INTRODUCTION TO HUICHOL YARN PAINTINGS NIERIKA The nierika is represented among the Huichol Indians of a s N Octcil NLgOft Tstswt( Ocwptw

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Northwestern Mexico as a focal point on which powerful beings concentrate their energy. This may be as primordial

s the well-crafted deer snare that induces the sacred animal to its willing self-immolation. It can be symbolized as a

pider’s web or threads attached to a wooden loop. Nierika is also a hole penetrating the caves of the heart of darkness in the deep canyon and the crater of Burnt Peak, where Our

ierika Offering left at Sacred Site Father rises from the underworld at dawn. It is depicted as a ©Juan Negrín 1982 cavity in the center of stone disks, teparite, that permit the rays of the sun to receive and emit the visual messages of

ur Ancestors from their shrines to all the places beyond, in a seven tiered space: the four orners and the center on this plane, and the world above and below. There is a tepari porthole in he back of the shrine and one over its doorway, as well as others that may be inside, either overing or serving as altars to images of corresponding standing ancestors, memuute. The nsight that nierika gives healing shamans enables them to diagnose the cause of an illness and ocate its source within the ailing person’s body.

ierika is also a mirror that reflects images of Our Ancestors for the pilgrims at the gates of the and where Our Ancestors paint designs on their faces, Wírikuta. First the pilgrims deposit ourd-bowl offerings, xukúrite, symbols of the womb, and take sacred water from the oasis of ur Mother of Birth and the source of eastern waters, Tatéi Matinieri. Later, they paint their

aces with a yellow root near another oasis that must have served as a mirror since immemorial imes.

oday pilgrims and shamans carry a mirror in their baskets to turn their cheeks into a reflecting urface of the divine energy embodied in the pilgrim who bears the name of an ancestor. Icons hat symbolize different ancestors are applied in the shapes of radiant prototypal beings, from eeds to rays or clouds. Their yellow painted face is a nierika or a reflection of the ancestor hose path is followed, because they have been blessed by the rays of Our Father who rises in

he east at dawn. The mirrors that are used by shamans and pilgrims are also called nierikate plural form). ne of the fundamental meanings of nierika is a metaphysical vision, an aspect of a god or a

ollective ancestor, which is the term they use. The other one is to serve as a front-shield,1 but e interpret this as a shield against temptations or distractions along the ritual path. No doubt in re-colonial history, shields represented a significant defense against intruding armed forces, but hey are now symbolic objects attached to votive arrows with bamboo and yarn, or wood and ax embedded objects.

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Carl S. Lumholtz, Symbolism of the Huichol Indians, Volume III, 1900-1907

As Lumholtz stated, for the Huichol a nierika means a picture, an appearance or a sacred representation. It evokes an ancestor, thanks it with blood offerings and invokes its favors. Its root is in the verb to see: nieriya.2 When the over all image is not round it may be considered a resting mat for the ancestor, or a prayer mat: itari. Nowadays we do not see the elaborate interwoven back-shields that Lumholtz called namma, which also bring to mind the origin of yarn paintings. These are generally rectangular or square, but wax was not used to inlay the yarn. Our Great-Grandmother Hollow-Ear, Takutsi Nakawé, whom the Huichol identify as the oracle and the primordial mother of Our Ancestors, is characterized by her nierika mask that reveals her masculine alter-ego as Naurú, the chanting shamanic ancestor of seminal fire. Lumholtz identified the general meaning of Takutsi Nakawé as Our Grandmother Growth that is metaphorically correct, but does not correspond to her semantic roots: naká, for ear, and wekí, for hollow. As he reported, she was the ancestor who was able to predict the great deluge that flooded the previous underworld. On the other hand is the mask of the buffoon, whose facial traits mimic the thick black moustache of a mixed-blood Mexican. This pilgrim, tsikuaki, who wears a rubber mask for the return ceremony, is most loquacious about the secrets encountered on the ritual trail and the ones disclosed in public confessions before using the peyote cactus. His tales are not considered anymore reliable than a Mexican’s understanding of Huichol faith and language. He states things in their opposite order and he changes their names, but he is the only one who is explicit about the journey to those who have not been involved in it. In conclusion, the Huichol have been making garments for themselves, including their bags and embroidered clothes, besides all the above mentioned nierikate and other sacred symbols, as prayers to attract mercy from their ancestors, or for the harmonious balance of female and male vital energy. Their name really means ‘those who wear garments as prayers to the ancestors’: Wixaritari, or Wixárika (singular form). Returning to their nierikate, these are now frequently made out of carved, flat, semi-circular wood as a base on which they apply a coat of native sticky, wild beeswax to one side. This is used to inlay threads of yarn that form patterns representative of the ancestor to whose sacred spot it is dedicated after it is smeared with the blood of a sacrificed animal. Square angled itárite are made in a similar fashion. Offering to Our Mother Ocean ©Juan Negrín 1978

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2 Vocabulario Huichol-castellano Castellano-huichol por Juan B. McIntosh y José Grimes-Instituto Lingüístistico de Verano, Mexico, D.F. 1954

HUICHOL YARN PAINTINGS Huichol yarn paintings were first brought to the public’s attention around 1950 by Professor Alfonso Soto Soria. Some samples of his collected pieces are now on display in Mexico City's National Museum of History and Anthropology; one is in Berlin among the collection of Konrad Theodor Preuss (from the early twentieth century); and many are on display at the museum of Zacatecas, along with Dr. Henry F. Mertens’s collection of embroidered Huichol textiles from the early 1930s. Commonly, these early collected yarn paintings are unsigned. They measure about 2’ x 2’ or smaller, and are symbolically simplistic. Like most of those produced more recently for the market, they are not meant to celebrate or invoke a particular ancestor. Instead, they juxtapose Huichol motifs in a haphazard manner that lends the work a decorative touch, in contrast with traditional religious Huichol crafts. The technique is borrowed from that of the production of a legitimate nierika, but it is employed without a religious purpose or meaning. The yarn paintings are rendered on boards of plywood covered with an even layer of beeswax, which is then entirely covered with thin threads of wool yarn pressed in a previously inscribed design. Normally the colors of the frame are rendered first, and then the main figures are depicted. The final work consists of filling in the background with other colors of yarn that is often applied with less care, one or two strands at a time. Commercial versions do not stand up to the mark of time because the yarn does not adhere well to the wax. They have been produced using acrylic yarn, poor quality wax and in the worst of cases with fiberboard as a base. The outside world’s knowledge of Huichol art was augmented and changed in 1969, when Dr. Peter T. Furst wrote the text for an illustrated portfolio of yarn paintings by Ramón Medina Silva called "Myth in Art: A Huichol Depicts His Reality", in a volume of The Quarterly 7(3) publication of the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History. Although their artistic value remained folkloric, the paintings were related to more specific meanings, and the anthropologist meant to present them as a shamanistic insight into Huichol culture through his graphic and oral interpretation. Dr. Barbara G. Myerhoff, Peter Furst's co-researcher, does acknowledge in the preface to her Peyote Hunt, (1974, Cornell University Press), "For personal and professional reasons I was not able to live among the Huichols in the Sierra; this fact is responsible for the most conspicuous lacunae in this study" (p. 17). Neither she and nor Dr. Furst ever spent much time deep in the field, where they would have seen how the Huichol function on a religious communal level. Dr. Furst staged a film called “To Find Our Life”, portraying Ramón Medina as a peyote leader, sitting on a shaman’s chair in the desert of Wírikuta, a theatrical fantasy considering the distance involved between Huichol dwellings and this spot. However, in 1970, many of the yarn paintings for sale on the local market that had intricate meaning were copies of Ramón Medina’s work, as described by him to Dr. Furst. Huichol craftsmen and other investigators we met, such as Professor Miguel Palafox Vargas, do not deny

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that Medina was a very deft craftsman with the talent of an artist, but many doubt that he ever reached the level of a Huichol shaman. He gave Dr. Furst enough misinformation that one cannot tell whether he was acting as a trickster or out of his own ignorance. No doubt the inaccuracy Dr. Furst conveyed also had to do with the language barrier (Huichol to Spanish to English), which all investigators of Huichol culture find challenging. He shows no new knowledge of the Huichol glossary or its grammar. JOSÉ BENÍTEZ SÁNCHEZ In our efforts to encounter the more gifted craftspeople and Hum FfceAs DtfHisMtm

learn what they could tell us about their artwork’s symbolic and legendary meanings, we kept returning to Mexico, venturing into different parts of the states of Jalisco and Nayarit, where the Huichol are concentrated. In 1971, we met José Benítez Sánchez, known in the Huichol language as Yucauye Cucame, or “Silent Walker”. He had set up his workshop in Tepic, Nayarit when I met him, and his reputation as a yarn painter was beginning to eclipse that of most of his peers.

Jose Benítez Sánchez ©Juan Negrín 1976 He was born in 1938 on a ranch called San Pablito, in

Nayarit. His religious tradition and family ties link him to the uichol sub-group of Wautüa, the community of San Sebastián Teponohuaztlán. He was brought p by his maternal grandfather, who died at the age of 105, leaving a strong impression on José’s emory, and his stepfather, Pascual Benítez. Both of them were maraakate (shamans).

ollowing the proper disciplines with his stepfather and his grandfather, José worked in the ields when he was eight; and the next year, his stepfather decided to train him as a shaman. He aught a deer in a snare before it died. This was a good omen. He was told to breathe in the last xhalations of the self-immolating deer and he initiated a shamanic career by the age of nine. fterward, he was instructed to go into mourning for the deer for six years, during which time he

hould not touch a woman or spice his food with salt.

uring the next four years, José Benítez made yearly pilgrimages to Our Mother Ocean and to he holy spots in the canyons deep in the Huichol mountains. When he reached the age of ourteen, however, his stepfather died and he was forced by his relatives to marry, according to uichol custom. Soon thereafter, he ran away seeking work in the coastal fields and going out

nto the civilization of Mexico without knowing any Spanish. José Benítez recalled, “When I tarted working as a coastal laborer, I left my Huichol clothes and my sandals, changing them for exican clothes, and I soon felt like a mestizo (mixed blood person). I never forgot my

raditional customs, but it was not the same, because I had abandoned my plans for becoming a araakame (shaman).”

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No doubt he felt more like a mestizo, as he quickly picked up the Mexican language and their ways at such a ripe age. In 1971, he was working at the government’s Coordinating Center for the Development of the Huicot Region3. He received a steady income from the government as a jack-of-all-trades, serving whenever a bilingual interpreter was needed for matters concerning land disputes and other problems in the mountains. Besides dedicating himself to his own production of yarn paintings, he was a middleman between the government and those Indians who sold their crafts through its offices. José Benítez came to be recognized as an undisputed master of original dramatic compositions, and his knowledge of the culture was respected by scores of other specialists in this medium by 1971. Many copied his style as best they could, a few achieving personal touches that kept their own work original. But José Benítez remains unsurpassed in the fertility and inventiveness of his art over the long span of his still-evolving career. The first craftsmen who introduced me to Benítez touted him as an important shaman, although Benítez told me soon afterward that he had not really achieved that status yet. Since then, however, he claims to have reached it, after many ensuing pilgrimages and adjunct sacrifices. At that early point, Benítez had taught several dozen Huichol how to make yarn paintings. His apprentices were Huichol who had become urbanized enough to eke out a living without depending entirely on their subsistence-farming tradition. Among them, Juan Ríos Martínez mastered his own forms and style and went on to produce beautiful and original compositions. Others worked out a superficially personal style while basically sticking to simple compositions that they had at one time helped their master produce by filling in the background for the figures that Benítez had already designed. It became apparent to us that José Benítez was the anonymous living source of the designs produced by many inferior craftsmen. His work easily surpassed that of the relatively famous and accomplished Ramón Medina, who had been killed in 1971. By 1972, my wife and I were residing permanently in Mexico and working constantly with many native people. Most significantly, at that time I made my first forays into the deepest canyons of the Huichol mountains to Teakata, the temple of Our Grandfather (Fire) with José Benítez Sánchez, who had been initiated there as a shaman in his youth. Circumstances had interrupted his shamanic practice until I prompted him to return with me. This led to many ensuing pilgrimages to the holy power spots in the mountains (seven-day walks), to the peyote desert in the East (seven-day walks), to Our Mother of the Ocean in the West and to Our Mother of the South Waters, in all of which he and I participated under the direction of his half-brothers and maraakate from Wautüa. Eventually, José Benítez’s artistic expression became more complex, and I became more able to distill a deeper meaning from his works related to our shared experiences. As a result of our pilgrimage in early 1972, he dedicated himself exclusively to developing his artistic talent and renewing his links with his religious tradition. His pending vows would persecute him in agitated dreams until he externalized them as visual images, and we eventually reached the spot where 3 “Huicot” stands for Huichol, Cora and Tepehuano Indians of the states of Jalisco, Nayarit, Durango and Zacatecas.

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the sacred offerings had to be taken again. That experience would lead to many more visionary understandings of traditional reality. Together, we went on five journeys to Wírikuta, in the east. On three occasions we walked and fasted in the desert for seven days. We walked several times to the most holy spots in the mountains: Tuamuxawitá, the cave of the First Cultivator; Nuariwametá, the falls and the niche of Our Mother the Messenger of Rain; Teakata, where shrines are built as an archetypal sacred ceremonial center to the major Huichol ancestors. We went to the edge of Our Mother Ocean, by the white peak in the sea called Waxiewe, Our Mother Who Is like White Vapor Escaping, and to Xapaviyemetá, the lake in the south named after its wild figs, where it is said that the new earth first appeared after a five-year flood. Benítez took major breaks from pursuing his art when we undertook these pilgrimages, and when he eventually reintegrated himself into the Huichol community of Wautüa, he followed the tradition of cultivating the land and participating in all the ceremonial rites attached to that cycle. In the early 1980’s the artist said: “This is how the xutúrite4 suffer, without food or sleep, without possessions or knowing where they are headed, poor and innocent, but rich in their kupuri (soul) and in their tukari (spiritual life).” In a composition he wrote for a Huichol xaweri (a native adaptation of a violin) he chants in praise of Tamatsi Kauyumari, Our Elder Brother Fawn of the Sun, saying: “My Elder Brother’s word and his figures, his designs, his thought is never-ending in the drawings of his matsuwate (wrist guards or bracelets) and in his uxa (the yellow pigment José Benítez Sánchez painted on his face).” ©Juan Negrín 1981 He was conscious that many of the yarn paintings he produced in partnership with me are reflections of the ancestors, and he said: “Our memory will stay in these paintings.” These were visual expressions of what Benítez had learned under the spiritual guidance of Our Elder Brother, which he wanted me to understand in depth by tape-recording explanations that allowed me to pursue their meaning in detail. Important traditional shamans from the mountains have visited me, and they are often struck by the lucidity of Benítez’s work, reflecting deeply on its meaning in their own way. His art has undergone many changes over the 31 years that I have been a witness to its development. His figures have always been bold and dramatically placed in dynamic juxtapositions, with a deep understanding of color contrast, such as The Four Aspects of the Spirit,

4 natural or paper flowers, attached to an offering, which is the nickname for the Huichol in the language of Our Ancestors)

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Four Aspects of the Spirit José Benítez Sánchez 1972

a 2’ x 2’yarn painting. They started out as relatively ingenuous depictions and within a few years became more complex, as well as more intricately connected. José Benítez created some pieces in a 4’ x 2½’ size, like The Dismemberment of Our Great Grandmother Nakawé and The Dismemberment of Watákame, from 1973, which show surprising parallels to the finest works of surrealistic and contemporary fine art. Later he evolved a more intricate style, as his narratives became more complex and his EA Sespt Csosur TscwSawp

inventiveness was invigorated by our mutual participation. Another painting of this size from 1979, called The Nierika of Our Great-Grandfather Deer-Tail, exemplifies this inspired complexity.

By 1980, José Benítez’s art had become extremely sophisticated, and the meaning was difficult to extrapolate from his greatest work. The best example of this is a 4’ x 8’ yarn painting called The The Dismemberment of Watakame Transcendental Vision of Tatutsí Xuweri José Benítez Sánchez 1973 Timaiweme (Our Great-Grandfather Who Was Created and Found Knowing

verything). It toured many world museums until it was donated to the National Museum of nthropology and History in Mexico City, for permanent exhibit, in September 1999.

ince that time, a Spanish-language CD-ROM kiosk has been installed next to the painting in the xhibition hall, from which a detailed description of Huichol culture can be gleaned as one earches through the meanings of the symbols in the yarn painting. The description is based artly on the transcription of a tape-recorded interpretation the artist made with me, and partly on he anthropological perspective of the Western Section Curator, Dr. Johannes Neurath.

onstantly characteristic of Benítez’s art is that his figures are abstract enough to remain ymbolic prototypes, yet are reproduced in many unique variations, transformed by the presence f other figures in a context that is full of interlinking energy fields and sharp contrasts. His trong sense of rhythm and balance reflects his skill in performing Huichol music and dances. He ses both thick and thin wool yarn to achieve rich textures and to avail himself of the widest ange of color tones.

he disappearance of wool yarn from the Mexican market, around 1982, represented a serious etback in Huichol artists’ ability to manufacture fine yarn paintings. Wool yarn had been ommonly available on the popular market, and was known as estambre del indio, although it as always a little more expensive than the shiny acrylic yarn that eventually supplanted it. ometimes it was even available as a finer, thicker yarn imported from Australia, which a deft rtist could use to vary the texture, blending it with the thinner strands of Mexican wool. The ool yarn has the inconvenience of being attractive to moths unless it is treated or carefully rotected, but it does not have the artificial glow of the shiny acrylic colors. Furthermore, it

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adheres much better to the pure native beeswax used to coat the wooden boards. However, native beeswax is both very scarce and difficult to work with, and is no longer used. José Benítez has continued to evolve and develop his style with the thin acrylic yarn that is currently available. He had to leave Wautüa after a short stay, when his community manifested it felt he could not be trusted because he was too ambitious. He then moved back to Tepic and fought for the rights of many Huichol who lived in the slums and on the periphery of town, and they were eventually able to claim homes in a colony called Zitakua. This is today a refuge for many Huichol who have left the mountains to pursue crafts in the city. It has its Huichol tatoani, or governor, and a tuki, or round temple, at the top of the hill. José Benítez is no longer an anonymous Huichol craftsman, although the public in general has still not properly recognized him as an artist. For example, his work on display in the Regional Museums of Guadalajara and Tepic remains unidentified, as does all other Huichol art on display with one sole exception. However, José Benítez has always performed better than the average Huichol in resisting anonymity; and in 2001, he created the largest yarn painting to date, which was commissioned by the government to place behind a huge glass frame in a subway station in Guadalajara. Along with it is a display of more modest-sized pieces, but as he notes, the lack of wool yarn has made it impossible to produce “real yarn paintings”. GUADALUPE GONZÁLEZ RÍOS Guadalupe González Ríos, Ketsetemahé Teukarieya, or “Godson of the Mounted Iguanas”, was born on December 12, 1923, in the Huichol settlement of Carretones de Cerritos, Nayarit. He considers himself a member of the Huichol community of Tuapuri (Santa Catarina Cuexcomatitlán), when it comes to the roots of his paternalistic tradition. One of his grandfathers, Inés Ríos, became a legend in his own time. He was a mestizo, or teiwari, i.e., a Guadalupe González Ríos “neighbor”, as the Huichol call a mixed-blood outsider, ©Juan Negrín 1977 but he discovered a plant that the Huichol consider a very powerful means of achieving shamanic capabilities.

This solanaceous plant, related to the nightshade family, has very strong hallucinogenic properties and is known to the Huichol as kieri, or the tree of the wind. Unlike peyote, which is found in the eastern desert and is associated with the insight of the Dawn and the Sky, kieri manifests a nierika related to penetrating the darkness of the underworld, what existed before, and the dead. Kieri can bestow the power to heal, or more readily to hex, as well as to play extraordinary music and to become a great shaman and it can do this more rapidly than peyote. At the same time, kieri is purported to be extremely dangerous by comparison. It is easy to slip

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off the proper path when you are ascending into some new realm of consciousness at a maddening speed! It takes an earnest and humble man like Guadalupe González to master the complexities of being a devotee to this plant that his grandfather passed on to him. It drew his grandfather into the world of Huichol religion and ceremony as an unsurpassed master violinist. He was reported to be able to play in several places at once! The Mexican anthropologist Dr. Jesús Jáuregui, who did his thesis on the roots of mariachi tradition in Mexico, investigated the story of Inés Ríos. He writes about him and his musically gifted descendants in “Un siglo de tradición mariachera entre los huicholes”, from Música y Danzas Del Gran Nayar, which he edited for the Centro de Estudios Mexicanos y Centroamericanos and the Institito Nacional Indigenista, México, in 1993, among other publications. But unlike his cousin Juan Ríos Martínez, Guadalupe González did not acquire musical gifts from going to the kieri; he was more involved with its healing power. Guadalupe González had been warned by one of his uncles that if he reproduced meaningful designs in his yarn paintings, he would eventually become blind. There were two factors that could mitigate these consequences: the first, that his work not be used for merely decorative purposes, but to arouse respect and admiration for Huichol culture. The second and more concrete factor being that I would submit myself to the sight of his principal master, a kieri that is particularly feared that grows on top of Tukakamerixi, four large peaks on the western rim of the Huichol territory that represent the Lords of the Underworld. From there, at the end of a long pilgrimage, one overlooks the Gates of the Underworld in Our Mother Ocean, as Our Father (Sun) is swallowed to begin his invisible course from the west to the east through the serpent’s body below. A night vigil begins at the top of the vertiginous rocks, without any fire, and the effect of the plant’s pollen is to suppress or kill the insects that come near it. As many Huichol devotees have discovered, kieri also infuses them with a sense of power and pride that can be confusing, and even deranging. Frequently the pilgrim is led astray by his or her ability to seduce members of the opposite sex, because the devotee is supposed to maintain months of strict sexual abstinence before each journey and never have relations with anyone besides his spouse(s), at least until all the vows are fulfilled (five journeys). Breaches in proper conduct lead to long-term dementia and Gepilepsy, such as affected González’s wife (because of her adulterous relationships) for about a yalso been frequently reported to me as being involvedhas probably been more commonly the abode of the f

uadalupe González Ríos ~ Untitled 1974

ear before she was finally cured. Kieri has in cases of suicide among the Huichol. It emale than the male shaman.

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Interestingly, the Cora Indian neighbors of the Huichol in the Nayarit Sierra also pay their dues to the power of the kieri, which they identify with the Antichrist at the syncretistic ceremony of Easter Friday. On that day, one of the Cora, dressed in black and riding a black stallion, stabs the image of Christ three times. He is kieri, as well as the embodiment of the Antichrist, according to one of Dr. Jáuregui’s personal communications. Indeed, Guadalupe González’s world and the Catholic Church remain as far apart as Mesoamerica was from Spain before the conquest. Guadalupe González took me on three journeys to Tukakamerixi between 1973 and 1977, much to my later confusion, as I began to recognize that the power of the kieri was more than myth. To fulfill the tradition of the Huichol, I am supposed to perform two more pilgrimages to the kieri. Guadalupe González had been exclusively involved in the kieri cult until he made a pilgrimage with me to Wírikuta, under the guidance of José Benítez’s half-brother, Yauxali. Guadalupe González’s masterpieces have little in common with the work of José Benítez. In González’s paintings, figures are not connected to each other by linear relationships. Instead, they reflect and emanate a mystical attitude. Human prototypes appear to float in a vacuum, defying gravity to levitate in space. The primary focal point is the central being of the ancestor invoked in the yarn painting, around which everything else is arranged. Points, stars, and other symbols represent various prayers, and multiple beings invoke the legendary figures and their allies. Guadalupe González’s use of color can be very bold, and his figures are connected by the rhythmic pulsations created by the words and prayers (dots, stars, etc.) and the resonance of larger circular figures representing nierikate. His major paintings are often large, typically 4’ x 4’, such as The Birth of Our Father Sun (1973), The Birth of Our Great-Grandmother Moon (1973), The Birth of the Tree of Wind (1974) and The Metamorphosis of the Petrified Ancestor (1974). He created two other masterpieces in an even larger, 4’ x 8’ size, one of which is The Journey of the Dead (1974). After 1976, Guadalupe González dedicated himself almost exclusively to the practice of his healing skills and produced few meaningful works. He is now too old to construct yarn paintings, because his physical condition prevents him from exerting the necessary tension and constant pressure in applying each strand of yarn with the fingertips. But on occasion he will still create a special work of art to focus his energy and stop the tremors in his arms and hands. His art remains exceptional among the Huichol and in contemporary fine art. JUAN RÍOS MARTÍNEZ Juan Ríos Martínez is known in Huichol as Taurri Mutuani, or “Painted Red”. He told me he was given this name at birth in 1930 because of his skin pigmentation. This artist’s sense of Huichol culture was closely tied to his extraordinary performances on the Huichol xaweri, a native made violin, prized by the talented natives who have adopted them. He was known and acclaimed throughout the Huichol communities by their greatest musicians. At the age of nine, he started to fill in for his father, who was famous for playing at ceremonial

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celebrations. His father was a son of Inés Ríos (see the biography of Guadalupe González Ríos); this was the musical tradition that flowed through Juan Ríos’s veins. He became a devotee and pilgrim to the kieri at a very young age to improve his skills as a musician. When I met Juan Ríos, in the early 1970’s, he had been forced to leave his native territory of Carretones de Cerritos, Nayarit, because of family conflicts and he was earning a living in the slums of Tepic. He had recently abandoned the cultivation of the land and the deer hunt. He commented, “I consider my devotion to the deer the foundation of my spiritual strength. When I find a live deer, I suck its saliva and I eat it, because I believe he is also giving me something useful, some grace. As a witness to this are these thoughts of mine that are manifested as yarn paintings.” There were two types of yarn paintings for him: the first was easy to make and sell in the city, because it had no history and represented no spiritual drain (loss of iyari, or heart/memory). But he became ill after a while of producing these decorative pieces, and an uncle of his who was a maraakame told him, “It is because in Tepic there is a god who is the Virgin of Guadalupe and also Jesus Christ, and there you are playing, making your money without paying your dues.” Following his advice, Juan Ríos took candles and money to the Temple of Tepic and having fulfilled his vows or paid his “dues” to the mestizo deities, he recovered his health. The second type of yarn painting produced by Juan Ríos was more daunting, because it “takes a lot of thought”; it contains the iyari of the artist and it is “all made of one thread of yarn at a time”. Only these works, significant down to the last detail, arouse the attention of Our Ancestors. They force the artist to renew his traditional devotions and pay homage to the ancestors he invokes. We journeyed to Wírikuta together on one occasion, and Juan Ríos began to absorb more information from his peers, as he continued to fulfill his vows. Juan Ríos Martínez fills spaces with large, The Pilgrims Are Barred from Wirikuta sensuously curved figures and his paintings Juan Ríos Martinez 1974 express the physical experience of both field labor and ritual disciplines. The mythological context is humanized by a dramatic expression of emotion, which is not evident among other Huichol artists. The warmth in his use of line and color is unsurpassed, as seen in The Head of Our Elder Brother Blue Deer (2’ x 2’, 1973). In other masterpieces, he expresses the terrifying realm of Huichol mythology and its understanding of Our Great-Grandmother Tacutsi Nakawé, as an insatiable were-beast. This is significant because Tacutsi Nakawé is such a complex and fundamental Huichol ancestor as the first part of her name indicates. She represents one of the earliest manifestations of the essence of God. The semantic meaning of nakawé derives from the terms wetsi, hollow and naká, ear. In the first times, before the earth was founded, Our Great-Grandmother Hollow Ear was able to foretell in the primordial underworld that a great flood would devastate the previous realm. She is symbolized in the moon as Tacutsi Metseri and as the essence of growth, but as they do, she

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waxes and wanes. She precedes the foundation of the earth and her androgynous alter-ego is Naurú, who appears to be her husband and the early essence of fire. In fact, when she chants she wears a male mask, but fire, Our Grandfather and the exemplary chanting shaman came from her womb. She is the ultimate source of divination and prophecy for Huichol oracles involved with the kieri who have frequently been female maraakate. Another series of 14 works depicts The First Pilgrimage to Wírikuta; it contains some of the artist’s best work (4’ x 2½’). His vision as expressed in this series has been compared to that of Henri Matisse or Rufino Tamayo. After two or three years of creating yarn paintings with iyari, Juan Ríos began to suffer from doubts. At night his dreams were filled with the presence of Our Ancestors and threatening nahuales (animals by which a person may become possessed), which he depicted in his paintings the next day. He had been investigating the history of the great battles of the ancestors of the Huichol with the giants who first lived on this earth and who became predators of early humankind. Finally, his nightmares became too overwhelming, and he decided to return to making decorative yarn paintings, i.e., commercial crafts, which he could execute at less spiritual cost. The problem was that Juan Ríos, according to his own peers, remained involved with the cult of the tree of wind, whether he wanted to or not, and he never completed his vows. Thus, according to their tradition, he died (in early 1996) because he failed to revisit the kieri. Medical sources attributed his death to chronic liver ailments. TUTUKILA Tiburcio Carrillo Sandoval, baptized as Niukame, or “Sprouting Corn”, in Huichol, was born on a ranch of one of the most traditional Huichol communities in Tuapuri (Santa Catarina Cuexcomatitlán), in 1949. By the time we met in 1973, he had adopted the pseudonym Tutukila, derived from tutú, a yellow flower that is associated with corn, and kila, the action of beating the corn stalks with a stick to release the pollen or dust before the harvest. In 1963, he became one of the first members of his community to begin a formal education, which he had to pursue outside the Huichol territory to finish seventh grade. This way he “civilized [himself] in mestizo (Mexican) culture.” He also started making yarn paintings, as an apprentice to a fellow tuapuritánaka (member of the same community) named Andrés Valenzuela. He commented to me, “Andrés never wanted to teach me how to work properly, but by observing him I dedicated myself to forming certain figures, as a game or for a decorative effect. With time my designs improved, although they remained crude.” In 1964 he went to Guadalajara seeking work as a craftsman. “There I met the unforgettable craftsman and artist Ramón Medina, who was working with Father Ernesto.” Ernesto Loera was then the head of the Franciscan Mission of Zapopan, on the outskirts of Guadalajara. Later,

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Ernesto Loera introduced Ramón Medina to Peter Furst (c.f. Huichol Yarn Paintings). Medina, whose compositions were treatments of meaningful themes, hired Tutukila to assist him in making yarn paintings. After four months, Tutukila returned to the highlands, seeking to further his knowledge about his own culture by asking his father pertinent questions. His father responded by telling him that he would give him the proper orientation later if he showed an earnest interest in his people’s history. Consequently, Tutukila pursued his religious education by visiting the sacred spots of Our Ancestors in the Huichol Sierra. Tutukila interviewed elder wise people in his community, but he emphasized, “Even in these last few years, none of them has ever told me the truth; so I have relied on my own insight and the teachings of my father.” While he worked with me, Tutukila had to perform special rites and sacrifices for revealing aspects of his culture to an outsider, in hopes that his culture would receive more respect and recognition. He introduced me to life in the most remote parts of the Huichol Sierra, and we eventually became the compadres of two cousins of his, Totopika and Hautsima. Totopika carried major community weight; as Secretary of Communal Goods, he was the intermediary for the Huichol with the federal government, because he had managed to make personal contac My close bonds to an inner member of this commWhen Totopika died in 1979, the community askthe government’s efforts to take away their land aprivate lumber companies. The mutual understanwithin a vast context of interactions, which drew Tutukila stressed the ethic of not revealing the trumaturity through active practice and rigorous devachieved their ends by resorting to trickery, and bthe wise shamans, having gained their knowledgeinstruct others who seek knowledge gratuitously,outside their culture by prostituting the mysteries Along with José Benítez, Tutukila was at a certaiyarn paintings into a serious art form depicting ththe medium reflected a different background thanviewpoint.

Untitled painting by Tutukila 1974

t with President Luis Echeverría.

unity helped me gain their sympathy later. ed me by consensus to be its adviser in blocking nd to plunder their forests in collusion with

ding between Tutukila and me was formed me to serve among his people even to this day.

th to those who have not reached religious otion on a long-term basis. Our Ancestors often y testing those who sought their help. Today through penitence and discipline, will not

especially youngsters who would earn a living of their own heritage.

n point the main inspiration for the evolution of e Huichol tradition. However, his approach to that of José Benítez, and a more didactic

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When Tutukila collaborated with us from 1973 through 1975, he produced an epic history of the feats of Our Ancestors in a series of yarn paintings that averaged 10 per story. He incorporated carefully gathered information from close relatives who were noted shamans. He was recognized for his peerless craftsmanship, which he used to carefully detail important symbols and to forcefully represent the prototypal figures of Our Ancestors, thus influencing changes in the style of his fellow yarn painters. His intricate manipulation of detail lent more realism to his figures than is found in the work of José Benítez and others. He slowly formed the figures in his compositions, working with great application and concentration, without sketching any outlines on the beeswax (unlike Benítez). Even when creating large paintings, he rendered all the major features of each figure before beginning to form the next one. The color field that surrounds his figures follows their contours carefully, creating unique linear patterns that radiate from their forms and integrate them into the overall composition. Tutukila’s vibrant, harmonious textural approach confers an inner vitality on his figures. The Petrified Figure of Our Grandfather (Fire) (2’ x 2’, 1973) and The Power of the Kieri Is Tested (4’ x 2’, 1974) are two examples of his diverse style. He found it difficult to enlist the help of equally meticulous apprentices, and worked mostly by himself or with his wife Turuima, or “Corn Stalk”. Tutukila’s art is more reflective and style-conscious than José Benítez’s, partly because he aimed to depict his themes in faithful detail. He viewed his art as an effort to capture the significance and richness of his culture, having been made painfully aware that other Mexicans and outsiders regard his people as ignorant members of an inadequate society. He hoped mestizos5 and young Huichol would come to realize the depth and validity of their culture. As he said, “We cannot develop well among the mestizos because they don’t understand our religion and our culture. But they don’t realize how we would suffer, since they want us to lose our traditional ways to become just like them. But I say it is not right to lose everything that is ours in exchange for something we can’t defend. Outside culture is important, but so is ours. I believe we are losing it, now the young are losing their very language!” Unfortunately, Tutukila eventually chose to use his teaching credentials to become a supervisor of the National Indigenous Institute’s bilingual school programs in the state of Nayarit. This situation conflicted strongly with his more deeply held feelings, and he began to drink too much. He died in the 1980’s, without having had much contact in his later years with his community or myself.

5 So-called mixed-blood Mexicans are taught to denigrate their native traits.

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PABLO TAISÁN DE LA CRUZ I know Pablo Taisán de la Cruz by his matst

Trevnasofvc

Ysahaa ICchfh

Huichol name, Yauxali, or “The Costume of Our Father (Sun).” He was born as a member of the subgroup called Wautüa, from the community of San Sebastián Teponohuaztlán, Municipality of Mezquitic, Jalisco, around 1936. He spent most of his youth mostly in its southern branch called Tutsipa, or Tuxpan de Bolaños, Municipality of Bolaños, Jalisco, where he developed a traditional ranch with his brother and pilgrimage companion, Yauxali ©Juan Negrín 1978 Pancho Taisán de la Cruz. (Historically, the Tutsipa are probably a separate branch of Huichol, who had

ost of their land expropriated by the Spaniards in late eighteenth century. They found refuge mong their Wautüa siblings, until they tried to recover some of their old grounds at the end of he nineteenth century.) They are both half-brothers of José Benítez Sánchez and experts in the hamanic arts, capable of leading pilgrimages to remote sacred spots and chanting sacred praises o Our Ancestors that last for days and uninterrupted nights. They are healers as well.

he maraakame, or chanting shaman, can

epresent Our Ancestors as they are: in the soteric symbolism of votive objects like urute, otive arrows, and xucúrite, gourd bowls; ierikate, wooden disks decorated with yarn; nd memuute or tepárite, standing or round culptures in stone. Long, intimate experiences f the sacred allow the shaman to draw precisely rom a great range of symbols to describe his isions in properly assembled ideographic ompositions.

auxali began to lead ceremonial chants after

ome twenty years of uninterrupted discipline nd pilgrimages. Many of his foot pilgrimages ave traced the entire path from the coast in the west to ts through the northern and southern sacred spots. His dind abstinence from sex with his two wives that last up t

n 1975, during a pilgrimage in which Yauxali was my gultivator, survivor of the flood and ancestor of mankindarved wooden image of a deer’s head. My guide informere as an offering on a previous pilgrimage. He had “seeainting from exhaustion while cultivating his fields. Tuae reproduce the head and take it to his sacred dwelling.

Our Elder Brother Hot Arrows Yauxali 1981

he eastern holy land of Wírikuta, as well scipline includes periods of salt fasts o half a year.

uide to the cave of Tuamuxawi, the First , I was struck by the beauty of the ed me he had carved it and brought it n” the deer head as a vision after muxawi “spoke” to him requesting that

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Following subsequent pilgrimages, in 1977 Yauxali and his brother Pancho Taisán, called Matsuwa, or “Wrist-guard” in Huichol, began a special project with me to produce stone carvings of the sacred figures of Our Ancestors. These were to be kept as a repository of symbolic guideposts for future generations of Huichol. I founded “The Association for the Preservation of Sacred Huichol Art6, incorporated as a non-profit organization in Guadalajara, Jalisco, and received funding for the purchase of the first sets of standing sculptures, memuute7, and the round sculptures that accompany them, tepárite8. Initial funding was mostly provided through the nonprofit organizations Cultural Survival and Friends of Huichol Culture in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Yauxali also began to make yarn paintings in 1978 as part of an effort to explain the role of Our Ancestors and of their symbols in Huichol sacred history. He became a rare exception among yarn painters as an expert maraakame who approached his work as a master of purely sacred art. His output was sporadic, and his explanations were couched in esoteric shamanic vocabulary. The best of his art contains the same energy and sincere conviction of Guadalupe González’s finest pieces, as if a hidden magnetism guided his hands and the artist allowed himself to become an impassioned intermediary for the messages of Our Ancestors. Yauxali’s greatest yarn paintings are meant for people initiated in Huichol culture, but their archetypal beauty breaks down cultural barriers with its universal appeal. His second wife Kuaynulie, who accompanied Yauxali on most of the pilgrimages, along with his brother Matsuwa, José Benítez and I, also created a few remarkable paintings, and so did Matsuwa. Some of these works are in the Radford University Collection in Radford, Virginia, including a number of works by the artists discussed here, such as José Benítez, Guadalupe González, Juan Ríos and Tutukila. On display in the retreat center on campus is Yauxali’s sculpCorn, standing erect sculpted out of volcanic white stone. Necarved stone shield through which she can perceive her realmparaphernalia. Yauxali sculpted these pieces and their approparrow, a gourd bowl, and an accompanying nierika. The art cuniversity by the Kolla-Landwehr Foundation in 1996.

6 La Asociación para la Preservación del Arte Sagrado Huichol, Asociac7 singular: memuú 8 singular: tepari

Tepari by Yauxali 1978 ~ Photo P. Link

ture of Tatei Niwetsika, Our Mother xt to her is her tepari, a round , and all her corresponding riate symbolic offerings: a votive ollection was donated to the

ión Civil

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CONCLUSION The magic and mystery conjured by the nierika are reflected in the yarn painting medium by a few native artists who offer different mirrors of and views into the Huichol culture. Their expression is distinctly personal and is connected to seasonal events or intimate happenings, such as a dream, a birth, the sowing and harvesting of the fields, or an illness, that recall seminal events in human life. Since the visions and experiences that move the artist’s inner being are ever fresh, each work is unique. This meager number of native artists managed to harness their genius at a critical juncture in history. The pictures are a testimony of what the artist sees through his own nierika, his clear inner mirror that has been polished by his experience of the sacred. Their forms emerge from his iyari, a heart built on the memory of experiences that reinforce the path of immemorial ancestors, who are brought back to life by pilgrimages and ritual activities. The pilgrim assumes the name of a sacred ancestor for five years and his “heart” becomes connected to the experiences of Our Ancestors. Thus, the artist is imbued with a collective memory of signs and symbols that have an archetypal meaning when placed in proper order and that evoke quintessential beauty. It is important to distinguish the artist’s work from the votive religious crafts, as well as from the decorative or repetitive, inferior deteriorating crafts, manufactured without meaning for a bargain-hungry market. The former are only fabricated and deposited in sacred spots as offerings to an ancestor, they are not commercialized. They are meant to evoke, and serve as symbols specifically relevant to the ancestor in question. The genuine Huichol artist is distinguished by the wealth of the authentic cultural material on which he draws to express himself in a personal, therefore original, manner. He needs to establish a rapport with his cultural milieu that will give his drawings thematic relevance. This inspires the artist to make art that is not decorative, but integral to and reflective of his people’s culture or their shared mystical experiences. He cannot explain its content to someone ignorant of Huichol culture or someone he does not trust. That restricts his output. Typically he is a Huichol who is profoundly aware of both his native culture and the assault of western culture upon the traditional ways. Yauxali, for example, settled unsuccessfully in various parts of the Huichol Mountains after he saw how acculturated and modernized his community of Tuxpan de Bolaños, legally called an annex of San Sebastián was becoming. Unlike the craftsman, the artist does not want his art to be seen as anonymous or abstract design; he considers this art to be a beacon of a culture that deserves preservation and respect. Ironically, I was criticized for exploiting Huichol art because I drew people’s attention to the names of the creators of some of their finest work, instead of presenting them as anonymous Huichol yarn painters. This enabled us to promote higher prices for their art to the public and it allowed people to seek them out on a direct basis.

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EXHIBITS AND PUBLICATIONS The first catalogue I published was called The Huichol Creation of the World, to accompany an exhibit at the E. B. Crocker Art Gallery, Sacramento, CA, in 1975, and the San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA, in 1976. It contains 47 color illustrations of José Benítez and Tutukila yarn paintings, thoroughly explained. However, that book is currently out of print, like El Arte Contemporáneo de los Huicholes (published by the University of Guadalajara and the National Institute of Anthropology and History), which I wrote in Spanish for the Regional Museum of Guadalajara in 1977. It includes 44 yarn paintings, most by José Benítez Sánchez, with a few made by Juan Ríos and Guadalupe González. The National Autonomous University of Mexico City published a catalogue in 1979, called Arte y Magia de los Huicholes, which featured some of the stone sculptures and yarn paintings in an exhibition we organized, as well as photographs taken by John C. Lilly, Jr. of the Huichol in the field. It is out of print, as is a feature article I wrote for the UNESCO Courier magazine of February 1979, with a Guadalupe González masterpiece illustrating its cover. In 1985, the Universidad de Guadalajara published my Acercamiento Histórico y Subjetivo al Huichol, which may still be available. In 1985, major works of art were gathered for a European tour produced by Mr. John Hargrove Bowles and the Kolla-Landwehr Foundation: “The Shaman-Artist, Contemporary Art of Huichol Indians of Mexico” (for which I wrote the original French catalogue of explanations of yarn paintings). The exhibit traveled to Amsterdam, Bremen, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Paris. Consequently, the Mexican Institute of Fine Arts helped me reintroduce the paintings in an exhibit in Mexico City’s most appropriate forum, its Museum of Modern Art, for which I wrote Nierica-Arte Contemporáneo Huichol. Mexico’s English newspaper, The News, called it “The Best Show of 1986”. The most unusual trip these yarn paintings ever made was to Mallorca, Spain, where they were exhibited in the Church of Santo Domingo de Pollença, in October 1991. At the opening of the show, the ribbon was cut by Queen Sofía of Spain, to the consternation of Santo Domingo, who is shown in a medieval painting burning heretical texts and was now surrounded by Huichol iyari in 20 yarn paintings (including Yauxali’s). Basilio Baltasar and the Municipality of Pollença sponsored the tour and published a large and, beautiful limited-edition catalogue titled, Arte Indígena Huichol for the occasion. It included 14 photographs of the Huichol in their native environment and numerous yarn paintings. “An Appreciation of Huichol Culture”, my last published article, was featured in the winter 2001 issue of ENTHEOS, which was devoted to “Entheogens in the Americas”. It can be located through their Web site: (http://www.entheomedia.com) for a possible purchase order. In 1996, I co-authored an article with Johannes Neurath for the summer issue of the Mexican magazine Arqueología Mexicana (“Nierika: espejo entre dos mundos. Arte contemporáneo huichol”).

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Future projects include the production of a new CD-ROM, based on the masterpiece on permanent display in Mexico City’s National Museum of Anthropology and History. We will be integrating many previously unpublished photographs as well as taped material from my archives that I gathered in the field over the years to illustrate places, rituals and objects described in the yarn paintings. PHONETIC SYMBOLS: ü is used to denote a sound that is similar to the sounds of the French u or the German ü (umlaut), which do not have an equivalent English or Spanish vowel. The Huichol are currently taught to substitute a + symbol to transcribe that sound. ‘u’ is used to denote an “‘oo’” sound, as in “too.” ‘i’ is used to denote an “‘ee’” sound, as in “eel”. ‘a’ is used like a simple phoneme, as in “mat.” ‘ç’ used in the word “Pollença,” is pronounced like an ‘s’ in Catalonian Spain, like it is in French. ‘x’ is used to denote a sound that varies, according to dialects, between the English ‘sh’ or French ‘j’ sounds and a Hispanic ‘rr’ sound. The author Juan Román Negrín is eternally grateful for the help he received from Yvonne Negrín and the editors William Meyers and Leslie Kriesel, at Columbia University Press. © J. Negrín 2002 ~ 2003 All rights reserved