1958
Peyote Effect September 4, 2018 DOI: 10.1525/california/9780520285422.003.0009 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Historical analysis Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that Mexican federal officials pursuing development in Huichol territory showed almost no interest in Huichol peyotism despite growing researcher fascination with regional customs, and that the state imposed development top-down with virtually no cooperative relationship with its intended beneficiaries. |
Abstract
Around the same time that Salvador Roquet was investigating the use of hallucinogenic drugs in the sierra mazateca, the Mexican government undertook its first sustained efforts to implement a development agenda in the region where Mexico’s most important peyotists (the Huichols) lived. The Huichols had existed largely beyond the authority of the Mexican state for most of its existence. This chapter explores the shape of that development project, focusing on the ways that federal officials made sense of the traditions they encountered in the sierra. They showed an almost complete lack of interest in Huichol peyotism, in spite of the fact that Mexican and foreign researchers were increasingly fascinated by the customs they found in this region. We also see the top down, authoritarian state at its peak. Government officials simply sought to impose development on an unruly countryside and made almost no effort to develop programs or priorities through a cooperative relationship with the erstwhile clients of the developmentalist state.