Newsletters

Summer 2025 Newsletter detailing the activities of the Wixarika Research Center.

Fall/Winter 2024 Newsletter detailing the activities of the Wixarika Research Center

Newsletter detailing the activities of the Wixarika Scholarship Fund Fall/Winter 2023.

From July 12th through July 14th, 2023, a third face-to-face meeting was held in the Las Margaritas ejido with the participation of various organizations and with the purpose of promoting the ecological, economic, and social well-being of the Altiplano Potosi, also known as Wirikuta to the Wixárika people. The Wixárika Research Center oversaw general coordination, that included invitations to Wixárika communities and inhabitants of the Altiplano region, as well as some delegates Sonora and Jalisco who were invited to participate to share their environmental work.  

With all the rain we had here in California, it has been a truly glorious spring. We hope that everyone, wherever you are, is in good health and spirits and enjoying an equally spectacular springtime.

As this is our first newsletter of 2022, we would like to wish everyone a healthy, happy, and peaceful year, despite the many personal and collective tragedies we continue to face. 

Spring 2022 newsletter detailing the activities of the Wixarika Scholarship Fund.

Fall 2021 Newsletter detailing the activities of the Wixarika Research Center.

The Wixárika Scholarship Fund (HSF) is a charitable program that awards scholarships to Wixarika university students to assist them in completing undergraduate university studies.

The last year and a half has been long and surely has tested everyone’s patience as we waited to return to some semblance of what used to be our normal behavior. We hope you have all been well and remained in good health and the best spirits possible as we wait to exit this pandemic. 

Spring 2020 newsletter detailing the activities of the Wixárika Research Center.

As this year draws to an end we want to thank all of you who supported our projects this past year and made possible the work we accomplished with our special visitors, Matsiwa De la Cruz and Aukwe García Mijarez. More than at any other time, our mission at the Wixárika Research Center is to continue to build a rich archive of Wixárika history, culture and territory alongside our continued support of select initiatives that strengthen Wixárika autonomy. In this light, and given the enormity of threats that continue to affect Wixárika land and culture, we are happy to share some of our most important developments of the year.

Over the past years, the Wixárika Research Center has had the privilege of bringing guest interns to work on the extensive archive that Juan and Yvonne Negrín collected over more than forty years of work with Wixárika elders and various community members. Among other things, these materials consist of an extraordinary collection of contemporary Wixárika yarn paintings, each of which is accompanied by audio recordings between the artist and Juan discussing the symbolism and narratives of the work. But, these materials are far more extensive than the art collection itself and we continue to come across interested scholars who are able to help us with the process of digitizing and cataloguing the materials in order to make them available to the public.

During the past year we have been kept busy with our renewed activities in the field. In June of 2013, we received a generous grant from Lush Cosmetics to help us finance the building of a wood drying solar oven for the independent (autonomous) preparatory school, located in the community of Tuapurie (Santa Catarina Cuexcomatitlán). Building the solar oven...

Spring 2012 Wixarika Research Center Newsletter.

For the past seven months the Wixárika traditional and agrarian authorities have been actively working to bring about the cancellation of the 22 mining concessions granted to First Majestic Silver Corporation of Canada. For those of you who have not been following this news, the concessions total 6,327 hectares of which 70% are within the protected Wirikuta Pilgrimage Route and Reserve.

Spring 2010 Newsletter detailing work of Wixarika Research Center.

Last year our efforts to set up an effective bilingual website that reached out to a Spanish public bore fruits. Not surprisingly some of these people are the first generation of grass roots Huichol who have access...

Summer 2008 newsletter detailing the activities of the Wixarika Research Center

Our Trip to the Sierras In late June of this year I joined my husband and our daughter Diana and traveled to the sierras for a visit with friends and our now grown Godchildren. Juan has returned to the sierras on a yearly basis and Diana has often accompanied him but this was my first trip in quite a few years. The rains had already begun and made some of our trip difficult although in general we were blessed with fairly clear skies during daylight hours and a couple of dry days prior to our departure which made our trip back to Guadalajara uneventful.