The Huichol Indians of Mexico

(In my view)

Bead work

Just about a week ago, I went to the Huichol enclave of these renowned Mexican Indians, the place is the town of Santiago Ixcuintla roughly 45 miles North- East of San Blas in the State of Nayarit (Mexico). In this town, of about 5000 thousand people, are one exhibit after another of their artistic talent, they have tile and glass murals through the town that are magnificent expressions of their art, depicting the struggles of their life and their culture.

City of Santiago Ixcuintla Murals

They have mastered some ways of creating extraordinary sculptures covered with colored beads and thread. Trying to explain them to you will be a very challenging task for me, I will, instead, show you a few of their masterpieces that I photographed and only a few because…. I was not supposed to be taking any pictures of them or their pieces on display (so I sneak some of them, sorry!)

The Huichol Indians of Mexico call themselves "the healers." Secluded high in the Sierra Madre Mountains of northwestern Mexico, these indigenous people have preserved the purest pre-Columbian culture in our hemisphere. For centuries they have conducted ceremonial rituals they believe heal the Earth and keep nature balanced. But now the Earth is sick and dying. The lands of the Huicholes are dying. The forests are shrinking, water is becoming scarce, and the animals are disappearing, I can testify to this because were they live now in the town of Santiago Ixcluintla and the surrounding lands are almost a complete desert. Illness and poverty are all over the place. The Huichol Wise Man, the Grand Shaman, knows why…. Maybe! I personally hope so because these people are really very talented artists.
The Huicholes embroider their clothing with the symbols of nature which offer them strength and life: the flower, a prayer for rain; the deer, a request for love and bounty of their nature-deities; the scorpion, to ask their protection.

HUITCHOL AT WORK
LADIE HUICHOL

The genesis of the Huicholes are debated. Some believe they were nomadic wanderers recently arrived to the Sierra. Others embrace the theory that they are a branch of the same family as the Aztecs, both having migrated from their original island homeland near the Pacific coast. The Huicholes themselves say they migrated north from the Valley of Mexico and were forced to take refuge in the Sierra hundreds of years ago by warring Indian tribes

To learn more about the Huicholes and their world, please visit: http://www.spring.net/~wmmeyers/huichp01.html.

These are very, very talented people and little by little are getting extinct, I guess one of the reasons is the shrinking of their environment and the assimilation of their young into the more modern Mexican society, I wish that people as talented as they never have to disappear of the face of this heart of ours….now…. so you know.…all this is.... in my view only…!