by Hope MacLean
For the first few years, my interest was purely personal. I lived with Lupe and her family for weeks or months at a time, sleeping on the floor of a one-room concrete-block house in the slums of Tepic or on the ground around a campfire in the countryside. Lupe took me with her on pilgrimages to sacred sites. We traveled on rickety old polleros—buses with people and chickens riding on top—back into the hills behind Tepic. We rode crowded, second-class buses down the coastal mountains to the beach town of San Blas, home of aging American hippies and of a white rock jutting out of the Pacific Ocean that is sacred to Tatei Haramara, Our Mother the Pacific Ocean. In 1990, we went on the pilgrimage to Wirikuta, in the desert of San Luĺs Potosĺ, where we gathered peyote, a hallucinogenic cactus, and encountered the spirit of a tiny deer. Each visit took me deeper into Huichol mysticism, and I began to learn some shamanic practices.
At the same time, I was becoming overwhelmed by the mystical events I was experiencing. When I started, I knew little about the Huichol or about shamanism as a whole. There were few people I knew who could comment on these experiences, and none who could provide guidance. Perhaps optimistically, I decided to go back to university and work on a doctorate on shamanism as a way of structuring what I was learning. (I say “optimistically” because, in retrospect, I feel that many in the academic world still retain a deep suspicion of the more mystical and paranormal aspects of shamanism.) I chose the University of Alberta, where David E. Young was doing innovative research with a Cree healer named Russell Willier (Young et al. 1989). Willier was trying to describe how he healed, and his explanations included accounts of his visionary experiences with spiritual beings. The story that these coinvestigators told was most like what I had experienced among the Huichol. Therefore, I felt that here was a supervisor who might understand my experience. To his credit, David Young has always lived up to that expectation.
Fig. 1.1. The family of Guadalupe de la Cruz Rĺos circling the fire during a ceremony in the desert of Wirikuta. Photo credit: Hope MacLean.
When I flew into Puerto Vallarta on my way to visit Lupe, I often visited the galleries that sold Huichol art. They were full of Huichol yarn paintings—gorgeous paintings with glowing colors and obscure symbolism. The paintings seemed saturated with a shamanic worldview that both invited understanding and yet remained curiously beyond reach. I thought that by studying yarn paintings, I could learn what they had to say about Huichol shamanism and its worldview, so I chose the paintings as a focus of my research.
At first, I could hardly understand what the yarn paintings meant. The vivid colors exploded off the boards, and the paintings seemed to be confusing combinations of symbols and figures, jumbled together in ways I could not understand. It was hard to know what to focus on or how to see stories and styles. What the paintings “meant” was the first question I wanted to ask.
As I asked around, I discovered that comparatively little had been recorded about either the history of the yarn paintings or the artists themselves. Only three authors had written about yarn paintings at any length, and those accounts dealt mainly with only three artists. The American anthropologists Peter T. Furst and Barbara Myerhoff had written about my friend Lupe’s late husband, the artist Ramón Medina Silva. The Mexican author Juan Negrĺn had collaborated with a Huichol artist, José Benĺtez Sánchez, on a series of exhibitions and catalogues. Susana Eger Valadez, an American, had written about her then husband, the Huichol artist Mariano Valadez.3 Most other references to commercial yarn painting were passing remarks in articles concerned with other matters. Little had been written about the paintings’ origins or about the many unsung artists who had produced thousands of paintings over the years.
These unanswered questions piqued my curiosity about the history of the art and the artists who made it. Where did this art come from? Who had transformed it from a sacred art to a commercial one? Who are the mysterious artists who produce it, many barely known even to the dealers?
Research Strategies
My friend Lupe and her late husband, Ramón Medina Silva, were two of the first Huichol to become well-known yarn artists. Lupe could talk with authority about the early years of commercial Huichol art. Although she no longer made yarn paintings, Lupe was a tireless artisan who supported herself by making embroidered clothes and shoulder bags, beadwork jewelry, and backstrap loom weavings. She taught several men in her family to make yarn paintings in Ramón’s style. Lupe and her family became my first guides into the meaning of yarn paintings. They explained the legends and stories and helped me understand the basic vocabulary of symbols.
In 1992, I went to Mexico to discuss my research strategy with Lupe’s family. I was thinking of using a research technique called photo-elicitation, gathering all the pictures of yarn paintings I could find and then asking Lupe and her family to explain what the paintings meant. The family quickly told me why my plan would not work. Lupe’s brother-in-law, Domingo González Robles, told me that I should not ask them to interpret another artist’s work. Only the original artist could say what a painting meant. Chavelo González de la Cruz, a younger artist, was willing to try to identify what individual figures might mean, but he too insisted that only the original artist could say what the combination of figures signified.
The family’s reaction gave me clear guidance. It meant I had to locate more painters and get them to interpret their work. In 1993–1994, I expanded my research to other artists. The Mexican government gave me a scholarship that funded six months of field research, as well as—and equally valuable—a letter of introduction from Guillermo Espinosa Velasco, then head of the Instituto Nacional Indigenista (INI). This official support was particularly helpful in gaining access to the Sierra Madre comunidades. Nonetheless, most of my contacts were made without government help, and grew out of my initial relationship with one Huichol family. Usually, Huichol introduced me to other Huichol; some private dealers also shared their contacts. I spent six months traveling around the Sierra Madre, tracking down Huichol artists and interviewing them about their lives and art. Finding artists was not easy. They were scattered among urban slums, tiny villages, and isolated mountain ranchos (Sp.: homestead), and did not have telephones.4 Often, I would travel for days to reach an artist, only to find that he had just left to go to a fiesta at another rancho or that he had just returned from the city, where he had sold all his paintings. I began to realize it was no easy matter to put an artist together with a good selection of his or her own paintings, as Lupe’s family advised.
Moreover, I wanted to interview a wide and representative sample of Huichol yarn painters rather than just a few well-known artists, those popularly regarded as the “best” artists. Artists such as José Benĺtez Sánchez and Mariano Valadez were already famous, but I did not know whether their art or interpretations were typical of the majority of Huichol artists. So I was just as interested in little-known artists, such as beginner, “souvenir,” or folk art painters, as I was in the older, experienced “fine” artists. I wanted to see whether there were differences between artists from different communities, or between artists who lived in cities and those in the Sierra. I wanted to test whether the artists might be considered highly acculturated people, with little background in Huichol culture, or whether they had grown up within the culture, practicing its ceremonies, speaking the language, and learning the mythology. Most of all, I wanted to find out whether the artists themselves were shamans or on a shamanic path.
I wasn’t fussy about whom I talked to. I spoke to anyone who would speak to me. I visited the Sierra communities of San Andrés and Santa Catarina; I met artists in Tepic and the surrounding countryside, and in towns and cities such as Santiago Ixcuintla, Puerto Vallarta, Guadalajara, and Mexico City. I talked to yarn painters and to artists who specialized in other crafts, such as beadwork. These artists represented a range of experience along different dimensions, including their ages; the number of years they had spent doing yarn painting; whether they had ever attended school
and, if so, for how long; whether they grew up in an urban, a rural, or an indigenous community; whether they had learned about Huichol religion and shamanic practices as children; and whether they personally considered themselves shamans. I have transcribed a cross section of their viewpoints in order to portray what the Huichol artists have to say about their shamanic and visionary experiences.
I conducted all the interviews myself, in Spanish. I did not use an interpreter. All the artists I located spoke Spanish, but they often spoke a Huichol version of a rural Mexican dialect. They used phrases and ideas based in Huichol concepts, or imposed Huichol grammar on Spanish constructions. Their Spanish can be quite difficult to understand, even for Spanish speakers, unless one has a background knowledge of Huichol culture. In this book, I have translated our conversations from Spanish into colloquial English and added clarifying notes in square brackets to make the interviews easier to understand.
Some artists allowed themselves to be tape-recorded. These artists tended to be older, mature men who were comfortable dealing with foreigners. Their accounts are verbatim transcripts of our interviews. Some other Huichol believe that being photographed or tape-recorded is dangerous. This seems to be particularly a concern of people from San Andrés. Some who refused at first changed their minds once they got to know me. When artists did not wish to be taped, I took notes, and I have paraphrased their answers.
I use the artists’ real names rather than pseudonyms.5 This reflects the fact that the artists are professional artists, making art for the public, rather than anonymous folk artists. Most participated in interviews because they wanted to become better known and were quite aware that publicity is good for business. A number expressed pleasure that someone was asking them about their art and making their views known. I have used the artists’ real names when I had clear permission to do so, such as when I conducted formal interviews after explaining that the material would be used for research. I have not used artists’ names regarding material given in casual conversation, observed during daily life in a community, or given in confidence.
Between trips to the Sierra, I visited the tourist centers and cities where most yarn paintings are sold—Puerto Vallarta, Guadalajara, Tepic, and Mexico City. I talked to gallery owners, to dealers who bought paintings for resale in North America and Europe, and to Mexican government officials, museum personnel, and other anthropologists. Most allowed me to photograph the yarn paintings they had on hand. This gave me a representative sample of the paintings moving through the markets in 1993–1994. With photographs in hand, I could then discuss the paintings with the artists when I found them. I have since returned to Mexico for five more winters and have spent several months investigating the market for Huichol art in the American Southwest.
I have now followed the development of yarn painting since 1988. There has been a gradual evolution in styles and subjects as innovative artists have introduced new themes and developed new products. I have seen the lives of artists change as they respond to commercial success or to setbacks such as the devaluation of the peso. I have seen children grow up and decide whether to try to live by emulating their parents’ artistic practices or by working for wages at the bottom of the Mexican economy.
Research Themes
Several major themes have emerged from my research. One theme is how a sacred art changes when it becomes commercialized, and how this relates to the commodification of culture in the global marketplace. This process affects both the deep structure of Huichol aesthetic values and its manifestation in yarn painting.
What happens when a sacred art enters the commercial marketplace? A number of case studies exploring this process have shown that cultures use a variety of strategies to manage the transition. For example, Navajo singers resisted the commercialization of their sand paintings for many years, fearing supernatural danger from the nonceremonial use of the images. The final compromise was to change the figures somewhat so that they no longer duplicated the sacred art (Parezo 1991). The Haida refused to allow the use of sacred themes in their argillite carvings until the religion was no longer widely practiced (Kaufmann 1976, 65–67). To the Pueblo tribes, weaving has kept its ceremonial significance, and so has never become a commercial product. In contrast, weaving has little religious significance to the Navajo, although Western buyers often think it does, and so the images can easily be changed, or weaving can be abandoned for better ways of making money (Kent 1976, 97–101).
These studies suggest the range of solutions that cultures may adopt in response to pressures to commercialize their sacred arts: from completely refusing to sell, to modifying the figures, to allowing unrestricted freedom once the religion becomes attenuated. One question is how the Huichol have coped with the commercialization of their sacred yarn paintings.
One may also ask, who are the people responsible for this transformation, and what processes led them to modify their art? Did the Huichol decide to do commercial yarn painting on their own, or were non-Huichol involved in the transition? How are yarn paintings regarded by the Huichol, and is there any restriction on the reproduction or sale of sacred images? To what extent have yarn paintings been modified to suit a Western market? Do the dealers or buyers influence the art, and in what ways?
The commercialization of a sacred art is related to broader themes—the growth of tourism to indigenous communities around the world and the commodification of culture in the global marketplace. Tourism has become the largest service industry in the world (Smith and Brent 2001, xvi, 8–9). The sale of local products to tourists is a major component of this industry. There is growing concern about the effect of tourism on indigenous peoples, and about whether it is beneficial, harmful, or somewhere in between.
Clearly, yarn paintings are a part of the global tourism industry, since most are sold in tourist centers in Mexico, and they are marketed as the mystical product of one of Mexico’s most exotic pre-Columbian cultures. From both sides, complex negotiations about identity are being played out in this process. Foreign buyers have images about the Huichol, which drive the products offered in the marketplace, and the Huichol have their own set of images about buyers, which may affect what they produce. How this dance of identity plays out is another theme that I explore.
A related theme is whether yarn paintings manifest a deep aesthetic structure that is distinctively Huichol or whether they have become lovely, but culturally sterile, merchandise. Richard Anderson (1990, 235–236) suggests that a consistent pattern in colonial situations is for the colonized culture to “eventually discard the sophisticated systems of aesthetic thought they once possessed and adopt more commercially pragmatic, materially utilitarian and aesthetically superficial values.” Technical skill tends to become more important than the religious thought or philosophy underlying the work. Market value becomes the dominant standard. Tyler Cowen (2005, 5) suggests that there may be a cycle in which indigenous artists enter the market and generate excitement because of their unique worldviews, and then, as they prosper, the artists may move into the cultural mainstream and end by losing the traditional culture that made them unique.
Shamanic Vision and Extraordinary Experience
When I first began to study yarn paintings, I was intrigued by statements that they were spiritually inspired. The dealers in Puerto Vallarta insisted in their sales patter that all Huichol artists were shamans and that all their art was the product of dreams and visions. It made a good story for selling art, since Western tourists are often fascinated by the mystical products of another culture. But was it really true? Were all the artists shamans? Were the paintings the products of dreams and visions? Even if not all the paintings were the product of shamanic inspiration, some might be. If so, how fascinating! What could we learn about the process of envisioning shamanically from a culture that painted pictures of their visions?
My curiosity was driven by my own experiences. Shortly after our first meeting, Lupe gave me peyote, and I had a vision of multicolored
deer heads falling like confetti out of the sky. They were preparing the way for a deer spirit who was on his way. In the distance, I heard the sound of deer-hoof rattles announcing his coming. Somehow I knew they were deer-hoof rattles, although I had never seen deer-hoof rattles before, nor even heard of them. In the morning, I sketched the shape of the deer head in my notebook. At the time, I had seen few yarn paintings, but none that reproduced this image. Months later, I saw the same deer head in a yarn painting in a store. The coincidence seemed amazing.
Many years later, I told Eligio Carillo about my vision, and he confirmed that it was a Huichol experience and said he had seen it too. He told me that the deer is a spirit called Tüki, who gives off something like pollen (Sp.: suelte polvo), which takes the form of tiny multicolored deer.
ELIGIO: Yes, that means that it is a deer that brings a powder. It is called Tüki. He brings . . . it is one who brings this. He brings little deer, but it is a powder that he goes along giving off, that is showering down.
Years after my dream of the deer, I discovered a similar description of multicolored spirits of the deer family in a book on Dene shamanism by Robin Ridington (1988, 103). A dreamer was describing the moose spirits that live under the ground around springs where moose like to congregate.
Fig. 1.2. Eligio Carrillo Vicente, yarn painting of a mandala nierika, 2002. 24” x 24” (60 x 60 cm). The painting shows multicolored deer spirits, like those in the author’s dream. Photo credit: Hope MacLean.
Even in cold time, those moose under the ground are lonesome.
They don’t like it there and get tired of it.
Even if it is frozen over with ice, they just break through. . . .
