The Shaman's Mirror

by Hope MacLean

  Huichol communities are independent of one another, and the Huichol tend to be independent-minded people. The governors of San Andrés have no jurisdiction over Huichol living elsewhere in the Sierra or in cities and do not speak for them. Some artists commented on this situation to me with amusement or skepticism. To me, it seems to reflect the tension between openness and secrecy, which swings back and forth over time and between different individuals and communities.

  Caution about revealing occult knowledge meets an opposite principle surrounding yarn paintings. The Huichol believe that a competent artist should be willing and able to explain what a painting means to anyone who asks. Chavelo González explained:

  HOPE: You know many North Americans who come here and who want to learn something, and often they don’t know what they want to learn, and they are looking for something. Have you tried to teach them anything through your yarn paintings?

  CHAVELO: Yes, when they ask questions, a person should tell them what it is. What this means. What is the meaning of that. I can tell them. But also, the person should try to ask.

  HOPE: If the person doesn’t ask?

  CHAVELO: If they don’t ask . . . if a person makes a guess, if they try to say what it means, it’s possible they will offend or not know what the other person had in their mind. It is better to ask.

  HOPE: To know better the stories of the Huichol?

  CHAVELO: Yes.

  The Huichol idea that only the original artist can say what a painting means is very different from the Western tradition of art criticism. Contemporary Western critics feel free to assign meaning to an artist’s work. Indeed, some artists refuse to explain what their art means, saying that it is up to the beholder to decide. The idea is that visual art speaks for itself and that anyone is free to read his or her personal interpretation into it. The Huichol artists do not share this notion.

  Yarn paintings evolved through an iterative process, a kind of dialogue between artists and buyers. It is not just a case of Western buyers seeing a traditional art and deciding to buy it. Sometimes, dealers suggest ideas for paintings, which the artists pick up and use. Most of the time, it is the artists who propose concepts to the market through their works. The paintings that are sold today are outcomes of this process.

  16

  ancient aesthetics, modern images

  What conclusions can we draw from this study of commercial yarn paintings? What do yarn paintings tell us about why the Huichol make art, and what ideas guide their artistic choices? Here I will try to go below the surface details of technique and draw out some principles underlying the Huichol philosophy of art.

  There is no question that financial motivations play a part in the making of yarn paintings. The artists make yarn paintings to sell as a way to support their families; most artists have few other ways of making a living. Many older artists have little or no formal schooling, and their fallback source of cash income is dangerous work in the fields or manual labor for low wages. The importance of economic motivations is also shown by the fact that many artists are abandoning yarn painting for arts such as beadwork, which they consider more profitable and increasingly popular. The artists who are presently making yarn paintings seem mainly to be those who have a genuine preference for this particular art form.

  It is also clear that the purposes and functions of commercial yarn paintings are different from those of sacred offerings. Sacred paintings are made with ceremony and fasting and are created with the intention of offering them to the gods. Commercial paintings are made in everyday circumstances and are designed to attract buyers. Sacred paintings are smaller, simpler, and often round, and they may have only a few key images, such as one or two deer, a sun or nierika, a snake, or a scorpion. The commercial paintings can be larger, are usually square or rectangular, and incorporate more-complex designs and storytelling themes, such as myths and ceremonies.

  There has been a debate in the literature about whether yarn paintings are purely commercial products bearing little relation to Huichol shamanism. While commercial paintings are not the same as the sacred offerings, they do retain a significant amount of shamanic content. Commercial paintings are a repository of a great deal of information about Huichol shamanism. I have recorded dozens of variant versions of myths, many of which do not appear in the anthropological literature. They document ceremonies, including the required offerings. They describe the Huichol deities, along with their appropriate clothes, face paintings, animals, and attributes. The colors used can have important spiritual meaning. They can be records of visionary experience. Therefore, I feel it is a mistake to dismiss them as purely commercial products with no greater meaning.

  The question of whether yarn paintings are “authentic” is equally vexed. Grady (1998) devotes her doctoral dissertation to discussing the difficulties surrounding the concept of authenticity in Huichol art. I find the term almost impossible to pin down, because of the underlying assumptions that the Western art market brings to bear on indigenous arts and crafts. Yarn paintings are authentic in the sense that they are made by Huichol artisans (not offshore workers) and are usually accurate renditions of concepts in Huichol culture, including shamanism. I have drawn a clear distinction between paintings that are used for ceremonial purposes and those that are not—another grey area in some of the writing on authenticity.

  Is the commercialization of a once-sacred art necessarily destructive of the culture and its religion? Although some may deplore commercialization, on general principles, as a form of debasement, I do not see it that way. One might equally ask whether Catholic spirituality is debased or destroyed by the sale of souvenir icons, crosses, or pictures of the Virgin or the pope. Evidently, Catholicism continues to be practiced devoutly, and the sale of artifacts and souvenirs supports churches and shrines. The commercial industry, in effect, supports the religion and may actually increase devotion in its practitioners. Similarly, the sale of Huichol yarn paintings may give the artists monetary rewards and demonstrate external respect for Huichol culture and religion. The artists repeatedly said that they valued the opportunity to focus on their traditions, and the sale of art provides funds that I often saw them use to finance ceremonies and pilgrimages.

  Do commercial motivations mean that yarn paintings have lost whatever other aesthetic meaning they once had? As Anderson (1990, 234) asked, does an ethnic art necessarily discard the sophisticated aesthetic system of the traditional culture when it becomes commercialized? I would suggest that in the case of the yarn paintings, this depressing scenario has not happened. The reason lies in the fortunate coinciding of the aesthetic values of Western buyers and Huichol sellers.

  Both the Huichol and Westerners have reached a tacit agreement that yarn paintings should be about traditional Huichol religion and culture. The Western preference grows out of a long-standing preference for the exotic in indigenous arts—a preference that Graburn (1978) poked fun at in his title “‘I Like Things to Look More Different Than That Stuff Did.’” Western buyers particularly like ethnic art that deals with religious themes or has a myth attached to it. It is even better if an object has been used in a ritual—a desire that Mexican sellers of Indian masks are quick to capitalize on. Why Western art buyers feel this need to touch and own religious artifacts from other cultures is a fascinating anthropological study in itself, and several authors have made a start at explaining it (Graburn 1978; Greenhalgh 1978).

  The important point here is that the Western preference coincides with the religious and visionary themes that Huichol yarn painters prefer to use. The artists like this arrangement for several reasons. First, they have not had to invent new subject matter; they find their ideas within their own traditions. They can paint what they already know. As a result, the artists express gratitude that the making of yarn paintings allows them to spend their time thinking about their own traditions while still making a living. In the analysis of yarn-painting subjects, I noted that yarn paintings are almost exclusivel
y religious in content. The one exception seems to have been a brief foray into designs such as Walt Disney characters or Che Guevara’s likeness. This exception indicates that the artists might produce paintings with nonreligious themes again if the market demanded it of them, just as many artists are now turning to the more profitable beadwork.

  Fortunately, the market has not pushed the artists in the direction of reproducing commercial art from Western culture; instead, dealers urge the artists to make designs from Huichol traditions. This encouragement has enabled the artists to work within the context of Huichol aesthetic values and has led to a flowering of Huichol art in yarn paintings. I would suggest that far from being a degenerate art, yarn paintings continue to manifest outstanding creativity within the Huichol artistic and philosophical tradition.

  notes

  CHAPTER 1

  1. In English, the term “yarn painting” is commonly used, although some use “string painting.” Mexicans use several terms, depending on which aspects of the art they want to emphasize. The terms cuadra (Sp.: picture), cuadra de estambre (Sp.: wool painting), tabla (Sp.: board), or tabla de cera (Sp.: waxed board) all emphasize the materials. Tabla votiva (Sp.: votive or offering board) emphasizes the religious purpose. Huichol commonly use the term nierika.

  2. There has been some discussion about whether kieri refers to Datura, sometimes called jimsonweed, or to other species of Solandra. Both types of plants are hallucinogenic and are related. Some Huichol seem to have called kieri beneficial, and others have called it evil (Schaefer 1990, 145). Peter Furst (1989) clarified this discussion after interviewing Guadalupe de la Cruz Rĺos. She told him that the evil plant in her painting is Datura inoxia, properly called kieri-xra in Huichol.

  3. Susan Eger married Mariano Valadez, and has written under the names Susan or Susana and the surnames Eger, Eger Valadez, or Valadez. I have standardized her name as Susana Eger Valadez. The couple have since separated.

  4. Since about 2000, the Huichol have been buying cell phones, which make wireless communication possible in rural communities where there have never been telephone lines and where many do not have electricity. The mountainous terrain and dispersed settlements of the Huichol would make it prohibitively expensive to provide landlines.

  5. I have often used first names instead of surnames to refer to the artists; for example, I refer to “Lupe” rather than “Señora de la Cruz Rĺos.” This reflects current Huichol practice, which tends to emphasize calling people by first name. The Huichol did not adopt last names until the end of the nineteenth century, when Spanish census takers insisted that they do so (Lumholtz 1902, 2:98–99). I refer to myself the same way.

  6. Fagan (1998, 65) cites a San shaman in southwest Africa who drew people’s attention to things they could not see during a trance dance, such as a spirit eland that was standing in the semidarkness beyond the fire. His vision was strikingly similar to my own. The eland is a type of antelope, a member of the deer family.

  CHAPTER 2

  1. I have seen Internet sites claiming that the Huichol and their culture are dying quickly. Perhaps the authors say this to raise money or to convince people to buy crafts that may not be available in the future. It is an urban myth that ignores the reality of a rapidly growing population.

  2. The spelling “Zitacua” is used on the government sign at the entrance to the colony.

  CHAPTER 3

  1. Schaefer (2002, 305) gives the spelling of hix+apa and defines it as “land of the living, placed in the middle between the underworld . . . and the upper world.” Lupe pronounced the word differently and seemed to use the term more generally to mean the center point in a sacred map. She may also have been referring to xrapa, a giant fig tree (Lumholtz 1900, 171).

  2. Eligio Carrillo commented to me that the wooden saint of San Andrés is a special saint adopted by that community and not by Huichol generally, and that Semana Santa is the fiesta held for that saint. He said that his family never had anything to do with that santo (even though they came from San Andrés during the Mexican Revolution) and that the main purpose they knew of for it was that some people prayed to it for healing. His perspective provides an interesting contrast with modern accounts of elaborate Semana Santa ceremonies in San Andrés. Such practices may not have been the case ninety years ago, when Eligio’s family left San Andrés.

  3. I suspect that the translation of “Takutsi Nakawe” as “Grandmother Growth” is poetic license on the part of Lumholtz, the first person to write the term in English. Some of my consultants translate kutsi as “elder sister” rather than “grandmother,” which would make Takutsi Nakawe’s status as “Our Elder Sister Nakawe,” comparable to Tamatsi Kauyumari, or “Our Elder Brother Deer.”

  4. When the Mexican government was arranging protection for Huichol sacred sites in the early 1990s, there was some discussion among Huichol elders about whether the protected site for Tatei Rapawiyeme should be located in Lake Chapala or at a site farther south in the state of Colima (Leopoldo López, Instituto Nacional Indigenista, personal communication).

  5. The suffix “-ero” suggests a word borrowed from Spanish. Liffman (2002, 24) also suggests kawitero is a “loan word,” not a term native to Huichol.

  CHAPTER 4

  1. Berrin (1978, 152–153) illustrates four yarn paintings that were collected by Lumholtz in the 1890s and Zingg in the 1930s.

  2. Perhaps Knab’s term “wewia” is related to the word wewiakate, a word that Chavelo González translated as “dioses” (gods).

  3. See Chapter 5 for a discussion of rock carvings.

  CHAPTER 5

  1. There is a collection of yarn paintings in the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, but there is little record of their provenance or meaning (Jesús Jáuregui, personal communication). The labels on the boxes state that they were collected in Mesquitic in the 1950s. They were probably collected by Alfonso Soto Soria, but there is no record whether they are sacred paintings or were made specifically for him.

  2. The Ortiz Monasterio family was involved in an odd project to fly deer from a zoo in Mexico City to the Sierra to replace overhunted deer stocks. Not surprisingly, the deer died and the project was unsustainable. Shortly after, they won a contest offered by an airline. The prize was a trip to New York City, and so they flew several families from Santa Catarina to New York for a weekend.

  3. The Navajo use a very similar coiled serpent in a sand painting made for the Beautyway ceremony (Sandner 1979, 107).

  CHAPTER 6

  1. It seems to me that Lupe’s pinpointing of her birth date to the end of the Mexican Revolution is the most accurate benchmark, because it is one date that Huichol are likely to remember. Lupe’s passport had a birth date of 8 June 1922, but this date may have been assigned later by an official. It does not accord with her remembered date or her statement that she was a year older than Ramón Medina. Most Huichol of Lupe’s generation were illiterate and did not have birth certificates, so it is common to hear very general estimates of their ages.

  2. There is some confusion in the literature about the relative ages of Ramón and Lupe. Myerhoff (1974, 30) said Lupe was three or four years younger than Ramón, giving Ramón’s age as about forty in 1965. However, if Lupe was born in 1918, she would have been about forty-seven in 1965 and Ramón might have been in his midforties. Ramón told Furst (personal communication) that Lupe was quite a bit older than he was. Therefore, Furst (2003, 19) thought that Lupe was about ninety when she died, and gave the year of her death as 1998; this would have made Lupe’s birth year about 1908. (In fact, Lupe died on 9 May 1999, not 1998, according to her family and her gravestone. She was about eighty-one years old.)

  3. Kamffer (1957) briefly refers to yarn paintings, but he does not discuss them in any depth.

  4. Myerhoff listed Kuka as a participant in the 1966 pilgrimage and mentioned her by name in her thesis (1968, 141) and by pseudonym in her book (1974, 119–121). I recognized José Rĺos in Furst’s film o
f the 1968 pilgrimage.

  5. The paintings are reproduced in Furst and Myerhoff (1966). Two of the three are reproduced in Furst (1968–1969) and reprinted in Furst and Nahmad (1972). One is in MacLean (2001b, 72).

  6. Lupe gave me quite a different interpretation of this painting. She said that it represents the shaman’s path to enlightenment. The star represents the attainment of vision at the end of years of pilgrimage. The flowers on either side are temptations that the shaman must resist.

  7. The artists’ inclination to make copies creates problems for some dealers at the upper end of the market. Western buyers want original art, which is unique and one of a kind, rather than copies, especially if they are paying a high price. One gallery owner solved this problem by telling the Huichol that they should offer him only original designs and that if they subsequently made copies, he did not want to see them. Galleries at the lower end of the market do not seem particularly concerned about copying.

  8. Furst (1978, 27) states that Ramón “sometimes straddled with less than equanimity the two contradictory worlds” and that he “occasionally acted out . . . in alcoholic conviviality.”

  9. I have taken the date of publication from Fikes (1985, 373). These magazines were reprinted in 1980, though with black-and-white rather than color illustrations; my references are to the 1980 edition.

  10. The exhibition began in San Francisco, where it ran from 4 November 1978 to 4 March 1979, then travelled to Chicago’s Field Museum (1 May 1979 to 3 September 1979) and New York’s American Museum of Natural History (7 November 1979 to 10 February 1980) (Berrin and Dreyfus n.d.).