In Mexico, Keeping a Peyote Pilgrimage Alive
The Wixárika people are forced to face off with mining companies, plant poachers, farming encroachment, and psychedelic tourists in order to protect their most sacred land.
K’kame, the guardian of the ancestral ranch at La Tristeza, Nayarit State, Mexico, prepares to make offerings in Wirikuta.
Article by Robyn Huang with photography by Matt Reichel
A Spiritual Journey to the Land of Their Ancestors
Deep in the vast 140,000 acres of unforgiving Chihuahuan desert, high in the mountains of Central Mexico, Mario Bautista digs through the ground relentlessly. He is searching an area spanning almost 10 kilometers. The blistering sun grinds at him as he uses a machete to wade through a seemingly endless bush of thorny patches for nearly eight hours. Surrounding him are 25 members of his community, including his wife and three children.
They are all looking for one thing: a small, squishy cactus camouflaged underneath the shade of shrubs, the psychedelic plant known as peyote.
This small gem is their lifeline. Whatever they can find is what they will bring back to the rest of their village. Mario and the rest of the gatherers are members of the Mexican Huichol or Wixárika people. They are on an annual pilgrimage to forage and harvest hundreds of peyote crowns for their daily religious rituals.
The Wixárika are an indigenous people of Mexico. The group is spread across the southern Sierra Madre Occidental mountains of Nayarit, Jalisco, Zacatecas and Durango, with an estimated population of 45,000. They are traditionally animists who engage in Shamanist practices. They customarily believe that they interact with the primal ancestral spirits of fire within their rituals -- Tatewari, blue deer – Kauyumari and other natural earth elements. They are bound together symbolically by corn – elote and peyote -- hikuri.
To the Wixárika, peyote is far more than just a hallucinogenic cactus. They believe that peyote allows them to connect with their ancestors and spirits and provides their shamans or maraka’ames with the ability to regenerate their souls. Peyote means everything, so much so that if it and the land forming their pilgrimage trail were ever to disappear, they as a people and culture could fade away.
Every year, groups of Wixárika community members make this pilgrimage back to their ancestral homeland, the holy land of Wirikuta along the southern fringes of the Chihuahuan desert. The Wixárika believe the world was created in Wirikuta. The pilgrimage is a grand celebration for their people, and thousands make the long trek during the foraging season.
The pilgrimage groups are divided according to their ancestral family lands, or ranches referred to more formally as patios familiares or ceremonial centres. Each patio familiar consists of different families within a village or surrounding areas. The families are not necessarily related but come from the same community. Some families will bring their children, and as I learn, the children will also ingest peyote after the harvest.
The pilgrimage spans approximately 800 kilometers one-way from the mountains of Nayarit to San Luis Potosi, near the area of Real de Catorce, with offerings and rituals made along the way. The journey retraces the footsteps of their ancestors.
A wild hallucinogenic trip does not break out soon after. This is a transformational passage built around multiple tenets: openness, respect, spirituality, and life.
Wirikuta is located within the Chihuahuan Desert in the northern part of the Mexican state of San Luis Potosí.
The Significance of the Peyote Lands
Peyote is a psychedelic plant containing the active ingredient mescaline, which with specific ingested amounts, causes intense hallucinations. As a part of the whole spectrum of psychedelics, peyote is popping up in everyday conversation, given the potential role of mescaline in the future of mental health care.
According to peyote researcher and Cactus Conservation Institute board member Dr. Anna Ermakova, “mescaline was extensively studied in psychiatry. LSD replaced mescaline as a research compound because it was easier to tolerate.” The focus could shift back on mescaline with decriminalization and more development.
While peyote is only legal for spiritual use, its popularity is growing. Laws regarding peyote vary across nations. It is illegal to consume and harvest the plant in the wild in Mexico because it is endangered. The legal landscape is changing in the U.S as the focus on psychedelics for future mental health care strengthens. Under federal law, only Native American Church members are authorized to ingest peyote for ceremonial purposes. However, several states and cities have decriminalized psychedelics for medical use, including Washington, Oregon, and Oakland, California.
Popularity is amplified by illegal extraction and trafficking. “There’s a psychedelic renaissance, this boom of interest in indigenous plant knowledge and hallucinogens. And so, peyote is being marketed and sold in various parts of the world now in powder form,” explains Diana Negrin, an adjunct professor of Geography at the University of San Francisco and Board president of the Wixarika Research Center. “If anybody has powdered peyote, it was very likely poached and passed through narco-traffic rings.” This powder has ended up across the world and on the dark web, marketed as mescaline, but is extracted peyote.
Mexican biologist, Pedro Nájera expands on peyote trafficking. “There is a trafficking network that moves the dry and pulverized plant to the south towards Mexico City,” says Nájera. “Another is headed to the U.S. stored in cans of powdered milk, where this traffic is solving a good part of legal and illegal consumption.”
The continued popularization and commercialization of peyote is threatening the Wixárika way of life. The plant has been used for about six thousand years by native groups across the United States and Mexico for religious and healing purposes. The inclusion of peyote in decriminalization has indigenous groups worried about its impact on the plant’s already diminishing populations.
A 2021 study by Nájera showed an alarming 42 percent reduction in the number of cacti buttons found over an eight-year study analyzing 51 different sampling areas within Wirikuta and the Chihuahuan desert. Nájera predicts, based on certain sites, that “the species is projected to become extinct in a period of 10 to 15 years” if current trends continue.
Ermakova echoes those sentiments moderately. “Populations continue to decline, so while peyote is not going extinct anytime soon, the trajectory is there,” she says.
Peyote is under consistent threat from habitat loss and development. Ranchers, agricultural production, illegal poaching, and climate change all contribute in part to its decline. Even though peyote is unlawful to forage and possess in Mexico, a whole illegal tourist trade has still sprung up around the plant. Before the pandemic, the mining town of Real de Catorce, a launching point for the desert, saw visitors from all around the world seeking out the plant for recreational use.
The trade consistently encourages non-sustainable foraging practices. Non-sustainable foraging practices have resulted in year-over-year declines in the amount of peyote the group can forage. When peyote is foraged, the plant root needs to be left in the ground to regenerate. It can take up to 15 years for the plant to regrow. Self-cultivation also needs to be encouraged generally versus collecting the plant in the wild.
The Wixárika also have an ongoing battle with the Mexican government and several mining companies, notably, Canadian company First Majestic Silver, over mining operations on Wirikuta. Court orders have kept these mines from moving forward, but these could be overturned at any time.
The main issue here is that they do not have legal title over their sacred areas and where they forage peyote. “Their sacred lands are spread across different states in shared territories belonging to indigenous and non-indigenous communities,” explains Negrin. Because of this, these areas are continuously susceptible to exploitation, putting Wixárika traditions at risk.
Collecting the peyote each year recreates life’s cycle. Each family gathers about 100 to 150 crowns of peyote from the desert, which will last them until they make the trip again the following year.
Groups travel under the direction of a leading maraka’ame who steers the rituals and provides spiritual guidance. Other maraka’ames can assist on the journey. Maraka’ames are chosen based on their bloodline and, more specifically, based on families who have shown a dedication towards upholding Huichol traditions.
Dozens of peyote crowns are left out to dry in the desert following collection.
An Accepted Invitation
There are automatic thoughts of days and weeks of walking when it comes to pilgrimage. Indeed, their ancestors used to walk and travel using horses overland. But, with lands increasingly privatized, the Wixárika communities have had to adjust. Pilgrims travel now by car, trucks and buses. The journey still follows in the same footsteps of their ancestors, on the same roads connecting their sacred sites, Haramara in the West and Wirikuta in the East.
Three days before the community sets off on its journey, my partner, the photographer Matt Reichel and I, drive up to the city of Tepic to meet Mario Bautista and his family. Mario is connected to our pilgrimage group and has graciously extended an invite for us to experience their traditions.
His family originally comes from the village of La Cebolleta, right at the border of Jalisco and Nayarit. To the outside observer, there’s no real plan. He gives us a rough idea of how many days to disconnect, and from there, we learn to let go and just follow the rhythms of the journey.
For the following seven days, we integrate into their community – we travel with them, experience their everyday life within the pilgrimage, and breathe their traditions as best we can. Beyond that, we suddenly become part of a loving family that we learn to care for and grow an attachment to.
Mario is energetic, humorous, passionate about his culture and people, and ready and willing to share. Peyote has been an essential part of his life’s story.
He admits that he disconnected from his parents at a young age. His parents withdrew from the community culture and abandoned their traditions early on in his childhood. “My father was an alcoholic, and my mother was not a loving woman,” he says.
This story is not entirely uncommon for Wixárika who grew up within more recent generations. Within the last 30 years, many Wixárika have migrated to urbanized cities, losing sight of their traditions along the way. According to Bautista, “those who have moved to the city have already adapted away from traditions. Instead of relying on ancient medicinal practices using peyote, people are going to doctors.”
Others have been converted by evangelical missionaries or have joined mainstream Mexican Catholic society.
Negrin explains that while there has been a loss of language and practice of traditions, there are Wixárika groups, made up of university students and professionals in urban centres focused on bridging those gaps. “There’s still a challenge for many of those who are in the cities. They maybe haven’t gone to a ceremony in their community ever,” she says.
This fact parallels Bautista’s story initially. He was sent on his own at 15 to Guadalajara to seek schooling, and at the time, he never thought of looking back. He came from a remote place and was never raised in its traditions, just the language. He could not afford the school fees, so he found work as an artisan. Art is a skill the Wixárika learn from a young age.
In Guadalajara, he met another Wixáritari man by chance, an old shaman, who knew of his family and roots. “The shaman told me to go back, to return to my homeland,” he explains. Speaking with this man encouraged him to return to the Sierra to stay with his uncle.
He had enough money for just a bus ticket back to his village.
Here, he reconnected with his community and other family members and started diving into peyote and the Wixáritari culture. His first experiences with peyote led him down an intensive self-journey of healing and reflection.
During this time and deeper into adulthood, he learned, through spiritual influence and development, to forgive his parents. “They helped me to get to this point in life, so I am grateful. All I have ever wanted now is for my children to feel all the love I was missing growing up,” he says.
He is visibly a loving father, crazy about his three rambunctious and curious young children, Mario Jr., Jonathan, and Montse. At the ages of 10, six, and three, respectively, they are small spitballs of energy. There is intelligent wit in each child, a virtue of their upbringing.
They bounce back and forth between Spanish and their native language and display ties to their home life and cultural roots.
“I believe they have to continue returning to the ancestral homelands to keep a connection to their culture,” says Mario, about the fact that they moved out to the city.
Mario’s wife, Mariana, is a sharp conversationalist hidden behind a somewhat demure façade. She’s a picture of resilience and patience – mother, wife, caretaker, and the backbone of the family. Where Mario lacks in detail and organization, she fills in the gaps and structure. She quietly maneuvers everyone into place, so wherever plan A fails, plan B strikes a chord.
Being part of this family provides an added, unexpected and emotional layer to the journey.
Mario and his wife Mariana bless their three children with water from a sacred site in San Luis Potosí.
A Journey Unwound
It’s a long drive to La Cebolleta.
The drive to the Sierras takes us through the majestic countryside and up winding rough and unpaved mountain roads. The trail leading to Mario’s uncle’s ranch is shrouded in forest pines. There are mountain ranges and rolling cliffsides set against picturesque green valleys. There is yet another spot to take in a different angle of sunbeams over the valley with each subsequent step.
Small, brick buildings dot the ranch and vast farmland. Pigs and cows walk around almost freely. The scene exudes calmness and serenity.
Uncle Vicillio’s ranch sits at the border of Jalisco and Nayarit. According to Mario, “their patio familiar is organized under Rancho La Tristeza – literally, the ranch of sadness -- slightly southwest, but also includes community groups from San Andrés Cohamiata to the south.” Each patio familiar is organized under a permit granted by their self-governing authority, and they only access a particular area within Wirikuta under that assignment.
Before the pilgrims in any community set out on the journey, they must receive an initial blessing in their homeland. For Mario’s family, it’s in La Tristeza, a couple-hour hike down the mountain valley from La Cebolleta.
Admittedly, the Wixárika, notably the men, have a strong tie to a particular vice – a two-four of Modelo. There is an issue with alcoholism. Beer becomes a mechanism for escape in this community, given its remoteness. When we think we are going to attend a ceremony to make an offering for a blessing of a safe journey and return, it does not happen. Our family’s offerings are sent to the valley with another family because the men enjoyed their rest day just a little bit too much.
Mariana, along with Mario’s aunt, prepare corn and tomatillos for making fresh tortillas and salsa in their home village of La Cebolleta, Jalisco, Mexico.
But the next day, 25 community members, including our family, start the 800 km pilgrimage.
Both men and women are adorned in their local dress. The women wear stunning coloured hand-sewn two-piece dresses with scarves protecting their hair from the sun.
Every woman is a master of detailed bead and knitwork, as reflected through their clothing, jewelry, and embroidered bags. Beyond their use of peyote, the Wixárika are famous throughout Mexico for their intricate art – yarn paintings, beading, and clothing. Their art is a way for them to tell their stories.
The men are decked out in traditional white shirts and matching pants. Embroidered over the white cloth are depictions of deer, peyote, and other symbols of their culture. They also wear intricate wide-brimmed hats with plumed feathers and beading.
One particular man, Juan Miguel or K’kame, is a visual splendor. His hat holds the most plumed feathers, and he is chaotically energetic during all of the rituals. He is not only a hat weaver but the guardian of the ancestral pavilion ranch in Mario’s community. He tells us that it takes him several days to make a hat, the length increasing with more intricate designs.
The southern fringes of the Sierra Madre Occidental mountain range form the homeland of the Wixárika people, along the borders of the Mexican states of Nayarit, Jalisco, Durango and Zacatecas.
The Rituals: Offerings, the Public Confession, and Name Changing
Before they reach Wirikuta, the pilgrims must make offerings along the way. Offerings include tortillas, candles, and money. Even though they do not physically walk the same path as their ancestors, they pass through the same sacred sites and engage in similar rituals.
Water is also core to the offerings. Pilgrims will use a vivid feather brush or the back of a candle to sprinkle water over the offerings, over Mother Earth, the sun, and finally themselves and their children.
Candles also continually play a role in these rituals, and as we participate in the practices, Mario or the maraka’ames will often bless us with candles. In darkness and sunlight, they sprinkle mysticism to the scene. They signify the illumination of the human spirit to the Huichols.
Many spiritual practices must occur before the pilgrims enter the Holy Land. These rituals are led by a commission composed of members who know the traditions, chants and rituals the best. The selection does not necessarily factor in age, as some of the members appear to be teenagers.
The commission will change each year but will include ceremonial chiefs, governors, police and a secretary. The chiefs and governors will coordinate the details of the rituals and prepare the peyote. The police will ensure the pilgrims engage in the practices, going so far as yelling at participants if they do not dance or chant hard enough. The secretary handles everything administrative using the scribe of one single graph paper notebook. Everything, in this case, includes the split of monetary contributions and name changes.
Mario, because of his standing in the community and knowledge of the traditions, is a second governor.
On the first night, the group settles into a sacred site literally off the side of a highway, and the rituals kick off with a name-changing ceremony and public confession. Everyone gathers by a bonfire, some with moonshine in hand, to maintain warmth.
The group breaks into vigorous chants. When they chant and sing, it sounds like they are speaking at a pace of 100 km per hour. The chants are synchronous, rhythmic, and intensely hypnotic.
The evening’s first ritual is a name-changing ceremony for the most commonly encountered items and places in the desert. The theme is near opposites. The desert will become the ocean. Cars become boats. Juice is now beer. Donkeys and cows are renamed giraffes and elephants. Peyote evolves to chayote squash.
Name changing helps the pilgrims envision entering a new world. With peyote, they will feel different, visual, and artistic, and the word swap gives them an element of mental preparedness of what is to come.
Purification is also a core aspect of the journey. On the first night, everyone undergoes a “public confession” around midnight as a means of healing and essentially starting over. The secretary takes vigorous note as the commission asks every person to list all their past sexual relationships, including any current loves. These names are then publicly read around the bonfire. The intention is to let go of the past and any pain for cleansing and renewal.
It is probably a big deal to speak of sexual transgressions or even broken hearts for a small community where everyone knows everyone. One woman breaks into visceral sobs. Some men list over 20 names, but there is no awkwardness as we stand there listening to a long, droning list of “Monica, Maria, Olivia…”.
Each of the relationships is tied as knots on individual palm branches. The knotted branches are then burned in the fire. Each pilgrim is essentially re-born and cleansed to continue with the journey.
Families participate in the name changing ceremony around a fire in rural Zacatecas state, Mexico.
The Watering Holes
The pilgrims continue making their offerings at two more sacred areas the following day. One site is a fenced-off area belonging to the group in a tiny Nahuatl community called Yoliatl. The other is a holy spring called Tatéi Matiniéri, or “Where Our Mother Lives”. Both sites are significant to the communities because they found water here during their long journeys to the desert, and this revived them to continue onwards. The springs are believed to have healing powers because they bubble up from the great Mother Earth. They are called Ojos de Agua, or eyes of the water.
The offerings are ethereal and visually mesmerizing to experience and watch. The families congregate by the watering holes. They dip feathers and candles into the water; they chant and sing, blessing each other all the while. They sprinkle and, in some cases, spit at each other with water. A fiddler plays a joyful, albeit repetitive tune in the background.
The scene evokes a kind of peaceful serenity that is almost unimaginable in this day and age.
The guardian of the ancestral patio familiar uses a brush and water collected from a sacred watering hole to bless members of the community.
Reaching the Holy Land
“It is the largest church in the world,” Mario proclaims as we step into the desert. Before entering Wirikuta, the final offering to Mother Earth is to sacrifice a sheep. With this said and done, the group is finally given the blessing to enter the holy land.
As we turn the corner into our allotted area, Bernalejos, we see a striking Mother Tree right in the middle of the desert. It provides shelter and shade for all the families.
The harvesting site here in Wirikuta spans an expanse, unforgiving desert. Thorny bushes cover the peyote, and the only shade comes from short Joshua trees. The nights are frigid cold, while the days are sunny, dry and blistering hot.
The families rest for a short bit, but there is no time to sleep. The pilgrims stay up for the majority of the night to sing and dance for a good harvest. The fiddler plays the same joyous tunes on repeat, and the group steps in spirited, rhythmic formation. They chant in trancing voices, and this continues for hours. They chant and dance emphatically until near morning in hopes of a great haul.
Pilgrims dance to local music underneath Home Tree all night before the great peyote harvest.
The Harvest
The pilgrims encourage us to collect straight pieces of dried-out grass throughout the journey, which they will use for face painting. The morning of the harvest, families paint their faces with single yellow dots on each side of their cheeks. Some of the women paint their dots ornately. Mariana paints our dots with care. According to her, the “paint comes from a tree called raises amarillo, and the paintings symbolize the sun.”
Then, as a community and a united family, the group marches off into the morning sun in this beautiful formation into the desert with machetes, baskets, and bags. Everyone stays together at first. But, as more and more people begin to find patches, the families spread apart.
Pilgrims set out in the early morning into the Wirikuta desert to begin the harvest. They forage from just after sunrise to just before sunset.
The children are excited and emphatically announce that they will “find lots and eat plenty of hikuri later onwards.” The peyote search and harvest takes hours, becoming increasingly difficult as the sun becomes stronger and more unforgiving. The task seems impossible, especially without a machete. The most extensive peyote patches are located under shrubs wholly covered in thorns. It is an optical illusion trying to see the tiny cactus plants from beneath the shrubs’ shade. Everything blends in colour after a while.
The families, and especially the women and children, are adept at finding the peyote. Mariana and Mario Jr. are peyote whisperers. Every few minutes, they find large patches of big crowns. They are resilient, forceful, and efficient in tracking and collecting crowns.
Family members collect peyote cactus from the desert.
The families have this steadfast resilience to keep on foraging for peyote even after several hours in the sun. They know that this is their annual collection for the year to be used for ceremonies. Mario explains that “they are also collecting peyote for families and family members who cannot make the journey.” They have one day to harvest as much peyote as possible. It is a struggle, but peyote is an essential part of their self-development journey, healing, and re-connection with life.
“Through the energy of hikuri, we have learned how to heal, defend and protect both our children and ourselves. Hikuri is the heart of our world and universe,” their maraka’ame, Eliseo Bautista Lopez says.
Under the raging heat, the families finish the harvest by blessing the collected peyotes. With candles, water, and feathers in hand, they bless each crown and each other in vigorous chants once more. The blessing ceremony this time looks like a swirl of lively colours under the brightly lit sun.
The shaman of La Cebolleta prepares to make an offering over all of the collected peyote from Wirikuta. This act symbolizes the conclusion of this year’s foraging.
Microdosing on Offering Hill
When the families return to Mother Tree, Mario Jr. and Jonathan rush to help their father turn each of the crowns upside down, root facing up, which dries the plant, readying them for the evening. Each plant is cut at the root with exact precision. It cannot be cut too high or low. At this point, the plants have a shelf life of 30 days, but they can be replanted. Mario and Mariana will replant the bulbs using deep oven trays and soil back at home.
A few minutes away from Mother Tree around sunset, each family will walk up this hill in succession to make one final offering before ingesting the peyote. Mario makes blessings at the top. We light and offer candles and leave behind our offerings – candles, money. Mario and the other chief in our group begin to peel away a few peyote plants’ outer skins as we make the offerings. They set aside a few microdoses for each of us, his children, Mariana, and larger doses for themselves.
Mario asks us to hold out our hands. He taps our faces with one final blessing, and we ingest the small pieces. The plant is incredibly bitter. Its cold texture is reminiscent of canned artichoke. A lot needs to be consumed to experience visions. A person can experience a six to 10 hour high, depending on the dose.
We learn that the families will only ingest a little of the peyote – about the amount for a microdose in most cases – after the harvest. A child will take a small piece, whereas an adult will microdose on a full crown.
A full crown contains about eight bulbs, the equivalent of approximately 100 grams. For an actual trip with desert visions, they would have to consume 150 to 200 grams. They do this more regularly outside of the pilgrimage. The microdose is meant to provide calm reflection. It also helps you to sleep.
And, that night, after a few energy-charged days, the whole camp collapses to sleep in peaceful calm. Only a few members of the community stay awake in quiet conversation around the bonfire. It is as if a spell is cast over the camp, or everyone is just experiencing a long-awaited sigh of relief after a strenuous journey and harvest.
Pilgrims make a final offering on the top of this hill in Wirikuta at sunset by ingesting a small amount of peyote as a sign of gratitude to Mother Earth.
The Lesson
The next day, the journey culminates beautifully with a final ascension of Cerro del Quemado, the birthplace of the sun and the most sacred place of worship.
The journey in its entirety is not without struggle. There are instances of darkness intermixed with light, but the broader picture is in the lessons learned over just a few days. Among them, many opportunities for growth, introspection, learning and re-connection with others. As I say goodbye to Mario and Mariana, I feel emotional and torn about leaving. Jonathan tears up as he gives us a final, lingering hug.
For everyone involved, it is time to be thankful and to give back to the community. It is also a period to cherish age-long traditions and to appreciate and uphold culture and roots.
For the Wixárika, this pilgrimage harvest is about cultural survival and preservation. It is a human journey that encapsulates their story and existence.
“This is an important moment in their history in terms of how they are working through defense, territory, and reclaiming their culture and language,” explains Negrin. “It is important for people to listen and find ways to be allies without imposing.”
These are human beings whose culture, art, spirituality and economy centres around peyote and the sacred lands on which this plant can be found. If their holy lands continue to be threatened, a core aspect of their identity and their way of life is also put at risk. This includes the pilgrimage, their day-to-day practices and the manifestation of their ingrained beliefs. Some of their traditions will eventually be forced into extinction.
As he takes a look at the pile of crowns to take home, Mario smiles. “We have been given a sacred gift from Mother Earth for our community, and now we have to return it home.”
Robyn Huang is a Canadian writer and photographer based in Vancouver. You can follow her on Instagram @ror0roror0ro and Twitter @HuangRobyn.
Matt Reichel is a Canadian photographer and producer based in Vancouver. You can follow him on Instagram @matthew.reichel and Twitter @MattCReichel.
