This book is thus a multi-sited ethnography of territoriality with broad geographical and theoretical reach. Its mix of vivid description and complex theory will engage multiple publics. It is aimed at anthropologists, historians, and geographers who deal with Indian territory and sovereignty in Latin America, but it will also engage readers interested in what "place" means to native peoples and how they represent themselves to global publics. It will also be a good book for students who want to read an innovative ethnography about a quintessentially "traditional" Mexican Indian people's creative response to challenging historical conditions.
Best known for their ritual use of peyote, the Huichol people of west-central Mexico carried much of their original belief system into the twentieth century unadulterated by the influence of Christian missionaries. Among the Huichol, reciting myths and performing rituals pleases the ancestors and helps maintain a world in which abundant subsistence and good health are assured. This volume is a collection of myths recorded by Robert Zingg in 1934 in the village of Tuxpan and is the most comprehensive record of Huichol mythology ever published. Zingg was the first professional anthropologist to study the Huichol, and his generosity toward them and political advocacy on their behalf allowed him to overcome tribal sanctions against divulging secrets to outsiders. He is fondly remembered today by some Huichols who were children when he lived among them. Zingg recognized that the alternation between dry and wet seasons pervades Huichol myth and ritual as it does their subsistence activities, and his arrangement of the texts sheds much light on Huichol tradition. The volume contains both aboriginal myths that attest to the abiding Huichol obligation to serve ancestors who control nature and its processes, and Christian-inspired myths that document the traumatic effect that silver mining and Franciscan missions had on Huichol society. First published in 1998 in a Spanish-language edition, Huichol Mythology is presented here for the first time in English, with more than 40 original photographs by Zingg accompanying the text. For this volume, the editors provide a meticulous historical account of Huichol society from about 200 A.D. through the colonial era, enabling readers to fully grasp the significance of the myths free of the sensationalized interpretations found in popular accounts of the Huichol. ZinggÕs compilation is a landmark work, indispensable to the study of mythology, Mexican Indians, and comparative religion.
"Ramón Medina Silva, a Huichol Indian shaman priest or mara'akame, instructed me in many of his culture's myths, rituals, and symbols, particularly those pertaining to the sacred untiy of deer, maize, and peyote. The significance of this constellation of symbols was revealed to me most vividly when I accompanied Ramón on the Huichol's annual ritual return to hunt the peyote in the sacred land of Wirikuta, in myth and probably in history the place from which the Ancient Ones (ancestors and deities of the present-day Indians) came before settling in their present home in the mountains of the Sierra Madre Occidental in north-central Mexico. My work with Ramón preceded and followed our journey, but it was this peyote hunt that held the key to, and constituted the climax of, his teachings."--from the Preface
Two hard-luck drifters and a grizzled prospector seek gold in the mountains in Mexico. They start off as friends, but after they discover the lode the greed and paranoia set in.
The Mexican Revolution gave rise to the Mexican nation-state as we know it today. Rural revolutionaries took up arms against the Díaz dictatorship in support of agrarian reform, in defense of their political autonomy, or inspired by a nationalist desire to forge a new Mexico. However, in the Gran Nayar, a rugged expanse of mountains and canyons, the story was more complex, as the region’s four Indigenous peoples fought both for and against the revolution and the radical changes it bought to their homeland. To make sense of this complex history, Nathaniel Morris offers the first systematic understanding of the participation of the Náayari, Wixárika, O’dam, and Mexicanero peoples in the Mexican Revolution. They are known for being among the least “assimilated” of all Mexico’s Indigenous peoples. It’s often been assumed that they were stuck up in their mountain homeland—“the Gran Nayar”—with no knowledge of the uprisings, civil wars, military coups, and political upheaval that convulsed the rest of Mexico between 1910 and 1940. Based on extensive archival research and years of fieldwork in the rugged and remote Gran Nayar, Morris shows that the Náayari, Wixárika, O’dam, and Mexicanero peoples were actively involved in the armed phase of the revolution. This participation led to serious clashes between an expansionist, “rationalist” revolutionary state and the highly autonomous communities and heterodox cultural and religious practices of the Gran Nayar’s inhabitants. Morris documents confrontations between practitioners of subsistence agriculture and promoters of capitalist development, between rival Indian generations and political factions, and between opposing visions of the world, of religion, and of daily life. These clashes produced some of the most severe defeats that the government’s state-building programs suffered during the entire revolutionary era, with significant and often counterintuitive consequences both for local people and for the Mexican nation as a whole.
The book not only provides an overview of the Huichol and the plight of Mesoamerican Indians but also sheds light on traditional religion, indigenous Catholicism, messianic cults, urbanization, and indigenous conflicts with the modern Mexican state."--BOOK JACKET.
For centuries the Huichol (Wixárika) Indian women of Jalisco, Mexico, have been weaving textiles on backstrap looms. This West Mexican tradition has been passed down from mothers to daughters since pre-Columbian times. Weaving is a part of each woman’s identity—allowing them to express their ancient religious beliefs as well as to reflect the personal transformations they have undergone throughout their lives. In this book anthropologist Stacy B. Schaefer explores the technology of weaving and the spiritual and emotional meaning it holds for the women with whom she works and within their communities, which she experienced during her apprenticeship with master weavers in Wixárika families. She takes us on a dynamic journey into a realm of ancient beliefs and traditions under threat from the outside world in this fascinating ethnographic study.
