Our Mother Young Corn: An Image of the Ephemeral Totality of a Wixarika Ritual

In an agricultural ritual held in a family temple in a Wixárika community in western Mexico, an assemblage is created in an organized sequence of acts composed of heterogeneous elements: artifacts, parts of sacrificed animals, and people. This assemblage is attributed the identity of Our Mother Young Cornfield (Tatei Waxa ‘iimari). Anthropologist Regina Lira analyzes how each of its parts is created and manipulated throughout a ritual cycle within the interactions between humans in the ceremonial courtyard and between non-humans in the ritual chanting. This process establishes plural and contradictory relationships between people of the same sex, different sexes, and between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. We will show how this assemblage operates as an integrating node of the different registers of action, creating the conditions for coexistence between the human and non-human worlds in the creative act. Through this process, we reflect on Indigenous modes of transmission based on image, time, and the body.

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