Wixarika (Huichol) Temple Restoration Project

Located on the Wixarika (Huichol) ancestral pilgrimage route, Queaehruitea is notable because the local community of Tuapurie has been particularly tenacious in defending and maintaining the vitality of the traditions and shamanic teaching. However, harsh economic conditions within the community make it difficult to maintain the buildings; roofs may leak for years and render structures unusable.

Additional pressures from the Mexican government to assimilate Indigenous peoples into a more modern lifestyle also affect the traditional integrity of the buildings. In some places, you can now see corrugated metal or asbestos replacing the maguey fibres and dry grass.

Totupica Candelario Robles, Tuapurie community leader and Humberto Fernández Borja, Humana director say:

“This will be an extremely useful project to support the Huichol cultural survival and the shamans' education in Queaehruitea and serves as a valuable model to follow for the rest of the ceremonial centers in the rest of the Huichol Sierra.”

In 2017, the Center for Shamanic Education and AC Humana, a Mexican nonprofit, joined together to restore a temple complex along the ancestral pilgrimage route with local, traditional materials supporting the restoration of Queaehruitea within the spiritually vital community of Wixaritari (Huicholes).

With your support in 2018, this project moved to the next stage, repairing of 2 temple roofs and in 2019 has begun to build four new houses located within the ceremonial center of the complex. These new houses of 4 x 3 meters will be made using traditional design and materials.

Recently, we've been able to extend our collaboration to restore additional temples and support the production of traditional sandals worn by the Jicareros (both men and women). Here are some updates and details shared by Totupica Candelario, translated by Daniela Guraieb, and notes by Humberto.

With your continued donation it is the hopes of the Center for Shamanic Education to continue with the needs of the community by repairing 12 more roofs within the ceremonial compound and the ritual remake of roofs for the main ceremonial temples.

Thank you to Humberto with Humana and Totupica for providing the video content shown above and 12fps for editing in the subtitles.

June 2022

Since our update in March of last year, the shaman chairs (uweni) and woven mats (itsi) for the incoming jicareros (shamans) were completed. Previously, we shared an article detailing the labor-intensive process of creating these traditional chairs and mats, which you can find here: https://shamaniceducation.org/the-tradition-of-making-shaman-chairs-and-woven-mats/

March 2021

Good news about our Wixarika (Huichol) Project in Northern Mexico. The building of the Harianaka Xiriki (moon temple) was completed. In addition, Operation Guarache (sandal project) is going well! The Jicareros are happy and grateful and reported early last week that about 70% percent of the people in the group have already been fitted for their sandals and the rest should be collected this month (see article photos). Efforts to renew the main temple, the "Tuqui", are underway now, beginning with a ritual deer-hunt. In a few months, the Huicholes will start preparations to make the traditional ritual Shaman chairs that will be needed. Thank you all for your generous and on-going support of this project and the Wixarika (Huichol) people. Read the full article of the Harianaka xiriki restoration here.

May 2020

With your generous and ongoing support, the Center for Shamanic Education was able to expand the Wixarika (Huichol) Temple Restoration Project by providing the necessary funds to refurbish 9 xiriki-temples. The Huicholes believe that these temples are alive, like people. They are quite more complex, sophisticated, and demanding than the repairs of the huts. The planned repair work to restore these temples to a “like new” status is running on schedule and should be finished by late May or early June. Click here to view corresponding article.

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