Winter 2025 Newsletter
Dear Supporters,
We are pleased to close out another year with progress in all our areas of operation. We appreciate the participation and support of the public and look forward to what we have in store for 2026. The Wixárika Research Center is a non-profit foundation started in 2001 by Juan and Yvonne Negrín with the purpose of consolidating, digitizing, and sharing decades of collaborative work with Wixarika artists, mara’akate, and community members. Our online archive is a free digital library that contains not only examples of traditional and modern Wixarika art, but also manuscripts, art catalogs, videos, and a news archive with articles on politics, economics, and territory from the 1970s to the present. With the progress we have made, we would like to dedicate this coming year to disseminating and promoting the use of this archive as an educational tool. If you have materials you would like to share for the archive, please contact us at inquiries@wixarika.org.
This year we lost one of our dearest friends and collaborators, the mara’akame, Matsiwa de la Cruz. A brilliant man from the ceremonial center of Kieruwitia (Las Latas), who cultivated friendships that took him to Europe, the United States, and Japan. Matsiwa shared a lasting friendship with Juan and Yvonne from the time they were all in their twenties, sharing family life and seeking ways to elevate public knowledge of Wixarika culture. In recent years, Matsiwa helped us identify hundreds of photographs taken in the field by his compadre, Juan. We will miss his smile, grace and knowledge!
NEW ADDITIONS TO OUR ONLINE ARCHIVE
For those who have not yet visited our digital archive, we invite you to begin your exploration! Among the featured content we have made available is a collection of yarn paintings assembled by our founders, Juan and Yvonne Negrín. Our modern art galleries include works by José Benítez Sánchez, Tutukila Carrillo Sandoval, Guadalupe González Ríos, Lucía Lemus de la Cruz, Juan Ríos Martínez, and Pablo Taizán. Each work includes an explanation in Spanish, English, and Wixarika. We also have a video library that includes content by young Wixarika creators, academic conferences on ecological and territorial issues, as well as older interviews and films on topics of art, culture, and human rights. Finally, we continue to update our news page with recent events in the Sierra Madre Occidental and regional achievements in education and women's rights. This complements our news archive, which contains digitized articles from earlier decades.
THE WIXARIKA SCHOLARSHIP FUND
This year we continue to feel a deep admiration for the new generation of Wixarika students who are graduating from their university programs. The Wixarika Scholarship Fund was established in 2018 with the support of the International Friendship Club of Puerto Vallarta with the goal of creating a scholarship program for Wixarika undergraduate students. Since then, we have awarded scholarships to nearly 80 students from different communities, fields of study, and universities. We congratulate our most recent graduates: Juan Crescencio Bailón Jiménez, (Brasiles) Forestry Engineering from the University of Juárez in Durango; Félix Misael Bonilla Carrillo, (Tateikié) Teaching and Learning of Mathematics from the Escuela Normal Superior of Aguascalientes; Osbaldo Cosío González, (Tuapurie) Surgeon and Obstetrician from the University of Guadalajara; Otilio de la Cruz López, Law from the Autonomous University of Nayarit; Bernardo Carrillo Ramírez, (Tateikié) Nutrition and Food Science from ITESO, Jesuit University of Guadalajara.
