Huicholen

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A grave Nayarit figure in the permanent collection of the Children's Museum of Indianapolis

The Huicholes [ wit͡ʃoːlən ] (in the Huichol language Wirrá'ika , plural: Wirrá'itari , in another orthography Wixaritari , meaning "healer", "magician") are an indigenous Mexican ethnic group with around 15,000 to 20,000 members. Their settlement area is in the Sierra Madre Occidental in the impassable mountainous terrain of north-western central Mexico, especially in the states of Jalisco and Nayarit , and to a lesser extent in the southeast of Durango and Zacatecas .

Map of the Nayarit area before the Spanish Conquista by Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán with the various ethnic groups according to the historian José Ramírez Flores

The Huicholes live very withdrawn as mountain farmers and hunters in an extremely impassable and climatically varied part of the Sierra due to gorges and deep canyons and are therefore one of the last indigenous tribes of Mexico that has not been touched by civilization. Depending on the region in which they are based, the Huicholes speak different dialects of the Huichol language (Wirrá), which belongs to the Uto-Aztec languages , the closest to the language of the Cora , more distantly also the Pima , Yaqui , Tepehuano and Nahuatl Is related. The Wirrárika probably only moved to their current settlement area, which is also home to the Tepehuan , at the time of the Spanish conquest of Mexico, possibly to avoid either the Aztecs or other oppressing tribes, or the Spanish conquistadors, their exact origin is uncertain.

Way of life

For their livelihood, the Wirrá'itari operate simple agriculture during the rainy season in summer on their scattered ranchos , which are inhabited in small groups by one to about twelve families and are located on the less steep mountain slopes in their part of the Sierra, which are in the dry winter more like a desert, but almost like a jungle in summer. The land is jointly owned and cannot be rented or sold. Each adult is allocated around 3000 square meters of land. However, the stony soil is of poor quality and yields little. Mainly blue, red, yellow or white “holy” corn , beans , cucumbers , pumpkins and peppers are grown on the plots . The undergrowth is removed by slash and burn , the main tools for tilling the soil are planting sticks and simple plows . Most families keep one or more cows for milk and cheese production and sometimes sheep are kept for the wool . Other domestic animals such as chickens and pigs are also bred, but meat is rarely eaten, usually only slaughtered during larger religious gatherings. The Huicholes do not hold an organized market, but they do trade cattle among themselves or occasionally sell them to traders to make money. The everyday diet consists mainly of the mentioned field crops, more recently also of bought rice , the menu is supplemented by fruits from wild harvest such as wild plums ( ciruelas ) or guavas and fishing. In the past, deer were also hunted, but these are now seldom to be found in the Huicholen settlement area. Only recently have the stocks recovered somewhat thanks to the efforts of the Huicholes to resettle. For these efforts, the nature-loving Huicholen were awarded the Mexican national prize for ecology in 1988. The poverty or relative wealth of each family is measured by the amount of livestock they own. Since agriculture is often unable to meet their own needs, many Huicholes have to work seasonally on the tobacco and sugar cane plantations on the coast, where they often suffer serious poisoning from pesticides with the resulting damage to health.

In the dry winter, the Huicholen gather in settlements built around waterholes ( ojos de agua ) or near watercourses with houses made of dried, occasionally also burnt clay and wooden buildings on stilts. In addition to public buildings, these community centers consist of the houses of families who move there in winter, some also have a school, church or prison, but there is always a riviki or caliwey (temple) where religious ceremonies and celebrations are held become. Even larger settlements often contain only a few, extended extended families.

Religiously inspired thread picture of the Huicholen: in the middle the sun as the central deity, underneath "Grandfather Fire", in the corners three deer and an eagle

In the past decades the tribe has been repeatedly visited by anthropologists who observed and documented its way of life and culture. In the western world, in the course of the New Age movement, the original shamanism of the tribe and in art circles were particularly interested in the colorful traditional thread pictures, which are made by tribesmen inspired by visionary dreams from dyed wool threads by using wax in figural and geometric shapes glue on wooden boards. The craftsmanship of the Huicholes also includes weaving, embroidery, beadwork, wickerwork such as sombreros , hunting weapons (bow and arrow), ceremonial prayer arrows and cuchuries , these are woven and often additionally embroidered bags of great beauty, which apart from their practical use also have religious significance . Rarely do you come across a Wirrárika without his chuchurie.

Organization of the community

The Huicholen people strive for independence in their area, which is divided into five autonomous regions. The people are currently subject to two hierarchies of authority. One is responsible to the Mexican government and is carried out by “Agentes Municipales” who exercise their office in the larger settlements. The second is Wirrá'ika-internal, autonomous and decentralized. In the latter system, each Huicholen region has its own government, not subject to any higher authority, which is headed by a civil and a religious authority. Civil power rests in the hands of the totohuani , a governor who is the highest legislative authority. The totohuani is determined for a period of one year and, together with the judge, makes judgments in any conflicts. The Capitano represents the executive power, a "public servant" supervises the execution of punishments. With the exception of homicides, the Huichol judiciary is also autonomous. Once a year, a fiesta is held accompanied by religious ceremonies , at which the officials resign their mandate and choose their successors themselves. The former governors and the elders of a community together form a council that supports the current government. The religious authority is the moraakati , a medicine man or shaman who is responsible for keeping the ancient traditions and customs from being forgotten.

religion

The Huicholes do not know a term for “God”, but according to their “eco-religious” local religion , they worship various entities of their natural environment as divine beings, as it were, whom they address as family members. Above all beings in their worldview is "Father Sun", from whom the four sub-deities corn, eagle, deer ( Kayaumari ) and peyote come from . Other venerated beings are, for example, "Mother Ocean", "Grandfather Fire" ( Tatewari ), "Grandmother Growth" ( Nacawe ) or "Grand Grandfather Deer Tail", the latter according to tradition being the medicine man who led them into their current habitat.

The medicine men (marakame) - who are famous among the peoples of the Sierra madre occidental - perform, among other things, healing rituals in which they also use their extensive phytotherapeutic knowledge to prescribe suitable medicinal plants. The Huicholes have a special permit from the Mexican government to ritually use the peyote cactus, which is otherwise forbidden because of its psychotropic ingredients , for ritual purposes . It is tradition that a group of delegates from each region undertakes a peregrination together over 550 kilometers in the Wirikuta area in San Luis Potosí once a year . According to their legend, all life began there and it is there in the Sierra de Catorce that the peyotl grows. The hallucinogenic cactus is used, among other things, to receive visions that help determine the next moraakati or make other important decisions.

The Huichol have Marakame called medicine men, because of their abilities and their power in the peoples of the madre occidental Sierra are famous. Their religion contains almost the strongest pre-Columbian elements.

It is only recently that the Wirrárika people have also adapted fragments of Catholicism. The first mission station was established after 1950 in San Andrés Coatmiata. Since the Bible translation work of the Americans Joe and Barbara Grimes in the 1950s and the evangelical missionaries who followed them, more and more revival congregations and church buildings have sprung up in the tribal area. However, the translators who worked for the Grimes had a down-to-earth sense of humor, which led to many mistranslations and downright jokes in the Wirrá Bible. For this reason, too, the conversion process has not been particularly successful in many respects. Most of the Wirrá'itari have retained their original faith and are reluctant to change.

Present and Future

Since around 1960, both state and church schools as well as a private secondary school have been established in the settlement area, which has led to a certain division between educated, “urban” and uneducated “rural” Huicholen. There is also an increasing division between converts to Christianity and the adherents of the old religion, who just tolerate missionary work.

Since the 1990s, more roads have been built into the Wirrá'ika area on behalf of the Mexican government, which leads to new influences that are changing the traditional life of the tribe at an increasingly faster rate. Donkeys , mules and horses are increasingly being replaced by motor vehicles, which on the one hand can transport food and medicines in large quantities to the region, but on the other hand also alcohol in the form of beer and spirits . Also introduced diseases, for which the Huichola's immune system is not prepared, are increasingly spreading. Another growing problem is malnutrition and the associated health consequences. An unusually high percentage of Huicholen newborns are born with physical or mental disabilities, which could be a result of malnutrition. Due to the upheavals and problems mentioned, it is very uncertain how long the traditional Wirrárika society will survive.

Portrait of a Huicholen woman with child

Since the Mexican government granted 22 mining concessions to Canadian companies in November 2009 for the area in San Luis Potosi, which serves the Huichol as a pilgrimage site under the name Wirikuta, their traditional peregrination is in great danger.

literature

  • Guiliano Tescari: El cambio de varas. Símbolos y fuentes de autoridad política en una comunidad huichola . In: Barbro Dahlgren de Jordán (ed.): Historia de la Religión en Mesoamerica y áreas afines . UNAM, Mexico City 1987, ISBN 968-837-943-3 , pp. 177-198.
  • Silke Straatman: The wool pictures of the Huichol Indians. An Indian tribe presents its myths . Ethnological seminar at the Philipps University, Marburg 1988.
  • Fernando Benítez: Los Indios de México . Siglo XXI de España Editores, Madrid, 4th edition 1997, ISBN 84-323-1037-9 .
  • Sonja M. Steckbauer: La situación bilingüe y bicultural de los huicholes, México . In: Sonja M. Steckbauer, Kristin A. Müller (eds.): 500 years of mestizaje in language, literature and culture . Bibliotheca Hispano-Lusa, Salzburg 1993, pp. 132-149.
  • Stacy B. Schaefer, Peter T. Furst (Eds.): People of the Peyote: Huichol Indian History, Religion, and Survival. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque 1998, ISBN 0-8263-1905-X .
  • Claus Deimel: A world made of symbols. The Huichol in northwestern Mexico . In: Claus Deimel, Elke Ruhnau (eds.): Jaguar and snake. The Indian cosmos in Central and South America . Reimer, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-496-02695-2 , pp. 151-168.
  • Peter T. Furst: Visions of a Huichol Shaman. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia 2003, ISBN 1-931707-60-X .
  • Christian von Sehrwald: In the footsteps of the gods. Peyote (Lophophora williamsii) and the ethnic groups of northwestern Mexico with special consideration of the ceremonial cycle of the Huichol Indians . Nachtschatten-Verlag, Solothurn 2005, ISBN 978-3-03788-113-2 .
  • Peter T. Furst: Rock Crystals & Peyote Dreams: Explorations in the Huichol Universe. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City 2006, ISBN 0-87480-869-3 .

Web links

Commons : Huichol people  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Patricia Diaz-Romo and Samuel Salinas-Alvarez: A Poisoned Culture: the case of the Indigenous Huicholes Farm Workers , Abya Yala News Online, The Journal of the South and Meso American Indian Rights Center (SAIIC)
  2. ↑ Åke Hultkrantz , Michael Rípinsky-Naxon, Christer Lindberg: The book of the shamans. North and South America . Munich 2002, ISBN 3-550-07558-8 , p. 94 f.