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| Diana
Negrin |
I
landed in Guadalajara on May 27th and have
made it the base for my summer travels and research.
Guadalajara is my hometown and now, along with
Tepic, a principal site of my research involving
Wixárika (Huichol) migrations to
these two western cities.
During
the first week of June, I traveled to Santa Catarina Cuexcomatitlán,
probably the most traditional and conservative
Wixárika community, located in
the Western Sierra Madre in the northern part
of the state of Jalisco. There I mostly visited
with family friends and was updated on several
political matters that are important to the region.
It was the beginning of the rainy season and
people were largely busy getting their
fields ready for the planting of crops.
In
the past few weeks I have met with several Wixárika
university students
and graduates who currently reside in Guadalajara
and Tepic. I learned a lot from my conversations with them
and am impressed with the projects that they are each involved with concerning
both urban and rural Wixárika
communities. Most importantly, we established our
mutual interests in looking for ways in which we can
collaborate in each others' academic
research, as well as in our non-academic projects.
Personally,
this is a difficult time to be in Mexico, with
levels of violence due to organized crime at
an all-time high and an increased presence of
police forces visible along the highways, in
the towns and in the cities. At the same time,
federal, state, and local governments have continued
to press for eco and ethno tourist projects,
oftentimes overriding social and ecological matters.
In Tepic, the Wixaritari (Wixárika
in plural), through their beadwork and other artesans (crafts),
continue to be placed as a principal tourist attraction
(see photo). Nonetheless, I definitely
heard a lot of funny stories about these tourism initiatives.
