CHAPTER 13 THE INDIAN VOICE IN RECENT MESOAMERICAN LITERATURE 497Great San Juan,
Great Patron,
I search over the earth,
I search over the heavens,
Man of the cane of authority,
Ladino of the staff.
Patron of Heaven,
Lord of Glory.
Our Father Saint Matthew, Our Lord,
Our Father Saint Matthew, Jesus.
Mother of Heaven,
Mother of Glory.
Father of the Cross,
Father of the Passion.
How is it that you come before my feet?
How is it that you commend your self to my hands?
Great San Juan,
Great Patron.
For one year as for each day.
(Adapted from Gossen 1970:330–334; Gossen 1985:64, 76–82)The Huichol of Western Mexico
The Huichol, numbering some 40,000 in the late twentieth century, live in the rela-
tively remote mountainous areas of the states of Nayarit, Jalisco, Durango, and Za-
catecas. In the pre-Columbian era they lived at the northwestern periphery of the
Mesoamerican heartland. Being mountain dwellers and seminomads, they did not
in the pre-Columbian or Colonial periods, nor do they today, participate fully in the
centralized political and social arrangements that have long characterized the re-
gion. Their social, political, and economic world has always been an order somewhat
separate from that of the heartland, sharing certain elements with it but remaining
nevertheless at the margins of it.
The following text excerpt in Box 13.4 is about the sacred journey into the Hui-
chol past that they reenact ritually via their ceremonial peyote hunt. This material,
recorded by Barbara Myerhoff in the 1970s, constitutes a formal instructional speech
that interprets the meaning of this ritual practice to children. Dictated by a shaman
named Ramón Medina Silva, this account reveals the central importance of this sa-
cred pilgrimage to the desert, their legendary homeland. Small groups of Huichols
undertake this journey at great personal cost, in order to “find their life,” past and
present, via prayer, song, and vision quest as they “hunt” and consume the sacred pey-
ote cactus. Through this sacred hallucinogenic substance, which is closely linked
with maize and deer symbolism in their cosmology, Huichols affirm their social bonds
with one another and with their ancestors and founding deities.