Colorful shawls worn by Tarahumara Indian women dry on a line in Mexico's Copper Canyons.

Until recently, the remoteness of the Tarahumara's homeland—the canyons' deep, rock-lined gorges—has allowed these intensely shy people to preserve much of their native culture. But a decade of government-promoted tourism in the region is bringing the outside world to their doorstep.

(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "The Two Faces of Tourism," July/August 1999, National Geographic Traveler magazine)