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ALN0010.1177/1177180118762696AlterNativeGarcía-Weyandt

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AlterNative

Mothers of Corn: Wixárika women, 2018, Vol. 14(2) 113­–120

© The Author(s) 2018
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https://doi.org/10.1177/1177180118762696
DOI: 10.1177/1177180118762696
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Cyndy Margarita García-Weyandt

Abstract
Wixáritari (pl.) from Western Mexico perform a series of ceremonies through the cultivation and harvesting of Corn.
In communities outside Wixárika land, families align their ceremonies to the academic calendar and working calendar
to ensure the families’ participation. This article discusses the active role of Maize within ceremony from cultivation
to harvesting, emphasizing the role of women in preparing Corn-based substances for ceremonial offerings. Through
storytelling and embodied practices such as gastronomic representations, women are active agents in transmitting
the relationships between Corn and community members. Drawing from my ongoing ethnographic fieldwork among
Wixárika families in Tepic, Mexico, the article analyzes the ontological relationship between Wixárika and Corn. Utilizing
verbal performances such as storytelling, this article highlights the importance of Maize for purposes of continuing the
community’s connection to geographies, identity and the significance of women in enabling inter-species relations.

Keywords
Indigenous women of Mexico, Wixárika women, Wixárika ontology, Corn relations, inter-species relations,
Wixárika verbal performances

Introduction comadre (co-parent) Elva husked purple Corn cobs and

Well, long time ago the history that my mom tells is that there
was a flood right? Ah, well it was the time that Tacutzi [Mother
Earth], the one who made the Rivers that later became the
Earth, the Ocean I imagine, with her cane or I don’t know with
what, I think she made a road, like a small ditch, well the Sea
was created and Rivers, and that is why there was Earth to
grow Corn and that was the first thing she did [Tacutzi] grow
Corn. (Felipa Rivera Lemus, woman 35)
Origin stories, such as the one presented above, act as mne-
monic devices to remember important historical events in
the life of people. The genre of ethnogenesis, then, serves
the purposes of reconnecting members of the community
with the past and frame future relations with all actors in the
narrative through the process of retelling narratives of cul-
tural belonging, in time and space (Erickson, 2008, p. 36). In
the history of Wixárika people, Watakame (“first farmer”)
received Tatéi Niwetsika’s daughters and Watakame began
farming; Corn genealogy begins with this narrative (names
of Wixárika relatives such as Corn will be capitalized
throughout the article to denote respect). Wixárika women
in La Y+rata, a Wixárika community in rural Tepic, Mexico,
remember the importance of Corn by narrating to others the
history of Corn in Wixárika ways of knowing. In the perfor-
mance of Corn narratives, families remember their intercon-
nectedness with ancestors.
The first time I participated in the cultivation of Corn
was in the summer of 2016, Mamachali prepared the
seeds by separating each of the colors of Maize. My
her daughters helped in the separation of the best seeds
for cultivation. In a square blanket, the women and the
girls in the family, while discussing the origin of each
Corn color, separated by hand the five colors of Maize
(Yuawime “blue,” Taxawime “yellow,” Tuxame “white,”
Tairawime “red,” and Tsinawime “multi-color”). Without
hesitation Mamachali identified which color came from
each side of the family. Later in the week, families sent
their sons to the field as representatives for each house-
hold to clean and cut down the weeds. Many families
came from La Labor in the municipality of Santa Maria
del Oro, San Lorenzo in the municipality of Ruíz, and
Villas de Hidalgo in the municipality of Santiago
Ixcuintla.
In the summer, usually at the end of June or beginning of
July, the families prepare the seeds and the coamil
(“Cornfield”) for the cultivation and for the ceremonies
involving the cycle of Corn. Similar to the roles of Tatéi
Niwetsika’s daughters and of Watakame, women and men
work in the field. Women handle the seeds and men work
the soil and prepare the coamil for cultivation (Felipa
Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, University of
California, Los Angeles, USA
Corresponding author:
Cyndy Margarita García-Weyandt, Department of World Arts and
Cultures/Dance, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles,
CA 90095, USA.
Email: cyndymercy1@ucla.edu
114 AlterNative 14(2)
Rivera Lemus, woman 35; Zingg, Fikes, Weigand, &
García, 2004). As an active participant, I observed families
with ceremonial responsibilities participate in the Tatéi
Niwestsika ‘E+sixa (cultivation ceremony). In the cere-
mony, while children embodied all Corn maids, they danced
at the sound of the violin, presented the offerings to Tatéi
Takutsi Nakawé and Tatéi Newitsika and exchanged Corn-
based offering among themselves. When the ceremony
ended, everyone who came from afar left the community. In
La Y+rata, everybody resumed their daily activities.
Therefore, women continued the labor of husking, selecting
the best Corn seeds and planning the next trip to the coamil
to begin the season.
In this article, I will demonstrate how the role of Rosalía
Lemus, a Wixárika elder women, enables inter-species rela-
tions with Corn for the well-being of her family. I will show
women’s use of storytelling and other verbal performances
for epistemological purposes. First, I will discuss how
Mamachali’s family sustains and maintains their relations
with Corn despite the fact that they have migrated closer to
an urban center. In light of Mamachali’s life experience, I
especially consider how women’s labor in the domestic
sphere fosters ontological relations with Corn through cer-
emonies and in daily routines. I discuss how women employ
Wixárika language to maintain relations with ancestors in
public and private spaces. I later explore the verbal perfor-
mances in the community as linguistic resources to connect
members of the community to Wixárika ancestors. Finally,
I examine the “ontological turn” in relation to Wixárika
ontology to explore “being” and “existing,” by exemplify-
ing how Indigenous communities across the Americas per-
ceive human, non-human, and beyond human or in the case
of Wixárika, Kaka+yarite (Elder Ancestors).
To understand urban Wixárika women’s role in sustain-
ing and maintaining a relationship with their ancestors, I
use ethnographic field methods such as life history inter-
views, open-ended interviews, surveys, participant obser-
vation, active participation in the field, genealogy, and
archival research. Since 2012, I have been visiting the same
Wixárika families I first met in a gathering of Indigenous
communities in Tequepexpan, Nayarit. Although I am not
part of the community, my participation as a godmother or
goddaughter-mother-student or researcher allows me to
move in the field with my personal narrative: multi-ethnic
(part Indigenous, part mestiza woman) and binational
(ancestral roots from San Juan Sayultepec, Nochtitlán,
Oaxaca, born and raised in Sinaloa, and lived in multiple
spaces: Ejido El Tablón, Mazatlán, Mexico City, Tijuana,
and currently in Los Angeles).
In my repeated visits of 8 weeks during the summers and
extended visitations to specific ceremonies throughout the
year for about 1 week each, I actively participate in the
daily life of women in La Y+rata to experience different
aspects of Wixárika culture. In my visits, I usually video
record, audio record, take photographs, and notes in my in-
depth interviews with members of the family in Spanish. I
relied on the ethnography of communication outlined by
Dell Hymes and Richard Bauman in their respective works.
Hymes provides a framework for the analysis of language
and performances. In his framework of analysis, he sug-
gests that interlocutors in the act of speaking exchange “a
shared code,” a mutual understanding of the “code,” and a
“setting” to transmit a message (Hymes, 1974, p. 312).
Using Hyme’s model of speaking in the context of bilingual
Wixárika-speakers allows me to see how speakers share,
use, and disseminate messages in the performance of Corn
narratives. Bauman (1984), as well as Hymes, proposes
that speech communities rely on a set of markers to signal
the performance of “verbal arts” in which the narrative, sto-
rytelling, and speech from a community is an ethnographic
method to uncover modes of speaking (p. 15). In his frame-
work, Bauman (1984) provides a method to decode the per-
formance of narratives within a community by using a set
of structured devices such as codes, figurative language,
paralinguistic features (p. 16). In using Bauman’s method
to decode Wixárika modes of speaking, I am able to find
how the community uses the genre of storytelling as a
device to demonstrate their connections with Corn.
Ethnography of communication as a method allows an
understanding of Wixárika modes of speaking, in this case
storytelling. I record storytelling by Mamachali and other
women in the community with the intentions of analyzing
some of the linguistic resources available to Wixárika fami-
lies. With the help of women in Mamachali’s family, I tran-
scribe Wixárika words using the International Phonetic
Alphabet (IPA).
Cultural endurance and
transmission of knowledge
Over time, many Wixáritari (pl.) moved for political rea-
sons (appropriation of land, mining projects, and globaliza-
tion) and access to services (health, education, and jobs)
from their Native lands to border towns of neighboring cit-
ies. Beatriz Rojas (1993) estimates that over the past
150 years, most Wixárika people have migrated from tradi-
tional land (p. 196). Wixárika people’s mobilization to
larger cities led to an increase of interaction with the mes-
tizo population. Stacy Schaefer (2015) in her most recent
work, Huichol Women, Weavers, and Shamans, addresses
the movement of Wixárika women to cities as women leave
traditional lands to find access to education, services, and a
more profitable market for selling arts and crafts (p. 152).
Indigenous women from Mexico find niches across and
beyond the nation as a resource to gain economic sustaina-
bility. For instance, the Y+rata community with strong
women leadership built a tuki (“ceremonial center”), kitch-
ens, and Fire pits for the performance of Wixárika ceremo-
nies and cultural practices mirroring Sierra living. For the
past 2 years, Mamachali and my comadre Elva produced
artwork and sold their pieces in markets to build their
homes using the collected funds to purchase materials.
Indigenous communities displaced from ancestral land
find ways to preserve cultural traditions and ways of know-
ing. In the article, “Differential acculturation among the
Huichol Indians,” Phil C. Weigand (1981) writes a histori-
cal overview on Wixárika acculturation and he includes a
discussion on migration (pp. 17–20). In his discussion on
García-Weyandt 115
migration, Weigand proposes two types of movement in
which he identifies patterns of assimilation. In the first
model, Weigand suggests that by the second generation of
Wixárika, the community assimilates to mestizo society. In
the second pattern of migration, Wixárika communities in
the cities see the value in retaining aspects of their cultural
identity and decide to remain “Huichol within the urban
environment” (Weigand, 1981, p. 18). Families in La
Y+rata managed to retain key aspects of their Indigenous
identity for cultural survival while living in urban centers.
For some members of Mamachali’s family, urban living
brings challenges to maintain aspects of Wixárika identity;
however, the family continues passing down narratives of
Corn and traditional ways of cultivating Corn indicating
their deep connection to Corn beyond the daily
consumption.
The relationship between Wixárika families and their
environment prevails in the communities’ practices sur-
rounding Corn. Wixárika families at La Y+rata maintain a
very close and intimate connection with Corn. Once the
community harvests, dries, and stores the Corn for ceremo-
nial or everyday purposes in the teyari (center of the field),
women’s primary role is to handle the seeds for their con-
sumption. Women begin the process of making xakwitsari
(limed Corn) then, they grind the Corn kernels in the tradi-
tional metate (grinder made of stone) and prepare from pul-
verized hominy a masa (dough) for tortillas (flat bread
made out of Corn). Wixárika women at Mamachali’s ranch
perform this specific role in every family to learn the
importance of Corn as a food staple (Felipa Rivera Lemus,
woman 35, personal communication, July 2015; Rosalía
Lemus, female 68, audio interview, August 2013). In the
first week of my fieldwork in summer 2016, early in the
mornings, Olga woke up everyday to help her grandmother
grind the kernels to make tortillas for the breakfast. Even
when maseca (pre-made pulverized Corn flour) is availa-
ble, families make the effort to prepare the tortillas using
the xakwitsari because the consumption of Corn will pro-
vide children and elders the vitality of the ancestor Corn
through the consumption of tortillas.
When the dough was ready for the tortillas, Mamachali
brought red Corn masa from the inside of the tuki (ceremo-
nial center). She showed me the beautiful dough she was
about to use to make tortillas. Then, she gathered all the
necessary tools to set the Fire to cook. Finally, she began
preparing tortillas by using her bare hands to mix the dough
turning and rolling the pink mixture. Then, she grabbed a
ball of masa and pressed it with her hands to place the flat
dough ball in the prensa (tortilla maker). I was sitting at the
table unable to do much of the work, not because I did not
want to be helpful but because according to Mamachali I
did not know “the proper way of making tortillas” (Rosalía
Lumes, woman 68, personal communication, 2014). While
I was sitting, I listened to Mamachali speak in Wixárika and
Spanish. She commanded her granddaughter to help her
with the Fire and flip the tortillas over in Wixárika. When
she spoke to me, she code-switched to Spanish to utter the
words “As I already told you,” a cue she repeats every time
she resumes her narrative. In this very intimate space, while
she prepared food she created a performance space in the
house kitchen, I am the only one allowed to ask questions,
the other girls help in the multiple tasks around the kitchen.
Some girls bring more wood for the Fire, others cut the
vegetables, and the little children play around us. As I was
sitting in the kitchen, I asked Mamachali to tell me more
about the importance of Corn. In my privileged position as
a researcher, I was grateful for having the opportunity to
acknowledge Mamachali’s role in the family. As the elder
of the family, Mamachali’s role goes beyond the oral trans-
mission of knowledge; she is responsible for teaching girls
Wixárika food ways, farming, and ceremonial practices of
Corn. Although the genre of storytelling serves as an epis-
temological device to convey important information
regarding cultural aspects of Wixárika life her actual labor
and embodiment of Corn practices allows us to learn.
Storytelling, then, becomes Mamachali’s epistemological
device to teach members of the family about the intercon-
nection with Corn and the embodiment of all Corn prac-
tices become her methodology.
Women’s role in the cultivation of Corn extends
beyond the utilitarian. Through storytelling, women
become aware of their Corn ancestry. At La Y+rata, girls
learn how to feed community members and all other
extensions of kinship with Corn and Corn offerings.
Susana Eger (1978) and Stacy Schaefer (2002, 2015)
devoted their scholarship to understanding women’s
identity formation through the practices of artwork and
weaving. In Mamachali’s family, art-making and weav-
ing are more than expressions of womanhood, the two
practices became a new path to gain economic stability in
urban communities. However, Corn and knowing how to
prepare Corn-based meals such as tortillas instill by far
the most important aspect of womanhood at La Y+rata.
Berta, the oldest daughter of my comadre Elva’s house-
hold, after attending school comes home and prepares
tortillas, sometimes as the only component of the meal
for the family. During my stay in the summer 2014, when
Berta was only 15 years of age, I observed how she was
able to set up the Fire and make tortillas using maseca
(pre-made pulverized Corn flour). Over the years, I have
observed how she continued making tortillas for her sib-
lings even after she married at the age of 18. Now, Isabel,
15 years and my goddaughter, ensues the responsible for
the tortilla making in the family. Mamachali asserts, “I
taught all my daughters how to make nawá, how to culti-
vate this Corn, and all they already know, and then I
taught them how to weave and embroider” (Rosalía
Lemus, woman 68, summer 2014). Mamachali explains
how before teaching the arts in the community, she taught
all her daughters the art of making Corn-based meals to
feed their relatives, including Kaka+yarite.
In the essay “The girl who ground herself Huichol atti-
tudes toward Maize,” Anthony A. Shelton (1996) analyzes
the story of Corn and outlines the role of maize in Wixárika
communities to conclude that through ceremony families
develop “kinships” (p. 457). In his article, Shelton (1996)
summarizes the story and proposes “Maize is thus a gift
to the Huichols from the ancestral deities” (pp. 452). His
116 AlterNative 14(2)
analysis provides an understanding of Corn relations.
Shelton disregards the agency of Corn in Wixárika ways of
knowing when he dismisses Yuawima’s (Blue Maize Corn)
intentionality of helping humans. Corn was a gift, but
Yuawima turned herself into a human person to help
Watakame (first farmer) with the cultivation. Through nar-
ratives, Wixárika families begins to understand how Corn
entities interrelate with them. Later, the families learn their
responsibilities in the harvest to sustain and maintain rela-
tions. Stories serve as an epistemological device to teach
children their responsibilities in the community and the
gendered division of labor. In the following section, I will
discuss personhood in Wixárika ways of knowing and how
language enables and mediates relations during the cultiva-
tion and harvesting of Corn.
Wixárika being and existing
Children around 5 years of age learn basic principles of
Wixárika worldview by participation in ceremonies. La
Y+rata community celebrates the main ceremonies during
the month of October. Usually, all major ceremonies related
to Corn are compiled in one major celebration during the
weekend. The family distributes the major festivities into
3 days: Friday night, grandfathers assign names during the
Teukarita “Naming Ceremony,” Saturday morning children
celebrate the Yuimakwaxa “Harvesting Ceremony,”
Saturday night family dance and bless the harvesting in the
Tatéi Neixa “Dance to Our Mother Corn,” and Sunday
morning Xarikixa “Festivity of Corn Kernels,” in which the
family share and eat roasted Corn kernels for the first time.
For the past 3 years, my daughter and I have participated
in the ceremonies of October. The first year, in 2015 when
my daughter was 2 years of age, we flew to Tepic for the
first part of the ceremony. On Friday, all the mothers gath-
ered by the Fire pit and made tiny tortillas. Later, we placed
these inside the bags by our children. We also prepared
small tamales and left them cooking in the outside Fire pit
for the next day. Later at night, the mara’akame opened a
public communication with entities using nenewierika
(“praying sentence”) and established communication with
all beings in Wixárika ontology. The mara’akame’s perfor-
mance evokes the presence of all Wixárika relatives, asking
them to be present at the ceremony. Later at night, when the
grandparents dreamt of the names of the new initiates they
bring participants inside the tuki (ceremonial center) and
mara’akame began chanting to introduce the child to all the
ancestors (Santos and Carrillo, 2012, p. 150–152). Before
everything took place, Felipa came to find me and told me
to come to the tuki. Half asleep, I carried my daughter in
my arms and walked to find Elva with her baby inside the
ceremonial house. First the mara’akame of the family intro-
duced all the children to the Kaka+yarite in each direction
including Catholic saints. Later, each child went to the Fire
pit and finally to the front of the tuki to present them to
Tatewarí (Our Grandfather Fire) and Tatéi Takutsi Nakawé
(Our Grandmother Growth). The initial reaction of a child
when the mara’akame bathes its body is to cry and resist the
coldness of the water. Holding a 2-year-old toddler crying
while trying to pay attention to all the details becomes an
arduous task. However, I was acutely aware of my intersub-
jective participation. I felt the coldness of the night, I heard
multiple people chanting in Wixárika and praying in
Spanish, and I saw some people holding candles. My
comadre Felipa held my daughter’s waist down, and
Mamachali passed all the materials including water and
cotton balls to the mara’akame.
After making sure the body of the child is covered with
water (paying attention to the body’s joints and crown of
the head) the mara’akame transported each child to the out-
side. My reaction as a mother was to calm my daughter by
whispering in her ear “everything will be fine.” However,
Mamachali quickly suggested to breastfeed her to allow the
mara’akame to finish with the blessings. In the outside, the
mara’akame carried my daughter with the help of Felipa,
her grandmother, and presented her to Our Grandfather Fire
and then moved her to the front of the tuki and with her
barefeet made her walk on the ground and turn over a gourd
to feel the Earth and establish contact with Our Grandmother
Growth. The following day before dawn parents woke up
all participating children, dressed them up, painted their
faces with ‘uxa (yellow root), placed a bowl and cup with
offerings, and without ingesting any food or drinking water
the children sat with their caregivers by the drum to listen
to the mara’akame’s chants. While children rattled their
gourds, they received the blessings from the mara’akame
and flew to Wirikuta (Desert) granting children with an
“inner map” embedded in the ceremony (Anguiano and
Furst, 1976, p. 111). At the end of the ceremony, children
exchanged their food with other children, elders and elder
ancestors before they all continue the journey (Field notes
2016 and 2017). In these 2 days of ceremony, all the partici-
pants encounter Kaka+yarite in multiple spaces. First in the
opening chants of the mara’akame, later inside the ceremo-
nial house, and while everyone sat down to fly to Wirikuta.
To understand Wixárika “being” and “existing,” I ventured
into the task of reviewing diverse experts in Wixárika scholar-
ship and in the “ontological turn.” In Wixárika’s perception of
relatedness and being animals, plants, topographic formations,
land, and other “inanimate objects” such as art, feathers,
looms, crystals, and natural forces possess personhood
(Neurath, 2013; Schaefer, 2015). Linguistically, Wixárika
speakers distinguish a category for ancient ancestors, which
includes all extension of Wixárika kinship: Kaka+yarite.
Kaka+yarite interact with human persons in different levels
and change form depending on their powers and abilities. For
instance, Yuawima (Blue Corn) became-human person to
interact with the first farmer, Watakame (Felipa Rivera Lemus;
Zingg et al., 2004). Thus, personhood on Wixárika families
extends from everyone in nature to any material objects cre-
ated by members of the community such as art.
In the article, “Anthropology of ontologies,” Eduardo
Kohn comments on the “ontological turn” and criticizes all
the contributions surrounding the topic. Through the essay,
the definition of the “ontological turn” loses some of its
meaning as Kohn moves from one author to another and
provides multiple definitions. Kohn defines ontology as
“the study of reality” and his definition clearly states the
implications of utilizing this framework in anthropology to
rethinking concepts of the humans, “other-than-human,”
García-Weyandt 117
beyond human, and more than human. Thus, allowing a
discussion on the perception of multiple communities on
being and existing. Kohn’s definition of ontology allows
for the study of Wixárika and Corn to move forward into
the study of inter-species relations. I aim to insert Wixárika
ontology into the conversation of the “ontological turn” to
see how Wixárika people contribute to the ideas of “the
study of reality” and expand the notions on inter-species
relations (Kohn, 2015; Latour, 2012).
In my efforts to understand Wixárika Corn from an
ontological prospective, I take into considerations
Wixárika’s worldview to uncover the relationship between
people and Corn. In the work of Johannes Neurath, La
Vida de las Imagenes: Arte Huichol, the author grapples
with a discussion on Wixárika art and the esthetics of art in
shamanic practices. He discusses ontology in Wixárika
using theories in the “ontological turn.” In spite of
Neurath’s efforts to use Descola, Latour, and Viveiros De
Castro’s concepts of ontology, he minimizes Wixárika
ontology into the production of art as a symbolic practice.
In his attempt to define “persons,” in Wixárika thought,
Neurath (2013) attributes art with properties of life by first
distancing himself from Western thought; second, by mak-
ing an analogy between body and cosmos in which he con-
ceptualizes the body in relation with the cosmos; and
proposing that specialized artists have the abilities to cre-
ate Wixárika cosmos in works of art (pp. 19–25). Objects
for Neurath (2013) are persons, and the key in understand-
ing Wixárika conceptualization of personhood is in the
ability to “see the world in a different way” (p. 30). While
his description of Wixárika personhood is crucial to the
understanding of ontology, without the evidence to con-
ceive art as living, he evokes ideas of animism. These
ideas are prevalent through his constant use of “animist
people” throughout the text and his categorization of
Wixárika as an “analogistic society” or societies who asso-
ciate one thing in relation to another. Making assertions
about Wixárika’s personhood without providing the data to
prove how objects are alive, Neurath’s claims of Wixárika
ontology fall into antiquated theories of animism.
In antiquated theories of animism, things such as art and
nature possess attributes of life in a primitive ways of think-
ing. Anthropologist Nurit Bird-David (1999) revisits the
term “animism” to reverse the association of the term with
Indigenous communities as primitive. By using environ-
mental theory and personhood theory, she provides a new
framework to understand the relationship between people
and environment in which social relations include so-
called “supernatural” entities (Bird-David, 1999, p. S68).
Although the “supernatural” implies a hierarchical division
of power, in Wixárika terms, power is attainable if an indi-
vidual wants to access the “supernatural.” To access power,
one must train and follow the path of mara’akate (medicine
men, shamans). In her work, Bird-David expands the idea
that Indigenous communities relate to their environment
because they live in proximity to ecosystems and many
continue having a cognitive orientation to conceive nature
as an extension of kin. Wixárika people share a field of
relations with their local environment in which entities
such as Corn constitute part of their social networks. In this
Wixárika context, relatedness of human and beings entails
having the means to communicate, share spaces, and recip-
rocate with extended kin in a local environment even in
non-traditional land. For members of the family, Wixárika
ceremonial language mediates the relations between the
physical and the metaphysical. For example, mara’akate
with their chants establish communication with the ances-
tors to bring their presence to the communities. Women
extend the presence of ancestors through oral tradition and
embodiment of practices such as cooking, art-making, and
storytelling. In Wixárika communities outside Native land,
such as the case of Mamachali’s family, families reconnect
with their ancestral roots by the performance of origin sto-
ries and embodiment of Corn practices.
Through language, women pass down their cognitive
orientation to see nature as an extension of kin. After
5 days of the cultivation of Corn, Mamachali visits the
Cornfield to bring mawarixa (offerings to the cornfield). In
my first visit to the coamil (Cornfield) in 2015, I was very
excited to go out with the family; however, Mamachali
showed concern for the growing Cornstalks. When she
spoke about visiting the coamil, she referred to the plants
using the diminutive “milpitas” (little Cornstalks). When
we arrived, Mamachali’s face softened and she prayed in
front of the teyari (center of the field). She placed the can-
dles, chocolate, cookies, and water from Wirikuta inside in
the teyari. I was puzzled about Mamachali’s preoccupation
for Cornstalks even before they had sprouted from the
ground. She invested her time and her money into bringing
offerings for Tatéi Takutsi Nakawé to ensure that the Corn
was germinating properly. Mamachali with her knowledge
about Corn, Corn cultivation, and dedication passes down
the cognitive orientation to see Corn as more than just a
plant, but as an active agent in the life of Wixárika
families.
In a conversation with Dolores regarding health and
Corn practices, she stated that to maintain our health in the
community, we must constantly live in state of reciprocity:
“Well if you don’t give, something might happen to your
health this is because you didn’t give anything, so a lot of
things can happen” (Dolores Rivera Lemus, woman 45).
She referred to the lack of ceremonial offering to Corn or
mawarixa. The ceremonies beyond marking the beginning
or end of the season also mark the beginning of a constant
exchange. Mamachali echoed the idea of reciprocity when
she spoke about the exchange of offerings during ceremo-
nial events in the community:
when we made nawá (Corn-based drink) we go to the Cornfield
and leave it there right after like in October well another
ceremony of El Tambor [Druming Ceremony] yes, because
later we go to Wirikuta (“Desert”) to leave an offering and
little face, arrow and God’s Eye, and yarn painting. (Rosalía
Lemus, woman 68)
Mamachali begins reconnecting each member of the
family with their ancestors when she enables the relation-
ship between Corn and people by the preparation of
offerings for ceremonies. While the children participate
in the ceremony, the mothers constantly prepare food for
everyone in the family. Children actively participate in
118 AlterNative 14(2)
the cultivation of Corn and they learn about Wixárika’s
extension of kin. Wixárika depend on these connections
to formulate a sense of collectivity and learn how to
relate with Kaka+yarite.
Last year, while women from the family in La Y+urata
gathered to share with younger girls beading, weaving, and
yarn-painting techniques, I collaborated with them by
helping mothers with the care of the children. We mainly
kept ourselves busy by drawing Corn pictures and explain-
ing to others the meaning of the drawings. All of the
Children talked about “la milpita” (the little Cornstalks)
with empathy and love just as Mamachali did when we
visited the Cornfield. They explained how their families
cultivated and fed Corn with the same food they occasion-
ally eat. Families in La Y+rata make the sacrifice to
exchange food, even when they do not have the money to
eat a full meal they buy offering for their relative Corn.
Tatéi Takutsi Nakawé communicates through the cultiva-
tion of Corn and manifests her power by providing Corn as
a form of survival. Corn as relative, and as an actor in
Wixárika’s health, implies deep symbiotic inter-species
relations. As Mamachali explains, Corn-based offerings
assure that the family maintains connections with ances-
tors and assures the well-being of the family by offering
entities such as Corn food in exchange of health (Interview,
summer 2014).
Eduardo Castro de Viveiros (2014) expands the notion
of personhood in his book Cannibal Metaphysics. For
Viveiros De Castro, the body or “clothing” disguises the
pure essences of beings. The “spirit” or “soul” determines
the type of personhood of any given subjectivity (Viveiros
De Castro, 2014, p. 477). In the case of shamanistic prac-
tices, the essence of subjectivity takes a different form to
acknowledge the formation of other subjectivities (Viveiros
De Castro, 2014). Similar to Felipa’s narrative in the
“Introduction” section, Corn and other beings disguised in
an external body to interact with human persons. Viveiros
De Castro’s theory on “perspectivism” takes into consider-
ation how human and other species communicate through
the acknowledgment of the Other during predation.
Viveiros De Castro (2014) expands the notions of the
human to conclude that humanity is the common condition
of beings (p. 483). Wixárika families embody through Corn
consumption the characteristics of their relative; ingesting
Corn provides the essence or “soul” as energy gets trans-
ferred to, and transforms in, the body. His description of
transubstantiation serves as a way to understand the impor-
tance of Wixárika’s consumption of Corn. Perspectivism
supports the idea that Wixárika continue consuming Corn
because families wish to gain the skills or characteristics of
plant-persons (Viveiros De Castro, 2013). Wixárika derive
a healthy body from healthy Yuri 'Ikú (ancestral Corn). To
expand Castro de Viveiros’ ideas, Wixárika women and
caregivers throughout the cooking of Corn-based meals
make the decision to extend the relationship between Corn
and Wixárika children when they embody Corn practices
such as cooking and cultivation.
Mamachali makes the conscious decision of feeding
the family ancestral Corn during ceremonies to gain the
nutrients of their ancestral seeds and extend blessings
throughout the year. She rations the consumption of the
Yuri 'Ikú during the life of each of her grandchildren to
maximize the blessings (Rosalía Lemus, woman 68).
Women in the family serve parched Maize for the tradi-
tional nawá (“fermented Corn-based drink”) and offer the
drink during the ceremonies. In this year’s ceremony,
Mamachali and my comadres, Elva and Felipa, made the
traditional drink a week prior to the ceremony. Mamachali
reiterates that when the community commits to give offer-
ings to Corn is because “the Cornstalks want their nawá
and in exchange, they will receive the blessings in the
consumption of Corn (Rosalía Lemus, women 68, sum-
mer 2016). When the family decides to ingest their ances-
tral seeds and to feed the teyairi (center of the field), the
family resists losing connections with Corn. Thus, the
family demonstrates the implications of consuming the
proprieties of the plant-person for a deeper connection.
This conscientious decision grounds Mamachali and her
family to their ancestral practices. Johannes Neurath (2013)
makes the clear observation that “to take the perspective of
the victims in the context of Huichol initiation implies to
know the gaze of the ancestors and transform in them” (p.
53). However, Neurath is only referring to the transforma-
tion of the individual into the ancestor in shamanistic prac-
tices. Perspectivism in Wixárika ontology goes beyond
shamanic practices and gazing into the eyes of the ances-
tors. Perspectivism in Wixárika ontology implies taking the
essence and embodying the ancestors. Mamachali clarifies
that the family cultivates Corn: “so that we do not forget
how my great-grandfather conducted the ceremonies, my
parents. So that our family does not get sick” (Rosalía
Lemus, woman 68, summer 2016). Corn cultivation serves
two purposes: (1) transmitting knowledge and (2) avoiding
sickness. When Mamachali cultivates and consumes Corn-
based meals, she takes the perspective of the ancestors to
gain their properties, in this case, wellness. Corn cultiva-
tion and consumption as everyday practices defies the sym-
bolic aspect of ritual, simply because the interactive and
dynamic exchange between human and plant-persons
maintains a reciprocal relationship. Plant-persons offer
health and human persons the preservation of the plant by
cultivating the seeds every year.
Taking the so-called “ontological turn” in anthropol-
ogy offers a new path of conducting research in inter-spe-
cies relations. To take this route is to disrupt our binary
ways of thinking that divide people and Corn to begin see-
ing both as part of the same network of relations (Latour,
2013). Thus, allowing us to see how Indigenous commu-
nities in Mexico conceive personhood, being, and inter-
species relations to collaborate with them on projects
that express the interconnectedness with other beings.
Indigenous communities in Mexico subsist on Corn pri-
marily, exploring Wixárika ontology expands the existing
paradigm between culture and nature by emphasizing how
one group conceives Corn as a relative, avoids the cultiva-
tion of genetically modified seeds and therefore uses sus-
tainable agriculture to endure the interaction between
humans and plant-persons.
García-Weyandt 119
Conclusion
By maintaining and sustaining ontological relations through
embodied practices of Corn, such as gastronomic represen-
tations and cultivations of Corn, Wixárika in urban centers
assure the healthy growth of children. In Mamachali’s fam-
ily, she prepares food such as tortillas, tamales and nawá
(fermented Corn drink) for ceremonial and daily life con-
sumption. Members of the community use specific lan-
guage cues to demonstrate the physical connections
between people and Corn. Wixárika language through nar-
ratives and ceremonial vocabulary help the community
attain metaphysical connections in the public and private
domains. In the performance of Our Grandmother Growth
narratives, women become active agents in transmitting
cultural knowledge about the role of Corn, and roles of
community members. In one way, Corn narratives frame
division of labor and gender roles. In addition, the narrative
guides relational protocols between Corn and people for
future reference. In Mamachali’s ranch, men and women
continue traditional roles. Mamachali and other women in
the community prepare the seeds for cultivations, store the
seeds for later use, process the seeds for consumption in
ceremonies and everyday life, and narrate the history of
how their ancestors established relations with elder ances-
tors. The narratives teach the community how to maintain
relations with Kaka+yarite. Women enable and transplant
connections with ancestors by the use of oral tradition and
physical labor of quotidian activities in the domestic realms
outside Native lands.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
Funding
The author(s) declared receipt of the following financial support
for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This
project has been funded by two Graduate Summer Research
Mentorships grant from the UCLA Graduate Division, a Tinker
Research Award grant from the UCLA Latin American Institute, a
Faucett Research Award grant from the UCLA Latin America
Institute, a Sarah Gillifan Fieldwork Award from the UCLA
Fowler Museum, and numerous research and travel grants from
the UCLA Department of World Arts and Culture/Dance.
Glossary
coamil Cornfield.
comadre Spanish for female co-parent
Kaka+yari (Kaka+yarite, pl.) Elder Ancestor
mara’akame (mara’akate pl.) Medicine man, Shaman
masa Spanish for dough
maseca Pre-made pulverized Corn flour
mawarixa Offerings to the Cornfield
metate Grinder made of volcanic stone
nawá Fermented Corn drink
nenewierika Sentences or discourse to com-
municate with the ancestors
prensa Spanish for tortilla maker
Tairawime Red Corn
Tatewarí Our Grandfather Fire
Tatéi Neixa  Dance of Our Mother, Drum
Ceremony, a ceremony at the
end of the harvesting of Corn
Tatéi Niwetsika Our Mother Corn
Tatéi Niwestsika 'Et+sixa Ceremony of cultivation usually
in June
Tatéi Takutsi Nakawé Our Grandmother Growth
Taxawime Yellow Corn
teyari Matrix or center of the field
tortilla  Flat bread, the food staple of
many mesoamerican cultures
tuki Ceremonial center
Teukarita Naming Ceremony
Tsinawime Multi-color Corn
Tuxame  Female name that refers to
White Corn. White Corn
‘uxa Yellow root from the desert
Watakame Male farmer, first farmer
Wirikuta Desert area in Charcas and Real
del Catorce in the state of San
Luis Potosí, also east direction
in Wixárika cosmogeography
Wixárika (Wixáritari, pl.) Self-denomination of the Indig-
enous community for people and
language
xakwitsari Limed Corn
Xarikixa Festivity of Corn Kernels
Yuawima Female name that refers to Blue
Corn
Yuawime Blue Corn
Yuimakwaxa Harvesting Ceremony
Yuri 'Ikú True Corn, ancestral Corn
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