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Small Farmers take to the streets in San Cristóbal de las Casas, 1994.

What Is Left of Zapatismo 30 Years After the Armed EZLN Uprising in Mexico (and What Happened to Subcomandante Marcos)

Read full Spanish article here: https://www.bbc.com/mundo/articles/czkj7evp1ylo

Vida y Resistencia La Jornada Semanal

Life and Resistance: Five Women Writers in Their Native Tongue

With all of their wealth, the voices of  Rubí Tsanda Huerta, Nadia Ñuu Savi, Susi Bentzulul, Sitlali Xaurima Chino and Zara Monrroy, here together, are just a small example of the expansiveness, diversity and beauty of a literature that is many literatures at once. 

Read full Spanish article here.

Distribución del peyote. Cortesía Martin Terry (2008).

In Mexico, the Traffic of Peyote Continues Unpunished

For Full Eje Central article click here. 

Mario de la Cruz with his family at his graduation. Photograph courtesy of Mario De la Cruz, 2023.

Mario de la Cruz Carrillo

Mario de la Cruz Carrillo is a native of  Arroyo de Cañaveral, a small community in the Municipality of Nayar in the state of Nayarit. He graduated with a degree in mathematics from the Autonomous University of Nayarit in the Spring of 2023. Mario is very interested in working toward the creation of a curricular mathematics program that can better engage Wixarika youth utilizing innovative pedagogical practices so that students may find both enjoyment and relevance in the subject.

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’

On the first day of autumn, evening temperatures near Window Rock, Arizona, were brisk. Beneath the late September sky, a traditional round hogan in this remote corner of the Navajo Nation was enveloped in darkness. Ten tribal members gathered inside.
María Guadalupe Bautista

Wixarika Scholarship Fund Fall/Winter Newsletter 2023

This year is quickly drawing to a close and we are happy to share some great news with you all in the hopes that this can lift your spirits and inspire you to continue to support Wixarika undergraduate students. This newsletter is long overdue in part because the Wixarika Research Center has had its hands full launching a new website and online archive. Our new site includes an updated special page dedicated to the Wixarika Scholarship Fund (formerly HSF or Huichol Scholarship Fund), which will include both student profiles and our yearly online application process.
Adelfo Regino, Director General of the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples (INPI) addresses San Sebastián Teponahuaxtlán in February 2020. (gob.mx)

Wixárika community recovers 25% of ancestral lands in Nayarit

The Indigenous Wixárika community of San Sebastián Teponahuxtlán in Nayarit has recovered 2,585 hectares of its ancestral lands – a quarter of the territory it has been struggling to reclaim for nearly 70 years. The transfer took place peacefully after the Presidential Commission for land restitution assembled to address the dispute negotiated compensation with 13 property owners to return the land to its ancestral inhabitants.
Isaías Navarrete Chino

Isaías Navarrete Chino

Isaías Navarrete Chino is a forestry engineer who graduated from the Autonomous University of Chapingo and was part of the first generation of scholarship recipients from our Wixarika Scholarship Fund. He was a recipient of the scholarship from 2018 until 2020. Currently he collaborates with the Wixarika Research Center on agroforestry work and he just completed his first post-graduate position in Baja California for the National Forestry Commission of Mexico. He is originally from the community of Kuruxi Manuwe or Tuxpán de Bolaños.
Mesquite pod. Photograph © Yolitzma Rebollar 2023 All rights reserved.

Newsletter "Meeting of the Alliance for the Regeneration of the Altiplano-Wirikuta"

From July 12th through July 14th, 2023, a third face-to-face meeting was held in the Las Margaritas ejido with the participation of various organizations and with the purpose of promoting the ecological, economic, and social well-being of the Altiplano Potosi, also known as Wirikuta to the Wixárika people. The Wixárika Research Center oversaw general coordination, that included invitations to Wixárika communities and inhabitants of the Altiplano region, as well as some delegates Sonora and Jalisco who were invited to participate to share their environmental work.  
Wixárika land defender and attorney Santos de la Cruz Carrillo in 2010, at the beginning of the fight to defend the sacred desert of the Wirikuta from Canadian mining. (Tracy L. Barnett)

Attorney’s kidnapping highlights dangers for Indigenous activists

This past weekend was an intense and frightening one for many here in Western Mexico — at least among the people who care about the land and Indigenous people: high-profile Wixárika land defender and attorney Santos de la Cruz Carrillo had disappeared on Friday along with his wife and two children, including a three-month-old baby.