Wixárika Scholarship Fund recipient, María Fernanda Ramírez Gamboa, with a sign that says, "Neither the land nor women are territories to be conquered."
When the Spanish conquistadors arrived in Mexico half a millennium ago, they sought to convince Indigenous people that consumption of peyote, an inconspicuous cactus that contains the psychedelic drug mescaline, was akin to devil worship.
After four years of struggle, the Wixárika community of San Sebastián Teponahuaxtlán in Mezquitic, Jalisco, will directly receive federal resources to manage amongst themselves without the intervention of local officials or political parties. And they will do so with women at the table under an agreement of gender parity, a rarity among Indigenous governments and, indeed, governments in general.
Mothers pushing baby carriages, grandmothers and grandfathers in their 70s and even a man in a wheelchair joined the ranks of the 200 Indigenous Wixárika people making their way nearly 1,000 kilometers along the sweltering highways of México in a generations-long battle to recover their stolen lands. The Wixárika Caravan for Dignity and Justice departed from the Western Sierra Madre on April 25 and has been walking ever since, camping alongside the highway and rising at dawn to carry on.
Wirikuta tiene muchos nombres y una entrada. La puerta se nombra Wak+ri kitenie, la puerta del Hermano Mayor Tepehuán, el paso al quinto piso del altar-mundo, nuestro templo.
Los constituyentes mexicanos decretaron que la justicia en el país sería gratuita y expedita, aspiración que casi nunca se corresponde con la realidad y mucho menos para los pueblos originarios de esta nación.
1.El 23 de marzo, algunos representantes de centros ceremoniales, autoridades tradicionales y comuneros wixaritari de Jalisco, Nayarit y Durango llegaron a Palacio Nacional en la Ciudad de México a que los recibiera el presidente. Le pidieron respeto a sus sitios sagrados, en particular el que se encuentra en Wirikuta en San Luis Potosí. Le saludaron y le mostraron respeto a su investidura y la de su esposa.
Wirikuta es la flor de la conciencia universal de la vida, es el epicentro donde nacen los acuerdos que renuevan el espíritu de todo lo creado. Wirikuta es un espacio profundo repleta de libros que contienen de como se origino el mundo, los libros medicinales que sanan el corazón y fortalecen el lazo que nos borda como flores en una gran serpiente rio de luz que no tienen ni principio ni final.
On September 22, 2021, six young Wixarika men between the ages of 16 and 32 were “disappeared” from a road that runs along the sinuous border between the western Mexican states of Jalisco and Zacatecas. Relatives and friends confirm that the young men had gone to carry out a traditional deer hunt. Within days, four of the six bodies were found bearing the marks of torture that are all too common in a country that acts as a hub for organized crime serving its northern neighbor’s notorious appetite for drugs.
It is that time of year again, when, since time immemorial, the Wixárika people are preparing their offerings. The candles of life, the chaquira gourd bowls, the God’s eyes, the prayer arrows. They are beginning to retrace the arduous journey of their ancestors, carried out every year in sacred reciprocity for the gift of life.
