History and Culture

Taller de telares en la comunidad de Tuapurie

Apprentice and Philosopher: The Wixarika Archive of Juan Negrín

En 1982, un escritor francés, Jean-Paul Ribes, viajó a México para escribir un artículo para la revista Actuel1 sobre el chamanismo y los psicotrópicos, tomando a los wixaritari (huicholes) como ejemplo de uno de los últimos pueblos chamánicos vivos. Por entonces, mi padre, Juan Negrín Fetter, figuraba como uno de los principales estudiantes de la cultura y el arte wixárika, por lo cual le llegaban solicitudes por parte de académicos, funcionarios y psiconautas con la esperanza de que él les pudiera facilitar un vínculo con las comunidades wixaritari. Mi padre apenas llevaba unos diez años trabajando con artistas wixaritari en Jalisco y Nayarit, pero en ese lapso de tiempo había logrado crear amistades íntimas con varias familias, asesoró brevemente al Instituto Nacional Indigenista y había unido su interés por el arte con la defensoría territorial de los wixaritari ante la deforestación y otras amenazas contra la autonomía de este pueblo originario. 
Antonio Hayuaneme García - Photograph ©Yvonne Negrín 2013 - 2018

Huichi, A Worthy Ambassador for the Wixarika People?

The 2011 Pan American Games, to be held in October in Guadalajara, Mexico, have three mascots. One of them is Huichi, a caricature of the sacred Huichol deer, and according to Emilio González, Jalisco state Governor, and the Games Organising Committee, a "worthy ambassador of the Huichol". However, far from being a “worthy ambassador”, for the Huicholes Huichi represents a sacrilegious misuse of sacred Huichol symbology. If the government had bothered asking beforehand – which it didn’t – it would have found that out. In another sleight, the Huicholes, whose artisanry is famous worldwide, formally proposed having a fixed space to sell their artisanry during the games, but this was rejected, all of this by which time Huichi had already been made public. 
Le corps et la corde

Le corps et la corde: Le rite d’<<enlaçage>> des peyoteros Huichol (occident du Mexique)

The Body and the Rope: The rite of “entwining” of the Huichol Peyoteros (Western Mexico)”, article written by Dr. Olivia Kindl for Ateliers d’anthropologie 40(2014) in their number titled “Représentations et mesures du corps humain en Mésoamérique” (“Representations and Measurements of the Human Body in Mesoamerica”).

View of the Sierra Madre Occidental ~ Photograph ©Juan Negrín 1978 - 2025

Notes on Wixarika History: Early History

As archaeologist Phil Weigand puts it, the Wixarika and their Na'ayeri neighbors had deep roots in the area where they are now settled in a sequence that had begun by the Mesoamerican Classic period (ca. 200-700 A. D.). The Corachol branch of this Uto-Aztecan language family leads linguists like Valiñas, cited by Weigand to consider the relative antiquity of this language group in the area.
The Wixaritari Cleansing Themselves during Easter - Photograph ©Juan Negrín 1979 - 2025

Notes on Wixarika History: Post-Hispanic History

The Huichol were distinguished as xurute, according to a geographical map published in 1579, in the Atlas Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (reproduced in various sources: Rojas, Neurath). The term vizurita is used by Father Tello, in his Crónica Miscelánea, written in 1652. The first reference to the huicholes as guisoles appears in a briefing to the bishop Ruiz Colmenares (between 1640 and 1650). Father Antonio Arias y Saavedra used the terms xamucas and huitzolmes in his chronicle (1673), the first ethnological work on the Indians of this area of the Sierra Madre, according to historian Gutiérrez Contreras.
Clandestine Sawmill on the Outskirts of the Huichol Sierra ©Juan Negrín 1981 2025

Notes on Wixárika History: Recent History

After independence was achieved from Spain in 1810, the laws of the reform passed under Benito Juárez during the 1850’s, restrained the power of the Catholic Church, but they also stopped recognizing Indian colonial land rights. Soon the Huichol, Cora, Tepehuano and Mexicanero Indian groups of the Western Sierra Madre were further dispossessed of their territory by their mixed blood neighbors. They rebelled, eventually uniting under Manuel Lozada, who joined French invading forces until they were stopped at Guadalajara, Jalisco, in 1873.
Te'ekata ~ Photograph ©Juan Negrín 1976 -2023

Sacred Sites by Juan Negrín

The Wixarika tradition is rendered by three different terms: the first refers to our heart/ memory, tayeiyari- the second to how we develop, tanuiwari- the third to our life, tatukari, is transmitted by families, reinforced by communal living on extended family ranches and through clans at ceremonial centers, tukite (tukipa, sing.). Three places serve as the headquarters for what appear to be distinct Wixarika subgroups, with ritual and dialectical variants.
La serpiente emplumada entre coras y huicholes

The Feathered Serpent Amongst the Cora and Huichol

Article written by Nayarit-born anthropologist and specialist in Naayeri culture, Jesús Jáuregui, for the magazine, Arqueología Mexicana.

"En algunos ritos coras y huicholes, a la serpiente emplumada se le representa en sus manifestaciones antagónicas: flecha chamanica con cascabeles o cola de escorpión, peyote y kieri, Estrella de la mañana y Estrella de la tarde, Sol diurno y Sol nocturno. Este complejo simbólico remite a la lucha cósmica original entre luz y oscuridad, ampliamente extendida en la mitología amerindia."

Read full Spanish-language essay here.

Discover Mexico

The Huichols Indians a people in transition

"The Huichol Indians have maintained their cultural traditions at a level of integrity far above most pre Columbian societies still existent in Mexico. Living in the rugged and remote hightlands of Jalisco and Nayarit, they have not had to cope over time with the same kind of inroads on their belief systems and daily living as did the linguistically related Indian groups living in the less remote and rugged highlands and lowlands in the same general area."

Antología de Textos

The Huichols or Wixáritari: Between Tradition and Modernity. Anthology of texts 1969-2017

The present anthology gathers the work of Marina Anguiano Fernández (1945-2023). Born in Mexico City, she studied her Bachelors of Arts in Ethnology and Masters in Anthropology from the National School of Anthropology and History with the honors of Cum Laude. She worked as a  full-time researcher in the Direction of Ethnology and Social Anthropology in the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH for its Spanish acronym). She obtained several national and international grants from the UNAM, Mexico; French Government; Fulbright, United States; and from the Complutense of Spain.