The Peyote Effect: From the Inquisition to the War on Drugs

Abstract

Alexander Dawson has produced a stellar piece of comparative scholarship on the history of peyote and its uses in both Mexico and the United States. He opens his book with an 1833 cholera epidemic that plagued a small town in northern Mexico and the attempt by a pioneering doctor to use local remedies to solve the crisis. This introductory chapter paves the way for the multifaceted remainder of the book, in which scientific experimentation blends seamlessly with spiritual uses in the Native American Church in the United States and by the Wixarika in Mexico to demonstrate the complicated history of this small cactus. Dawson also problematizes the assumption that only indigenous peoples should consume peyote—that is to say, that nonindigenous peoples who consume the cactus are in some way violating peyote's spirituality.I found the chapters that emphasized the potential medical effects of peyote to be most valuable. Prior to reading Dawson's study, I was unaware of the intense study of the cactus by scientists in Mexico, the United States, and Europe. These scientific investigations led to different debates about and perceptions of peyote and its usefulness for the medical community. For example, one of the first experiments with the cactus occurred in the United States, when a Texas man, Dr. John Briggs, consumed a “mescale button” and subsequently experienced a rapid heart rate and dizziness (p. 12). He recorded these physical effects in a medical journal article that later caught the attention of scientists elsewhere. The medical community and policymakers in the United States gradually came to characterize peyote as a harmful, dangerous, and addictive drug, and as a result it became classified alongside narcotics, its use closely controlled except in the rarest of circumstances (as in the Native American Church). Restrictive rules were put in place that helped to distinguish peyote as something only Native Americans could consume. Thus in the United States peyote became equated with indigeneity, much like it had during colonial times in Mexico.Additionally, Dawson's chapters on the studies conducted in Mexico by Salvador Roquet were disturbing, to say the least. In 1957, Roquet experimented with peyote use as a curative agent for individuals with extreme mental disorders. Using lights, terrifying imagery, and music in conjunction with peyote consumption was supposed to produce psychic “stimulation” in his patients, thus helping lead the afflicted people to emotional healing (p. 84). I found Roquet's application of peyote as a way to cure mental illness to be fraught with problems; while on the one hand he had studied with indigenous experts such as María Sabina in order to learn about native plants and their applications, on the other his methods were quite unconventional. They displayed a sort of half understanding of peyote and the power that it has to distort a user's perception of reality.Descriptions of peyote by religious and secular authorities in the United States often mirrored earlier depictions of the cactus made by the Catholic Church (and others) in Mexico. For instance, Dawson notes that in the early decades of the twentieth century a prohibition movement had already coalesced that touted the dangers of peyote use among Native Americans in the United States. Reports called it a “dope drug among all the Indians who use it,” causing orgies and “drunkenness” that prevented indigenous people from assimilating and becoming productive members of US society (pp. 38, 53). This language is remarkably similar to that deployed by missionaries and government officials in Mexico, who critiqued peyote use among the Huichol because it kept them in a state of primitiveness and madness (p. 28). Thus assimilationists and prohibitionists on both sides of the border criticized the consumption of peyote because it was antithetical to the so-called civilized behavior that was the ultimate goal of the Mexican and US governments for their indigenous inhabitants.This book will appeal to a variety of scholars who focus on the United States or Mexico. Scholars of Mexican history will find Dawson's criticism of the racialization of indigenous people familiar yet refreshing, as he uses peyote to describe the othering of them since the earliest colonial times. And those interested in the United States will appreciate how Dawson traces the trajectory of peyote as a potential medicine through to its characterization as “poison” (in chapter 3) and its adoption by the Native American Church for their spiritual ceremonies. Throughout, Dawson problematizes the conflicting attitudes toward peyote and its frequent mischaracterization as a narcotic by US officials. Though the shifts in the text between the United States and Mexico, which Dawson admits reflect the history of peyote in both countries, could be a bit jarring at times, I think the complex organization helps create an impressive time line of the understanding of peyote and attempts to control it (p. 8).