scholarly journals Reflexiones sobre la expansión y legalidad del campo peyotero en México

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Mauricio Genet Guzmán ◽  
Beatriz Labate

This paper presents a reflection on the implications of the use and trade of peyote (Lophophora williamsii) and the challenges associated with its conservation in a religious and binational (Mexico and the United States) context. Our main focus is on a controversy raised by the Native American Church before the Mexican government, via an application submitted to the General Directorate of Religious Associations of the Secretariat of the Interior, demanding the registration of organizations that use the cactus in their rituals. This case is unique because it represents a paradigmatic illustration of the drug policy and religious rights frameworks currently in place in Mexico.

Peyote Effect ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 103-120
Author(s):  
Alexander S. Dawson

As the United States moved toward a ban on peyote during the 1960s, the courts were forced to confront the First Amendment claims of Native American peyotists. This chapter explores the deployment of the concept of “bona fide” religious belief, which became the means through which an exemption for Native American peyotists was enshrined in U.S. law. The courts attempted to measure this through a series of metrics: whether or not other drugs were used, whether or not ceremonies took place within a formally organized church, and the extent to which these practices could be said to be traditional. More troubling was the fact that the courts and later the U.S. government relied on race as a basis for evaluating these claims, particularly after the Native American Church exemption was enshrined in federal laws that made peyote a schedule-one drug. Federal law made exceptions for the Native American Church only so long as those enjoying the exemption were also at least one-quarter Indian by blood. We see here, then, the role that the state’s obsession with race played in ensuring that Native American Church chapters became exclusively indigenous churches, reshaping the Native American Church in the process.


Peyote Effect ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 55-62
Author(s):  
Alexander S. Dawson

Chastened by how close a national ban of peyote came to passing in early 1918, the following October a group of Native American peyotists gathered in El Reno, Oklahoma, in order to found the Native American Church. This chapter explores this remarkable moment of political activism, along with the histories of peyotism in the United States that led to this initiative. The deep history of peyotism north of the border remains somewhat unclear, though we can be certain that the individuals who came together in 1918 to found a church that could, in turn, enjoy constitutional protections were participants in practices that had consolidated in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Their efforts to create an institutionalized church that would be legible to the U.S. government did not immediately bear fruit, as anti-peyotists dominated the Bureau of Indians Affairs (BIA) through the 1920s, though these efforts did begin to see significant success after John Collier became chief of the BIA in 1933.


Author(s):  
Clarissa T. Kimber ◽  
Darrel McDonald

Peyote is one of the best-known plant sources for a psychedelic experience. This small cactus is also associated in the popular mind with North American Indians and Hippies. Although its ritual use is thought to be over 7,000 years old (Furst 1989, cited in Schaefer 1996: 141), its use by Indians of the Native American Church (NAC) is less than 100 years old. The peyote button is the essential ingredient in the ritual ceremony associated with NAC meetings and is referred to as “the medicine” by those who regard the button as a god-being and ingest it as a sacrament (Slotkin 1956: 29; Smith and Snake 1996: 80, 91, 105–6). Even more recently, non-Indians have formed churches (the Neo American Church) to follow the Peyote Way or Road (Trout 1999: 47). Secular uses of peyote are as medicine, especially for topical application to the skin on open wounds (Schultes 1940), for divination to discover something lost or when possible attacks of the enemy will occur; or for mind-altering experiences of a nonreligious nature, that is, for recreation. These nonritual (profane) uses have a long history, but peyote’s more significant sacred use in the United States, as measured by numbers of participants, has been in force for little more than 100 years. Various plants are called peyote in Mexico (Schultes 1938: 157), and their usage in the public and official literature of Texas and the United States has not been precise over the years (Morgan 1976: 12, La Barre 1975: 14–17). The major confusion over the common name among field anthropologists and government officials has been with the mescal bean, or Texas mountain laurel [Sophora secundiflora (Ort.) DC]. This hardy, small tree produces a hard, highly toxic, red seed, which has had a long history of ritual use by Amerinds (La Barre 1975: 15). The distribution of the mescal bean is on the southern edge of the Edwards Plateau, on the caliche cuestas in the Rio Grande Plains, and in the mountains of the Trans-Pecos. The native Americans of this region strung the beans into necklaces or bracelets, and a shaman might have passed down to another shaman some of these items as important paraphernalia.


Author(s):  
Alexandra Délano Alonso

This chapter demonstrates how Latin American governments with large populations of migrants with precarious legal status in the United States are working together to promote policies focusing on their well-being and integration. It identifies the context in which these processes of policy diffusion and collaboration have taken place as well as their limitations. Notwithstanding the differences in capacities and motivations based on the domestic political and economic contexts, there is a convergence of practices and policies of diaspora engagement among Latin American countries driven by the common challenges faced by their migrant populations in the United States and by the Latino population more generally. These policies, framed as an issue of rights protection and the promotion of migrants’ well-being, are presented as a form of regional solidarity and unity, and are also mobilized by the Mexican government as a political instrument serving its foreign policy goals.


2021 ◽  
pp. 003335492097269
Author(s):  
Michael A. Flynn ◽  
Alfonso Rodriguez Lainz ◽  
Juanita Lara ◽  
Cecilia Rosales ◽  
Federico Feldstein ◽  
...  

Collaborative partnerships are a useful approach to improve health conditions of disadvantaged populations. The Ventanillas de Salud (VDS) (“Health Windows”) and Mobile Health Units (MHUs) are a collaborative initiative of the Mexican government and US public health organizations that use mechanisms such as health fairs and mobile clinics to provide health information, screenings, preventive measures (eg, vaccines), and health services to Mexican people, other Hispanic people, and underserved populations (eg, American Indian/Alaska Native people, geographically isolated people, uninsured people) across the United States. From 2013 through 2019, the VDS served 10.5 million people (an average of 1.5 million people per year) at Mexican consulates in the United States, and MHUs served 115 461 people from 2016 through 2019. We describe 3 community outreach projects and their impact on improving the health of Hispanic people in the United States. The first project is an ongoing collaboration between VDS and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to address occupational health inequities among Hispanic people. The second project was a collaboration between VDS and CDC to provide Hispanic people with information about Zika virus infection and health education. The third project is a collaboration between MHUs and the University of Arizona to provide basic health services to Hispanic communities in Pima and Maricopa counties, Arizona. The VDS/MHU model uses a collaborative approach that should be further assessed to better understand its impact on both the US-born and non–US-born Hispanic population and the public at large in locations where it is implemented.


2018 ◽  
Vol 53 (s1) ◽  
pp. 413-423
Author(s):  
Zuzanna Kruk-Buchowska

Abstract The aim of this paper is to analyze how Indigenous communities in the United States have been engaging in trans-Indigenous cooperation in their struggle for food sovereignty. I will look at inter-tribal conferences regarding food sovereignty and farming, and specifically at the discourse of the Indigenous Farming Conference held in Maplelag at the White Earth Reservation in northern Minnesota. I will show how it: (1) creates a space for Indigenous knowledge production and validation, using Indigenous methods (e.g., storytelling), without the need to adhere to Western scientific paradigms; (2) recovers pre-colonial maps and routes distorted by the formation of nation states; and (3) fosters novel sites for trans-indigenous cooperation and approaches to law, helping create a common front in the fight with neoliberal agribusiness and government. In my analysis, I will use Chadwick Allen’s (2014) concept of ‘trans-indigenism’ to demonstrate how decolonizing strategies are used by the Native American food sovereignty movement to achieve their goals.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document