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.

Justice Plan developed jointly with the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples (INPI) and representatives of the various indigenous peoples requested and invited. The document explains the historical, geographic, and cultural context of the ancestral territory of the Wixárika, Na'ayeri, O'dam, and Meshikan peoples, with the explicit objective of developing public policies based on the consultations held during this process (2022-2023) under the presidency of Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

Read full Spanish-language document here.

The sacred cactus for Indigenous peoples and protected internationally to avoid its extinction continues to be trafficked between Mexico and the United States. While the authorities in charge of investigating and punishing the traffic of peyote show space results.

“We need to raise our voices so that our rights do not continue to be violated”: Sitlali Chino Carrillo, President of the Agrarian Commission for the communities of San Sebastián and Tuxpán de Bolaños. Like the other members of the caravan, she had walked 353 kilometers upon her arrival to Guadalajara, and she is willing to continue 700 more to the National Palace if necessary.

Complete video of visit made to the National Palace on March 23, 2022 by Wixarika and small farmer representatives to demand the protection of their natural and cultural landscapes. This video shows the presence of the Consejo Regional Wixárika led by their mara'akame, Ambrosio López, the Union of Ceremonial Centers of Durango, Jalisco and Nayarit, y and small farmers from the Wirikuta region of the high plateaus of San Luis Potosí.

On September 22, 2021, six young Wixarika men between the ages of 16 and 32 were “disappeared” from a road that runs along the sinuous border between the western Mexican states of Jalisco and Zacatecas. Relatives and friends confirm that the young men had gone to carry out a traditional deer hunt. Within days, four of the six bodies were found bearing the marks of torture that are all too common in a country that acts as a hub for organized crime serving its northern neighbor’s notorious appetite for drugs.

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.

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.