Wirikuta News

Displaying 1 - 18 of 29
La Ruta Sagrada a Wirikuta Evitará el Saqueo del Peyote

Recognition of the Wixárika Sacred Route Will Avoid the Pillage of Peyote

Merry MacMasters
| December 2025
The inscription of the Wixárika Route through the Sacred Sites to Wirikuta as a UNESCO World Cultural and Natural Heritage Site, on July 12, during the 47th session of the World Heritage Committee, is “a strategic tool that strengthens the protection of Wirikuta and many other sacred places along our ancestral routes to prevent their deterioration and destruction,” stated members of the Wixárika Regional Council for the Defense of Wirikuta.
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Acuíferos de Wirikuta y ruta de peregrinación wixárika

When Night Returns to the Desert

José Luis Silván Cárdenas y Tunuari Roberto Chávez González
| November 2025
Article detailing the hydrological history of the region of Wirikuta in the high plateaus of Wirikuta and the reasons why mining and agroindustrial concessions are further endangering the water table. Includes maps and photographs.
Read more
Map of region

Wirikuta: The Invisible Limit of Life in the Desert

Tunuari Chávez González
| October 2025

Article written by longtime environmental activist and scholar, Tunuari Chávez. This article deals with the overexploitation of Wirikuta's aquifers despite environmental designations that should protect the region from the large-scale agroindustrial exploitation occurring at an increasingly fast pace.

Read more

Lithium Concessions Damage the Historical-Cultural Route of the Wixarika People

Patricia López Suárez
| October 2025

Article summarizing the research conducted by Dr. Iracema Gavilán about lithium concessions in Wirikuta.

 

Read full Spanish-language article here.

Read more
Labores de desalambrado realizadas por ejidatarios potosinos y sus familias, con el acompañamiento y resguardo de elementos de la Guardia Nacional

Irregular Fencing Installed by Industry Removed in the Ejido of Las Margaritas in San Luis Potosí

Alfredo Valadez Rodríguez
| September 2025
Article detailing the historic removal of barbed wire fencing by a coalition of small farmers and allies from the Las Margaritas ejido in the heart of Wirikuta. Read Spanish-language article by Alfredo Valadez Rodríguez in the link.
Read more
Guardians of the Nawa Women from each family prepare and care for nawa, a sacred maize drink, during Semana Santa. It is offered to the community on Holy Sunday. Photograph by Luis Martínez

Wixárika Pilgrimage Route Earns UNESCO World Heritage Status

Text by Jasmine Virdi, Photographs by Luis Martínez
| September 2025

Last month marked a historic victory for the Wixárika people of Mexico, and by extension for Indigenous communities across the Americas.

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A Wixarika woman overlooks the Sierra de Catorce at dawn. (Tracy L. Barnett)

After UNESCO, what's next for the Wixarika route to Wirikuta?

Tracy L. Barnett
| August 2025
"Dawn takes its time in the Chihuahuan desert. By the time the first light brushes the hills above Wirikuta, Wixárika pilgrims are already moving, with gourd bowls and candles in hand, and stories carried in footsteps along a 500-kilometer thread of sacred sites that ties mountains to springs, desert to sea, and families to their ancestors. Last month, UNESCO wove that thread into World Heritage. 
Read more
Ruta Wixárika Patrimonio Mundial

Sacred Wixárika route added to UNESCO’s World Heritage List

Mexico News Daily
| July 2025
A route through 20 sites sacred to Mexico’s Wixárika people was recently added to UNESCO’s World Heritage List, becoming the first such recognition for a living Indigenous tradition in Latin America.
Read more
Consejo Regional Wixárika Casa Clavigero

Wirikuta is Not for Sale, It is Loved and Defense: 13 Years in Defense of Wixarika Sacred Territory

Mario Marlo
| April 2024
After 13 years of constant struggle, the Wixárika Regional Council for the Defense of Wirikuta (CRW), a coalition comprised of traditional, civil, and agrarian authorities from the Wixaritari communities of Santa Catarina Cuexcomatitlán, San Sebastián Teponahuaxtlán, and Tuxpan de Bolaños in Jalisco, and Bancos de San Hipólito, continues to demand that the Mexican State cancel the 78 mining concessions that threaten the sacred land of Wirikuta and its 140,000 hectares, which extend across the municipalities of Real de Catorce, Charcas, Vanegas, Villa de Guadalupe, and Villa de la Paz, in the state of San Luis Potosí.
Read more
Entre lo sagrado y la riqueza minera: la defensa de Wirikuta

Between the Sacred and the Mining Wealth: The Defense of Wirikuta

des Informémonos
| April 2024
In the heart of Mexico, the Wirikuta region is not only a territory, but a symbol of spiritual and cultural connections that the Wixárika people (commonly known as Huichol) maintain with the land, a subject that is little talked about, but that it is necessary to know.
Read more
Mexican human rights and Wixárika delegates observe the passing of egg cargo from the new industrial plants. Photography by Author, 2022.

Why Land and Ecology Matter for Global Psychedelics

Diana Negrín da Silva, PhD
| February 2024
The 18th through the 20th centuries easily mark one of the most significant periods in human and environmental history, as Western European imperial expansion and settler colonialism incentivized the study and the incorporation of the botanical wonders found in what often came to be labeled as ‘the tropics.’
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Wixárika People on their pilgrimage to Cerro Quemado sacred mountain in Wirikuta. Photograph ©Nicola Zolin 2024

Asesinatos, sequía y peyote: la lucha mortal por el agua en México

The Guardian
| January 2024
Cada año, miembros del pueblo Wixárika hacen el peregrinaje de 800km desde San Andrés Cohamiata en la Sierra de Jalisco hasta el desierto semi-árido de San Luis Potosí. Su destino es Wirikuta, un lugar sagrado donde, según sus creencias, el mundo fue creado de una gota de agua.
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Frank Dayish (wearing black cowboy hat), who grew up on the Navajo reservation, leads one of the Peyote Way of Life Coalition’s meetings in Window Rock, Arizona. Photograph ©Sharon Chischilly/The Guardian

Peyote is the darling of the psychedelics renaissance. Indigenous users say it co-opts ‘a sacred way of life’

Annette McGivney
| December 2023
In recent years, progressive politicians, doctors, community groups and Silicon Valley investors alike have thrown their weight behind decriminalization bills in dozens of US states and cities. Their goal to spread the benefits of psychedelics may be well-intentioned, but for Indigenous Americans, the boom has a dark side that rarely comes up in venture capital pitches. Many Diné tribal members are describing this moment as a “peyote crisis” that threatens to appropriate and commodify their sacred way of life.Their concerns are multifold. Decriminalizing peyote could fuel poaching and a black market for the slow-growing cactus, whose limited habitat is already threatened by climate change and development. A sudden surge in demand might completely wipe out peyote from its natural environment, traditional practitioners say.
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Hikuri a demanda

Hikuri in Demand: A Living Being in Subordination and Tensions

Jade Ramírez, Adrían Cuevas, Bianca América Enríquez and Pajarito
| August 2023
En medio del conflicto de potencias, de las humanas contra las naturales y espirituales entre pueblos originarios y mestizos sobre el uso de una cactácea con componentes psicoactivos, se abre un marco propicio para desfavorecer a la planta convertida en droga.
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Hikuri a demanda ~ ©Perimetral Press 2023

Hikuri a demanda: ser vivo en subordinación y tensiones

Perimetral Press
| August 2023
“Desde que me acuerdo he vivido muchas ceremonias pero el recuerdo más viejo que tengo, era muy niña: iban llegando los peregrinos y mi papá masticó algo, lo escupió en el centro de mi cabeza, pensé que era hikuri pero era otra raíz sagrada porque traen muchas raíces, era para fortalecer mi energía; en ese momento me dieron un pedazo bendecido, me lo tenía que comer, recibir, que entrara al cuerpo.
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Gerardo Ruiz Smith speaking to those who attended the training in Wirikuta.

Planting Agroecology in the Sacred Desert of Wirikuta

Diana Negrín
| January 2022
On the morning of July 31, 2021, a group of 40 people assembled in the hamlet of Las Margaritas in the sacred land of Wirikuta, in the high plateaus of the Chihuahuan Desert of north-central Mexico. Local farmers in cowboy hats and baseball caps gathered alongside young indigenous Wixárika women and men who had come from their communities in the western states of Jalisco and Nayarit. There were also a dozen non-local and foreign attendees who happened to be in Margaritas or who had put down roots and established homes and working relations in the region.
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Wirikuta - Fotografía ©Juaquin Urrutia 2021

Water and Power in Wirikuta

Diana Negrín
| September 2021
When it rains in the high plateaus of San Luis Potosí, Mexico, the dampened earth releases a scent that showcases its unique biodiversity. During the rainy season, greasewood bushes, mesquites, yucca and a wide variety of cacti flower and give their fruits, while the locals plant their cornfields that grow according to the nourishment they receive from the seasonal rainfall.
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Wixarika territory, courtesy of Taller de Operaciones Ambientales.

"It is loved and it is defended": Critical Solidarity Across Race and Space

Diana Negrín da Silva
| August 2018

Abstract: Since 2010, the Wixarika (Huichol) indigenous people of western Mexico have struggled against transnational mining activity in their sacred pilgrimage site of Wirikuta in the semi-desertic plateaus of San Luis Potosi. This struggle has been accompanied by a multitude of non-indigenous and largely urban actors who have joined the Wixarika, bringing with them their own cultural, political and geographic registers for understanding and mobilizing against mining in the region.

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Displaying 1 - 10 of 28
La Ruta Sagrada a Wirikuta Evitará el Saqueo del Peyote

Recognition of the Wixárika Sacred Route Will Avoid the Pillage of Peyote

Merry MacMasters
| December 2025
The inscription of the Wixárika Route through the Sacred Sites to Wirikuta as a UNESCO World Cultural and Natural Heritage Site, on July 12, during the 47th session of the World Heritage Committee, is “a strategic tool that strengthens the protection of Wirikuta and many other sacred places along our ancestral routes to prevent their deterioration and destruction,” stated members of the Wixárika Regional Council for the Defense of Wirikuta.
Read more
Acuíferos de Wirikuta y ruta de peregrinación wixárika

When Night Returns to the Desert

José Luis Silván Cárdenas y Tunuari Roberto Chávez González
| November 2025
Article detailing the hydrological history of the region of Wirikuta in the high plateaus of Wirikuta and the reasons why mining and agroindustrial concessions are further endangering the water table. Includes maps and photographs.
Read more
Map of region

Wirikuta: The Invisible Limit of Life in the Desert

Tunuari Chávez González
| October 2025

Article written by longtime environmental activist and scholar, Tunuari Chávez. This article deals with the overexploitation of Wirikuta's aquifers despite environmental designations that should protect the region from the large-scale agroindustrial exploitation occurring at an increasingly fast pace.

Read more

Lithium Concessions Damage the Historical-Cultural Route of the Wixarika People

Patricia López Suárez
| October 2025

Article summarizing the research conducted by Dr. Iracema Gavilán about lithium concessions in Wirikuta.

 

Read full Spanish-language article here.

Read more
Labores de desalambrado realizadas por ejidatarios potosinos y sus familias, con el acompañamiento y resguardo de elementos de la Guardia Nacional

Irregular Fencing Installed by Industry Removed in the Ejido of Las Margaritas in San Luis Potosí

Alfredo Valadez Rodríguez
| September 2025
Article detailing the historic removal of barbed wire fencing by a coalition of small farmers and allies from the Las Margaritas ejido in the heart of Wirikuta. Read Spanish-language article by Alfredo Valadez Rodríguez in the link.
Read more
Guardians of the Nawa Women from each family prepare and care for nawa, a sacred maize drink, during Semana Santa. It is offered to the community on Holy Sunday. Photograph by Luis Martínez

Wixárika Pilgrimage Route Earns UNESCO World Heritage Status

Text by Jasmine Virdi, Photographs by Luis Martínez
| September 2025

Last month marked a historic victory for the Wixárika people of Mexico, and by extension for Indigenous communities across the Americas.

Read more
A Wixarika woman overlooks the Sierra de Catorce at dawn. (Tracy L. Barnett)

After UNESCO, what's next for the Wixarika route to Wirikuta?

Tracy L. Barnett
| August 2025
"Dawn takes its time in the Chihuahuan desert. By the time the first light brushes the hills above Wirikuta, Wixárika pilgrims are already moving, with gourd bowls and candles in hand, and stories carried in footsteps along a 500-kilometer thread of sacred sites that ties mountains to springs, desert to sea, and families to their ancestors. Last month, UNESCO wove that thread into World Heritage. 
Read more
Ruta Wixárika Patrimonio Mundial

Sacred Wixárika route added to UNESCO’s World Heritage List

Mexico News Daily
| July 2025
A route through 20 sites sacred to Mexico’s Wixárika people was recently added to UNESCO’s World Heritage List, becoming the first such recognition for a living Indigenous tradition in Latin America.
Read more
Consejo Regional Wixárika Casa Clavigero

Wirikuta is Not for Sale, It is Loved and Defense: 13 Years in Defense of Wixarika Sacred Territory

Mario Marlo
| April 2024
After 13 years of constant struggle, the Wixárika Regional Council for the Defense of Wirikuta (CRW), a coalition comprised of traditional, civil, and agrarian authorities from the Wixaritari communities of Santa Catarina Cuexcomatitlán, San Sebastián Teponahuaxtlán, and Tuxpan de Bolaños in Jalisco, and Bancos de San Hipólito, continues to demand that the Mexican State cancel the 78 mining concessions that threaten the sacred land of Wirikuta and its 140,000 hectares, which extend across the municipalities of Real de Catorce, Charcas, Vanegas, Villa de Guadalupe, and Villa de la Paz, in the state of San Luis Potosí.
Read more
Entre lo sagrado y la riqueza minera: la defensa de Wirikuta

Between the Sacred and the Mining Wealth: The Defense of Wirikuta

des Informémonos
| April 2024
In the heart of Mexico, the Wirikuta region is not only a territory, but a symbol of spiritual and cultural connections that the Wixárika people (commonly known as Huichol) maintain with the land, a subject that is little talked about, but that it is necessary to know.
Read more