From Modernization to the Sacred Other: Huichols and the Unmaking of the National Project in Mexico

For many decades in the aftermath of the 1910 Revolution, Mexican government officials remained committed to a project that aimed to transform the most recalcitrant and marginalized peoples of the country into proper citizens. One of the most aggressive endeavors in this regard was undertaken between about 1965 and 1978, when wave after wave of bureaucrats descended on the Sierras of Nayarit and Jalisco (known collectively as the Zona Huicot) in order to remake the Huichols, among the least known peoples of the country, into modern subjects. Still, if this project represented the height of the country’s modernist moment, it also seems to have represented the last instance in which government “experts” shared complete confidence in their capacity to remake Indians into Mexicans. It was out of the failure of this project that INI officials first came to openly consider the right of indigenous peoples to self-determination. This paper explores that change, seeking to locate the rise of a politics of self-determination in Mexico from an international, national, and local perspective, as the product both of novel intellectual trends, but also unmistakable facts on the ground.