It is that time of year again, when, since time immemorial, the Wixárika people are preparing their offerings. The candles of life, the chaquira gourd bowls, the God’s eyes, the prayer arrows. They are beginning to retrace the arduous journey of their ancestors, carried out every year in sacred reciprocity for the gift of life. 

The Sierra Madre Occidental in northwestern Mexico boasts vast forests that are home to Indigenous communities such as the Wixárika people (or Huichols). Across the largest forest reserves in Jalisco, just three communities are spread across an area of more than 400,000 hectares (988,421 acres), equivalent to one-fifth the size of El Salvador. But this natural wealth is not reflected in the residents’ living conditions. Now, several stakeholders are coming together to help change this narrative.

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.

TEOTIHUACÁN, Mexico —  On December 18, Mexico City and neighboring Mexico State entered a weeks-long coronavirus lockdown for the first time since the spring. The next evening, I hid in a sleeping bag surrounded by people vomiting in a small park near the famed Teotihuacán pyramids outside the capital, as dozens consumed the psychedelic peyote cactus at a clandestine ceremony.

Before nurse Rocio Echevarría founded Casa Huichol in Guadalajara to shelter members of Jalisco’s Wixáritari who had family in the public hospital, there was usually one option available to the hospitalized person’s loved ones.

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.

There are 73 mining projects within natural protected areas in Mexico, one in a Unesco heritage site, but they are allowed to operate due to a law which defines mineral extraction as a public good.

The State Commission on Human Rights of Jalisco (CEDHJ) warned of problems of insecurity in the indigenous community of Santa Catarina Cuexcomatitlán, belonging to the municipality of Mezquitic, whose commissioner and three policemen were arrested for the enforced disappearance of the PRI pre-candidate. The community is now supposed to be guarded by state police, but residents accuse that it is null and void and instead in recent days detected the presence of a group of strange men who, list in hand, are looking for comuneros from the area.

In 2007, during the construction work of the Amatitán-Huejuquilla el Alto highway, the government of Jalisco buried the sacred site of the Wixárola known as "Paso del Oso", between Tenzompa and Santa Catarina Cuexcomatitlán. This happened at the beginning of the term of former governor Emilio González Márquez, who did not have the manifestation of environmental impact.