Shoeless Trique Indian Boys Win International Basketball Tournament

A team of Trique Indian boys from the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca recently emerged as champions of the International Festival of Mini-Basketball in Argentina despite the fact that many of them are of short height and play shoeless. The players, who were dubbed "the barefoot mice from Mexico" by other teams in the tournament because of their diminutiveness according to Ernesto Merino, one of the team's coaches and also a Trique Indian, went 6-0 in the tournament to sweep away its competition. Merino told the Associated Press that his team was able to compensate for their lack of height by virtue of their "strength, speed and resistance".

The coach added that the boys were given tennis shoes to wear during competition when joining the team, but most of them decided not to use them because they felt more comfortable without them. In explaining what many might view as the boys' quirkiness, the coach said that his players come from large, poor families who often struggle to come up with the money necessary to buy shoes for their children. "For them it's normal to not have shoes, to walk barefoot," Merino told the AP.

Merino said that his players who flew to Cordoba, Argentina to participate in the tournament are members of a state-government-run basketball program aimed at helping poor children in Oaxaca obtain access to tennis shoes and uniforms. It also gives them $46 monthly in exchange for their participation in the program, which mandates that children have good grades in school, speak their native indigenous tongue and help with chores at home. Oaxaca is the second-poorest state in Mexico, with over 76 percent of its inhabitants living in extreme poverty, meaning they lack regular access to basic necessities like food, water, education and health care. It is also home to 33% of Mexico's total indigenous population, with about 14 different indigenous dialects spoken in the state. Merino said he and other adults who run the program, started three years ago, "want [the children] to be prepared in life" and added that they see basketball as "an opportunity to grow in life".

Mexican lawmakers who caught wind of the team's performance gave it a minute-long round of applause on Wednesday in the Chamber of Deputies. Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto also added his kudos. "The victories of the Trique Indian team from Oaxaca's Academy of Indigenous Basketball make Mexicans proud," he wrote in a tweet.

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