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In the second volume of the Four that he wrote about the Indians of Mexico, Fernando Benítez describes the trip he made to the extensive region where the Huichol people live. Its text (643 pages) brings us closer to one of the most important human groups in the country. And in it, in addition, it denounces the poverty in which its inhabitants found themselves and an evil that affects us all and is still in force: corruption and abuse towards indigenous peoples.
That trip, carried out in very unfavorable conditions due to lack of infrastructure and the prevailing poverty in what was a prosperous mining region, was achieved thanks to common friends: the anthropologist Rubín de la Borbolla; Rogelio Álvarez, specialist in colonial art, and Agustín Yáñez, governor of Jalisco. They facilitated Fernando’s stay in the Sierra Madre, where the so-called Wixárika people preferably live.
Sixty years after that trip, several members of said town produced a series of texts that make up the most recent number of The Ecological Dayillustrated by photographer Iván Alechine. In them they show the aspects of their worldview; the urgency of rationally using water, overexploited by external interests, as Dr. Tunuary Chávez points out in his article when analyzing the case of the Vanegas–Catorce aquifer. The threat it faces exceeds the physical-chemical dimension, since in the Potosí highlands, water sustains a structure of life where the agricultural, the ritual, the community and the ancestral are intertwined.
Dr. Chávez adds that, although the National Water Law prohibits granting new concessions in overexploited aquifers, the deterioration of the system and the irregular drilling of wells continue. Even within the Wirikuta Protected Natural Area. Added to this struggle to achieve rational use of water is the struggle to avoid the privatization of communal land, as expressed in a text by Mrs. Mary, a resident of Las Margaritas, and, in parallel, the opposition to projects to extract minerals. The latter would be a mortal blow to the fragile ecosystems that make up the Wirikuta semi-desert.
Considerations about peyote, the sacred flower, erroneously considered by official organizations as a drug, when in reality it is a botanical treasure of the country, are not foreign to the supplement. For his part, biologist Pedro Sautemai Pareja Badillo illustrates how the white-tailed deer is a fundamental species for natural conservation and the Wixárika cosmogony in several entities in the center of the country.
If something distinguishes this important human group that travels from the Sierra Madre Occidental to the semi-desert in the Altiplano Potosino, it is their love for the land. A biocultural treasure that was recognized as such by UNESCO. In addition, it possesses a poetic language that the historian Regina Lara illustrates with fragments of poetry and songs that express the community feeling and its relationship with the spiritual and material world.
The supplement also refers to ancestral ceremonies. Like the Traditional Expertise in 2012, chaired by Eusebio de la Cruz, and thanks to which the attack on 78 mining concessions was stopped. Or that of the Renewal of the World, celebrated in 2022, which also addresses the dispute over land in the small Las Margaritas ejido, of 5,700 hectares, the site where pilgrims from the Wixárika people arrive. For four years, attempts have been made to convert it into a pole of industrial growth, alien to the local ecosystem, feeling and tradition.
In the section on community resistance, Eduardo Guzmán describes the foundations of unity to stop the destructive advance of agroindustries, among which the spirituality of the Wixárika people stands out; the commitment of a government sector, local farmers and a diverse network of civil society that contributes creativity.
Fernando Benitez accompanied the Huichols on a pilgrimage to Wirikuta. He stated in amazement that in all that extension it was difficult to find a single stone that did not have a name and sacred importance. It is regrettable that current legislation and UNESCO recognition fail to stop agroindustrial expansion and the illegal opening of wells. It is urgent that the government, so given to promising the well-being of the ancestral communities, avoid further damage to the sacred territory of Wirikuta.
