Peyote Dreams: From Collective Ritual to Personal Treatment? (English)

Based on ethnographic research, this presentation explores popular understandings of peyote’s therapeutic benefits that transcend ethnic and spatial worldviews. In addition, Diana will discuss the challenges that the potentiality of peyote faces due to its scarcity and centrality for some indigenous groups who affirm that its extraction by non-indigenous people could lead to cultural collapse. From the small farmers and migrants who occasionally ingest it in the high plateaus of San Luis Potosí to middle and upper class people who travel from afar to experience its effects, this presentation intends to deepen understandings of the controversy and affect that encircles this mythic plant.

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