My name is Bianca América Enríquez López, I am from Bajío del Tule, which is part of the community of San Sebastián Teponahuaxtlan, in the state of Jalisco. I am a proud Indigenous Wixárika woman, and three years ago I moved to Guadalajara in search of new opportunities and to study law (Bianca América (Tanima) Enríquez López is a 2020 law graduate from the Universidad Enrique Rebsamen).

“We are here to reaffirm that we are still standing, resisting, defending what belongs to us.” Sitlali Chino Carrillo

After four years of struggle, the Wixárika community of San Sebastián Teponahuaxtlán in Mezquitic, Jalisco, will directly receive federal resources to manage amongst themselves without the intervention of local officials or political parties. And they will do so with women at the table under an agreement of gender parity, a rarity among Indigenous governments and, indeed, governments in general.

Mothers pushing baby carriages, grandmothers and grandfathers in their 70s and even a man in a wheelchair joined the ranks of the 200 Indigenous Wixárika people making their way nearly 1,000 kilometers along the sweltering highways of México in a generations-long battle to recover their stolen lands. The Wixárika Caravan for Dignity and Justice departed from the Western Sierra Madre on April 25 and has been walking ever since, camping alongside the highway and rising at dawn to carry on.

Los constituyentes mexicanos decretaron que la justicia en el país sería gratuita y expedita, aspiración que casi nunca se corresponde con la realidad y mucho menos para los pueblos originarios de esta nación.

“Let’s Talk About Hikuri” (‘Hablemos de Hikuri’) is a project that was designed to create spaces for dialogue about hikuri (Lophophora williamsii), or peyote, in order to provide debates and reflections on the use and consumption of this cactus and consider proposals for its protection and use.

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.

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.

Wirikuta is one of the most important natural sacred sites of the Wixárika (Huichol) indigenous people and the world. The Wixárika people live in the states of Jalisco, Nayarit and Durango and are recognized for having preserved their spiritual identity. They have continued to practice their cultural and religious traditions for thousands of years. Wirikuta is the birthplace of the sun and the territory where the different Wixárika communities make their pilgrimage, recreating the route taken by their spiritual ancestors to sustain the essence of life on this planet. In this desert springs the peyote or jicuri, the cactus that the Wixárika ritually ingest to receive the “gift of seeing”.