger. During the decade of the 80’s of the XIX century, the last Apache bands were confined in the reservations in Arizona and New Mexico. From then, the presence of yoris increased most of all in Yécora, Moris y Yepáchic; however the Pima population decreased. Franciscans came back to the zone to reestablish in the abandoned missions left at the “Apache terror” time.
*** During the Revolution, besides confiscating food and animals, the troops of Pancho Villa, drafted some Pimas; others preferred to keep aside of the war, and got deeper into the mountains. Currently, the Pimas of Maycoba considered that due to their participation in the wars against the Apaches and in the Revolution, they have more rights over the territory than the yoris.
*** In general the initial relation with yoris, at the beginning of century XX, it was of pacific living together but with the growth of the white population and to demand lands and forest resources, the Pima town underwent great defacement and it went folding towards the interior of the Mountain, as a result, the marginalization that lasts to the present time.
The pima language (O,ob No,oki) belongs to the branch Pimana of the Yutoazteca family and is closely related with the group Taracahíta. Pima forms part of a set of related languages called Pimanas or Tepimanas, that well could be named o’dum or o’tham languages.
It is a language close to extinction, but at the settlements there are a bilingual and monolingual people. In the zones of greater contact with the mestizo people like Maycoba and Juan Diego de los Pimas, the rate of bilingualism is very high, because most of the people have learned Spanish.
With respect to the social relations, they have the pattern of the distinct sonoran tribes’ societies who did not live in a single population, but in isolated settlements with close relatives and they seldom live together with several families, depending on the Earth fertility that sustained them. At present, Pimas conserves the sense of belonging property to a tribe, who throughout a great amount of small population centers that defines their territory, conforming a less structured society.
The Pimas believe in the divine intervention like cause of the appearance or treatment of the disease, reason why continuously they make votes and bequest to San Francisco (Pimas’ patron saint) to ask for health. They also resort to quack doctors and midwives to be cure with medicinal herbs (inmortal herb and hoof of cow for the indigestion; alder and chamomile for the pains childbirth; ocotillo, garlic, cinnamon and rue for the scares; tail of horse for “badly of urine”; dark torote for scorpion punctures; etc.).
 When the disease persists or is serious, they go to small rural centers medical that exists in the region (Maycoba and Kipor is under the responsibility of the Secretaría de Salud del Estado). In the last years they travel to the great centers of population like Obregón’s and Hermosillo’s city.
The Pimas present diverse problems of health, such as, respiratory diseases, diarrheas, parasitic intestinal diseases and anemia, mainly in the infantile population. The low infantile mortality exists and is rare that the average of life surpasses the 60 years, predominating in a high percentage in the people population less of 19 years.
The Pimas lives in settlements as extended families way. In earlier times, their dwellings were wood houses. Today predominate the houses are made out of adobe.
 They are quadrangles or rectangles, with one or two pieces, ceiling of two waters, formerly made out of wood and today made out of galvanized lamina, with small windows, thus its interior is dark. In center of the home they count on a metal stove, fed with firewood, where they cook and they are warmed up in the cold days of the long winter. They also have chairs and table of wood, kitchen utensils of pewter or ceramic, mill of hand, guaris to keep grains and kitchen utensils to serve the water, in addition to rustic beds of wood or sleeping mat.
ECONOMY
The Pimas are spending for a difficult economic situation. The ones that live in settlements handle the agriculture of subsistence and some families have cattle heads. In the populations where they live together with mestizo people, they obtain occasional works according to the sowings or harvests of the season or in masonry, jobs of heavy work, or as laborers in near farms. In the last years an economic resource is the vegetal coal manufacture from the tree trunk of the oak.
 In addition to traditional crafts, the craftswomen elaborate pieces of crafts in blanket with embroidering of high quality, with designs based on cave paintings of their caves, in a project of conformation of crafts for the cultural reaffirmation that they develop in coordination with Lutisuc from 1999. (To see more information in PROJECTS)
The Yúmare, it is the prehispanic celebration to guarantee the corn harvest and it was celebrated at the beginning of year, although at the moment the date of its celebration is changeable. They are four nights of prayers, dances, pascola songs, where the tesgüino drink or corn fermented occupies an important place. During all the night the musicians and the pascolas play music and women dance around the fire.
 Christianity taught by missioners prevailed over the ancestral rites, although in a syncretism that joins up both cults. The celebrations of Holy Week highlight, participating in the rituals of pharisee and jews to carry out religious vows and keep the ancient Pima traditions. Other festivities, such as: the Santa Cruz, the Guadalupe's Virgin and San Francisco, on October 4, is a typically yori holiday, with fairs and northern modern dances that attract both, Pimas and yoris, as well as merchants from all the country.
The Pimas crosses by a difficult situation as ethnic group due to the danger of loss of their cultural elements and the economic crisis. Years of marginalization and loss of their self-esteem, they have given as result a town that it is on the border of forgetting its cultural myths, their cosmovision and its elements, unless it is made a joint effort of civil society, institutions and mainly of the own group, to rescue and to preserve its culture, along with the fight to survive daily their difficult situation.
 At the moment they work with them, from the departure point of respect to its tradition and idiosyncrasy, organizations of the civil society, like Lutisuc Cultural Association I.A.P., and diverse governmental organizations, so that this town recovers, along with its self-esteem, its historical memory, its ancestral language, its music and dances, his cosmogony and their myths. What it withstands to be different and only to the rest of the world, that reason why can be called “O, OB, means, “the people”, brow to all the others.
Compilation and investigation: Ma. Inmaculada Puente Andrés
Bibliography:
" El Noroeste de México: sus culturas étnicas ", Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.
Monografías de los pueblos indígenas de México. Pimas. Comisión para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas.
Brochure edited by the Dirección General de Culturas Populares, Unidad Regional Sonora.
Photography: Inmaculada Puente, Ana Municio
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