Fall / Winter Newsletter 2024

FALL / WINTER 2024 NEWSLETTER

We are excited to bring you our fall newsletter with some highlights from our last several months of work. Founded in 2001 by Juan and Yvonne Negrín, the Wixarika Research Center has dedicated more than twenty years to the preservation, digitization, and dissemination of the extensive archive that the Negrins collected over four decades. Thanks to our public support, our small women-run non-profit has continued to successfully meet its mission: 1) Develop a public archive of Wixarika history and culture (beyond the Negrín archives), 2) Provide yearly scholarships to university students, and 3) Support select community ecological and educational projects in Wixarika territory.

We would like to acknowledge that this has been a sobering historical moment, making the pursuit of human and environmental rights evermore pressing. In Mexico, a new presidency has begun under the direction of Claudia Sheinbaum, while new governors and municipal presidents have been sworn in across the country. The electoral map showed a diversity of political party affiliations in Wixarika communities, which also brought in new Wixarika leadership. Sadly, a Wixarika lawyer who had been elected municipal president of Bolaños, Yuniur Vázquez Rosalío, disappeared in August of this year and was found deceased alongside his companion and fellow lawyer, Antonio Carrillo. This reality has been replicated throughout Mexico as violence presents itself as a daily threat for Wixarika communities, exposing many to robberies, disappearances, and death. Like what our founder, Juan Negrín, witnessed in the 1970s and 1980s with the incursion of timber interests, the new roads that were constructed to better connect Wixarika communities during the last administration have facilitated the incursion of cartels. As we continue our work supporting public knowledge of Wixarika culture, history, and territory, we extend our solidarity with Wixarika communities as they navigate such unprecedented insecurity. We are hopeful that there can be peaceful days soon to come!

OUR ONLINE ARCHIVE

As a team, Yvonne and Diana Negrín have been coordinating closely with Aukwe Mijarez to upload content to our bilingual online archive that was so thoughtfully re-designed by Actual Systems in 2023. We are excited to bring open access material to our global public and, especially, to our growing Wixarika audience! Each week, Aukwe and Diana curate social media posts highlighting material that ranges from art to ecology. Our art section includes yarn paintings with detailed explanations and artist biographies from the six exceptional artists Juan and Yvonne Negrín worked with, and whose art they collected: José Benítez Sánchez, Tutukila Carrillo Sandoval, Guadalupe González Ríos, Lucía Lemus de la Cruz, Juan Ríos Martínez and Pablo Taizán de la Cruz. We also have sections on traditional and sacred art that include weaving, embroidery, and offerings. Our online archive has continued to build its repertoire of historical documents such as news and scholarly articles, manuscripts, and art catalogs from across different historical moments. For example, we are happy to include a link to Carl Lumholtz’s Unknown Mexico, Volumes I and II, published in 1902, as well as the work of many lesser-known scholars and current news stories. In the spring of 2024, UC Berkeley geography undergraduate, Antonio Pacheco, digitized and transcribed several unpublished writings by and interviews with Juan Negrín which we hope to bring to the public soon. One of our goals for the coming months is to expand our photographic content and provide more student stories profiling our current and past scholarship recipients. If you have not already followed us on Facebook @Wixarika Research Center or Instagram @wixarika_research_center, we invite you to join us there so that you don’t miss our weekly content highlights!! 

CURATORIAL COLLABORATIONS

We are always excited to team up with other institutions to make our archive accessible to the public and lend our consulting expertise where needed. After three years of collaboration, UCLA’s Fowler Museum will be launching its Vital Matters / Art, Devotion, Practice digital project that includes a significant spotlight on Wixarika art, culture, and territory. Diana Negrín spent time visiting the Fowler’s Wixarika collection and subsequently helped create curricular content with the participation of Wixarika colleagues in Tepic, Tutupika and Minerva Carrillo, and Mario Muñoz Cayetano. The star of the Fowler’s collection is a round yarn painting by José Benítez Sánchez from 1991, and we were happy to have coordinated the inclusion of many of Benítez’s family members to draw a better picture of the artist, the artwork, and the socio-political context that surrounds Wixarika art and territory. We thank Fidencio, Maymi and Neuvy Benítez, as well as Hilaria Chávez Carrillo, widow of José Benítez, for their time and generosity.

In Guadalajara, we were invited by a new art space, Plataforma, to participate in their current fall 2024 exhibit, Transmisión Ancestral, curated by Agustín Pérez Rubio. For this show, we lent the gallery two yarn paintings created by Xitaima Lucia Lemus de la Cruz, and one vintage wool kutsuri, or woven bag. The exhibit opened on October 27 and closes January 12, 2025.

Finally, people interested in purchasing a Wixarika yarn painting have a great opportunity to do so while also supporting our general fund. We are selling a beautiful 24 x 24-inch vintage yarn painting created by Juan Ríos Martínez that was donated to WRC by Yvonne Negrín. To send an inquiry or request to view the painting, please email us at inquiries@wixarika.org. 

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