A Small, Powerful “Being”: Peyote and Cultural Continuity among the Huichols

More than a century ago, the Danish botanist and ethnographer Carl Lumholtz explored the Mexican Sierra.  He noted that the Huicholes, considered to be among the most primitive of indigenous groups in Mexico at the time, clung tenaciously to their "traditional ways".  These ancestral practices, and a deep connection to the land, provided the fodder with which the Huicholes staved off acculturation by the larger Mexican state.   Central to the Huicholes' way of life, cosmology and physical existence was the pursuit of peyote, or hikuli as it is called in Huichol.  So long as they had land, and their religion, the Huicholes refused to become subsumed by their Mexican neighbors.  Peyote is vital to the religious experience of the Huicholes and this paper seeks to explore its historical, ethnographic and anthropological centrality to the Huichol existence.
The hunt for hikuli marks the end of months of preparation by Huichol pilgrims, who may only enter the sacred deserts of Wirikuta, or San Luis Potosí, after significant periods of fasting, abstinence and public confession.  "Hunted" and "tracked" like deer, another sacred being within the Huichol religious sphere, hikuli provides profound spiritual meaning, a means for healing various ailments and a way to connect with kin and friends.  More than a small cactus, the Huicholes treated hikuli as a powerful entity, available to all, but used to commune with their gods.
During the nineteenth century, as the Mexican state consolidated under the Liberal presidents of Benito Juárez, Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada and Porfirio Díaz, the Huicholes felt their lands and their beliefs greatly constricted.  Yet their strong religious convictions, intrinsically connected to all aspects of daily life, helped them avoid cultural annihilation.  By understanding the Huicholes' history, scholars can better understand indigenous resistance to the broader state apparatus.