[D66] [JD: 140] Inside a Peyote Pilgrimage | NYTIMES.COM

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nytimes.com
<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/05/travel/mexico-peyote-pilgrimage.html>


  Inside a Peyote Pilgrimage

Matt Reichel, Robyn Huang
6-8 minutes
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The Chihuahuan Desert in the Mexican state of San Luis Potosí. The
Wixáritari, an Indigenous group, return here every year to collect peyote.

The World Through a Lens

Drug tourists, mining companies and farming encroachment are threatening
the Wixárika people’s annual hunt for the psychedelic plant in the
Mexican desert.

The Chihuahuan Desert in the Mexican state of San Luis Potosí. The
Wixáritari, an Indigenous group, return here every year to collect
peyote.Credit...

Matt Reichel

Text by Robyn Huang

  * Published July 5, 2021Updated July 7, 2021

Mario Bautista was digging relentlessly at the ground. Deep in the vast
and unforgiving Chihuahuan Desert, in northeastern Mexico, he had spent
nearly eight hours wading through a seemingly endless patch of thorny
brush. Surrounding him were 25 members of his community, including his
wife and children.

Everyone in the group was searching for one thing: the psychedelic plant
known as peyote, or hikuri — a small, squishy cactus camouflaged
underneath the shrubbery.

Image

K’kame, at left, an elder among the Wixárika, takes part in a ritual in
central San Luis Potosí, near a naturally bubbling spring. Here, the
pilgrims use brushes and candles to collectively baptize one another.

Mario and those alongside him are members of the Mexican Huichol, or
Wixárika, people, and hikuri is their lifeline. Whatever they found
would be brought back to their village for use in their daily religious
rituals.

Spread across the rugged Sierra Madre Occidental range, the Wixárika are
an Indigenous people with an estimated population of 45,000. Within
their culture, peyote is far more than just a hallucinogenic cactus. The
Wixárika believe that the plant allows them to connect with their
ancestors and regenerates their souls.

Every year, Wixárika communities make a several-hundred-mile pilgrimage
to a sacred place called Wirikuta, near the northeastern city of
Matehuala. Groups travel — these days by car, trucks and buses — under
the direction of a leading shaman, or maraka’ame.

Under Mexican law, only Indigenous groups are authorized to harvest and
ingest peyote. But in part because of its increasing popularity as a
recreational drug
<https://www.vice.com/en/article/bn5k3m/i-dug-up-peyote-in-the-mexican-desert-456>,
the plant has become harder to find. If their holy lands continue to be
threatened — by drug tourists
<https://www.vice.com/en/article/bn5k3m/i-dug-up-peyote-in-the-mexican-desert-456>,
mining companies
<https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgz55a/inside-a-massive-peyote-ceremony-during-mexicos-covid-lockdown>
and farming encroachment
<https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14064806> — then
a core aspect of the Wixárika’s identity will be in danger.

This past March, the photographer Matt Reichel and I were invited to
join Mario and his family on their pilgrimage — as guests of his
community, and to learn about and document their traditions.

Pilgrims are divided into groups based on their ancestral family lands,
and each group can only access a particular area within Wirikuta. They
must also receive an initial blessing in their homeland before setting
out on the journey; for Mario’s family, the blessing took place in
Rancho La Tristeza, near the village of La Cebolleta, in the Mexican
state of Nayarit.

The next day, the group embarked on the pilgrimage adorned in their
traditional dress. The women wore vibrant colored, hand-sewn dresses.
Scarves protected their hair from the sun.

The men wore white shirts and pants, with embroidered depictions of
deer, peyote and other symbols. They also wore wide-brimmed hats with
plumed feathers. One particular man, K’kame, the guardian of the
community’s ancestral pavilion, was a visual splendor: His hat held more
plumed feathers than those of other pilgrims, and he was chaotically
energetic during all the rituals.

On the first night, the group settled into a sacred site off the side of
a highway. The evening’s first ritual was a name-changing ceremony: The
desert became the ocean; peyote became chayote squash. Name changing
helps the pilgrims envision entering a new world.

The pilgrims also underwent a public confession around midnight, during
which each person listed all their past and present sexual
relationships. The names were then publicly read around the bonfire; the
intention was to let go of the past.

Each of the relationships was tied as a knot on individual palm
branches. The branches were then burned in the fire.

Throughout the trek, pilgrims made offerings at sacred sites — areas
where their ancestors had found water during previous pilgrimages. Water
was key to the offerings; pilgrims used feathers and candles to sprinkle
water over the offerings, which included corn tortillas and coins.

Families congregated by the watering hole, where they chanted, sang and
blessed one another. A fiddler played a joyful tune in the background.

After traveling overland for a week, we finally reached our area, known
as Bernalejos.

“It is the largest church in the world,” Mario proclaimed as we stepped
into the desert.

The families rested for a while, but there was no time to sleep.
Instead, the pilgrims stayed up to sing and dance for a good harvest.

The morning of the harvest, families painted their faces with single
yellow dots on both cheeks. Mariana, Mario’s wife, explained that the
paintings symbolized the sun.

In a beautiful formation, the community marched into the morning
sunlight with machetes and baskets. Everyone stayed together at first,
but gradually the families spread apart.

The harvest took hours and became increasingly difficult as the sun grew
less forgiving. The largest peyote patches sat beneath shrubs covered in
thorns; reaching them was treacherous, particularly in the heat of the
day, when the colors seemed to blend together.

Still, the hunt continued. Mario explained that they were collecting
peyote not only for themselves, but also for family members who could
not make the journey. During the forage, each family had gathered up to
150 crowns, after which the plants were dried and blessed.

Around sunset, we walked up a hill to make one final offering. Mario
asked us to hold out our hands. He tapped our faces, and we ingested
small pieces of the peyote. The plant was incredibly bitter. The
families only ate a little, about the amount for a microdose, which was
meant to facilitate calm reflection. That night, the group collapsed
into a peaceful sleep, as if a spell had been cast over our camp.

Well rested from the night before, we all collectively packed-up camp to
leave the next day. As he took a look at the pile of his family’s crowns
on the ground next to the smoldering embers of the campfire, Mario
smiled at us. “We have been given a sacred gift from Mother Earth,” he
said, “and now we have to return it home.”

/Matt Reichel/ <https://mattreichel.com/>/is a Canadian photographer
currently based in the Democratic Republic of Congo. You can follow his
work on //Instagram/ <https://www.instagram.com/matthew.reichel/>/and
//Twitter/ <https://twitter.com/MattCReichel>/./

/Robyn Huang/ <https://www.robynhuang.com/>/is a Canadian writer and
photographer based in Guadalajara, Mexico. You can follow her work on
//Instagram/ <https://www.instagram.com/ror0roror0ro/>/and //Twitter/
<https://twitter.com/huangrobyn>/./

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