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. 

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. 

Dear Friends, Donors and Subscribers,

It is our hope that everyone is well and managing as best as possible during the crisis of the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic. We feel extremely fortunate and grateful that we have a safe place to work from and can continue to add new content to the WRC online archive while we shelter in place.

The Wixárika communities are taking precautions to protect their people from Covid-19. They have asked that outsiders refrain from visiting the communities and in the case of San Andrés Cohamiata / Tateikíe they cancelled their annual Holy Week for the first time in memory. Both the Government and the Wixárika people have shown initiative translating public service announcements and gathering essential medical and food supplies.
 

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...

Wirikuta Update: Since our last newsletter in April of 2011, the Wixárika Council for the Defense of Wirikuta and the Front in Defense of Wirikuta[1] have continued actively opposing mining and agro-industry in Wirikuta. At the time of our last newsletter, our efforts were mainly focused on the concessions granted to Canada’s First Majestic Silver Corporation, in the area of Real de Catorce. As we wrote last year, this project which has since been renamed Project La Luz, consists of 22 mining concessions covering an area of 6,326.58 hectares of which 70%  are located within the Wirikuta protected reserve. Since that time, one of the biggest threats to come to light is that of another Canadian corporation, Revolution Resources, which has purchased concessions in the heart of Wirikuta. This project, named El Proyecto Universo, has plans to exploit 59,678 hectares inside the protected area of the Wirikuta reserve. 

The crisis Mexico is living as a result of the continued escalation of violence between rival drug cartels and the state’s armed forces has increasingly affected indigenous peoples who have seen their territories invaded by these competing armed forces. Unfortunately, Wixaritari communities are no exception to this phenomenon. Santa Catarina Cuexcomatitlán’s (Tuapurie) continued objection to the completion of the Huejuquilla-Bolaños road has facilitated this community’s ability to keep their land somewhat inhospitable to outsiders, including drug traffickers.

In June of this year, Juan and Diana Negrín returned to Guadalajara and the Wixárika region to resume their respective investigations and receive first-hand updates on the continuing struggle between the community of Santa Catarina Cuexcomatitlán, or Tuapurie, and the government...