Category: pueqbkzj

Peyote cactus grows in the desert near the town of Real de 14, in San Luis Potosí, Mexico on July 17. Mexican and foreign tourists trek to the desert to take peyote, which has psychoactive alkaloids. Alfredo Estrella/AFP REAL DE CATORCE, Mexico – Gisele Beker, a 26-year-old Argentinian, trudged for hours in the scorching sun to the sprawling Wirikuta desert, craving peyote, the cactus hallucinogen locals in Mexico deem sacred.Joined by three Mexican friends, Beker was living her dream as part of a new wave of tourists taking a trip for a trip – in this case to see where “lophophora williamsii” takes her.“Did you strike gold yet?” she asks her Mexican friends anxiously – after a 700-kilometer hitch-hike – as they search the desert floor for the small, spineless cactus full of psychoactive alkaloids, particularly mescaline.The drug is technically illegal, but for centuries it has played a role in indigenous culture in northern Mexico and Texas, where it is part of transcendence and meditation for cultures such as the Wixarika, or Huicholes in Spanish.So much so, that this remote corner of San Luis Potosí state has become a bit of a promised land for those who have trekked here to try peyote, despite the logistical challenges, since the 1960s.The tourists just keep trickling in.They have not been deterred by the difficult topography, and there is no indication they have paid any heed to rusty, metal signs announcing regularly that “HARVESTING AND SELLING PEYOTE IS A FEDERAL CRIME.”Nor has the legal background done anything to change the availability of local guides who, when they hear the magic words from tourists – “We want to go out to the desert” – sidle up and quietly offer their services.César, one of Gisele’s friends who wanted to keep his last name private, recalls his favorite saying: “You do not find peyote. It finds you.”When the group locates what they have come for, the rituals start in earnest.Typically, people ask permission from the Wirikuta desert where the indigenous people believe the universe was created.Then an offering is made to the plant and people are careful not to uproot it. The peyote is splashed with water and its small button-shaped fleshy parts are eaten.“It is like a fruit, fleshy but very bitter,” says Gisele. No related posts. The native people see the plant as the symbolic heart of the deer god, as well as their communications hotline with the gods.Every year, the local community treks to Quemado hill led by a shaman who gives blessings and makes offerings to the peyote.Soaking up the mystical feel of the place, Mexican Eliana bites on her peyote. “It’s like going inside your own spirit,” she says. “When I finish, I am going to think some more and then I am leaving.”Many people experience heightened senses, synesthesia, vomiting and other effects while on the drug.Chris Biddle, a 32-year-old South African, said he and his girlfriend felt connected to nature, but that the experience “is not for everybody.”Local expert José Luis Bustos, 67, underscored that people trying to treat peyote without respect would perhaps pay a price.“Peyote is not a drug,” he said. “It is a sacred plant. And it must be treated with great respect, because if someone does something bad, the plant just may punish him, treat him badly.”Other locals also have voiced concern at cases of foreigners who came from around the world only to die alone in the desert, or wind up in local psychiatric facilities.Mayor Hector Moreno warned: “Peyote is exclusively for (indigenous) Huichol culture. The rest of us are only supposed to promote its preservation and respect for it.” Facebook Comments read more

Related posts:What keeps Johnny Araya awake at night? Ex-President Abel Pacheco to back opposition candidate Solís Abortion and politics on the campaign trail 3 things that happened this week in Costa Rica’s runoff race A month is an eternity in politics. Today it is difficult to remember when Johnny Araya was actually campaigning to be president. It is even more difficult to remember hisparting words and offers of assistance to the Citizen Action Party and Luis Guillermo Solís on the occasion of Araya’s premature exit from the campaign.While it is easy to see how Johnny’s “absence has made hearts grow fonder” of him, perhaps it is equally important to recall his parting words from those distant days of early March to best determine how trustworthy the National Liberation Party leadership is in their fulfillment of campaign promises, even when those promise were tantamount to the campaign’s dying wishes.In the final official speech of his campaign, Araya said the PLN was “preparing to exercise a responsible opposition” to Solís’ PAC government as “the historic mission of Liberation surpasses a race for the presidency.” Admitting the lack of resources and time to change the electorate’s view of him and the PLN, he suggested it would be “unethical to use ignoble tactics to change the voters’ perceptions.”Antonio Álvarez Desanti, Araya’s campaign manager, was equally magnanimous, claiming “the decision of Don Johnny [to leave the campaign] was the decision of a statesman to give his adversary the freedom of time and space to prepare his next government. “ After all, he said, “The [PLN] campaign will evaporate in the coming days. What follows is a mere formality and mere process, and we understand that the election results will be in favor of PAC.”One wonders how the candidate and his campaign manager could be so wrong about their own political party. This last month has witnessed no respect for the supposed statesman-like decision of Araya to admit defeat and leave electioneering in the past. Nor has the PLN campaign evaporated as Álvarez Desanti promised. The new campaign leadership headed by Bernal Jiménez and a cast of PLN regulars now insist on debates. It usually takes two to tango, and presidential debates without a presidential candidate are quite rare in politics. But the lack of a standard-bearer will not deter the PLN.Recommended: Raising chickens on the ‘Ruta de Alegría’Lawmaker Luis Gerardo Villanueva in a press conference with the new electoral leadership declared that “this is a political campaign – not only a contest between candidates, but also a contest of ideas and programs.” Ideas and programs that PLN lawmaker-elect Ronald González claims PAC is now stealing from them.Are the ideas and programs PLN wishes to debate those that they could have implemented in the last eight years when they controlled the presidency and the Legislative Assembly? Are the proposals PAC has allegedly stolen from PLN the ones they refused to develop in the last near-decade of their reign? Or are they perhaps the corrupt policies and scandal-laden programs PLN actually implemented to the benefit of a few and at the expense of many?No matter what subject they would treat, political debates go well beyond the “mere formality and mere process” of a foregone election that Álvarez Desanti promised oh-so-few weeks ago.Campaign ads also are suggestive of a campaign. Without money to air them, the newest ad for PLN has had to circulate exclusively through social media. Negative in tone, it recalls the PLN’s campaign of fear aimed at the Broad Front Party’s José María Villalta. But in this ad, the target is an expressive Luis Guillermo Solís pumping up his supporters at a campaign rally.A daughter watching Solís on TV asks her father why he is so angry: “He isn’t angry, he is happy,” says her father. The 32-second spot then shows the PAC candidate calling for an end to the corruption of the past, in Spanish repeatedly shouting, “¡No más chorizo!” When the daughter asks the father why he is yelling this, the father responds, “This is a term he uses when he wants to offend us Liberacionistas.”Meant to raise the ire of insulted Liberacionistas, the ad certainly seems to employ the very “ignoble tactics” that candidate Araya claimed were beneath him. It also misfires, as it tries to have rank-and-file Liberation members share the blame for the corruption and scandal of their elected officials. Instead of convincing the PLN rank and file that “No más chorizo” is an insult to them, it begs the questions, “Shouldn’t PLN members be insulted by their leadership exercising the resources of the state as if they existed primarily to enrich them personally? Shouldn’t voters be angered by it? Shouldn’t Costa Ricans be as excited as the PAC candidate by the prospect of ending political corruption?”Unable to be honest during their eight years of victory, the PLN has demonstrated that neither can they be trusted in defeat. Araya’s offer to allow PAC to organize the Assembly also has fallen on the deaf ears of eager incoming PLN lawmakers who, desirously clinging to power, would rather ally with the neoliberals of the Libertarian Movement Party and the members of the Costa Rican religious right than look for solutions to national problems.A party in disarray, PLN’s leadership no longer knows what their principles are. These values apparently were never represented by their presidential candidate; Araya was so quickly pushed aside and so easily ignored that his advice, appeals and final wishes go unheeded. Neither does the PLN leadership see these principles in their former head of campaign, Álvarez Desanti. His pledges regarding the end of the political campaign were easily trampled by a more power-hungry faction of the PLN in obvious fear that with defeat will come an end to their political largess.This frenzied turmoil in the last days before voters go to the polls recalls words from the famous Dylan Thomas poem: “Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”It may be more than the death of a campaign voters are witnessing. It may be the lights going out on the aged and infirm leadership of the PLN.May they rest in peace.Gary L. Lehring is a professor of government at Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts. He is on sabbatical in Costa Rica. Read more of his columns by clicking on the hashtag #Elections 2014. Facebook Comments read more