Mad Jesus: The Final Testament of a Huichol Messiah from Northwest Mexico

12: To Teakata: The Center of the World

“The women were all weaving belts and bags to take on the journey to Teakata, the center of the world. It is the Huichol treasure house of offerings. Everything that anyone has ever offered Them is there.” Jesús turned aggressively and said directly to me, rather than to the tape recorder. “All you tewalis try to get us to take you toTeakata, where the river gives its seed to the caves so that we may live. Our Mothers,our Fathers,our Grandmothers,our Grandfathers,our Sisters, and our Brothers, the Ones who watch over us, live there. It is the Navel of the World. But all you want to do is take the things, the arrows, the bowls, the little seats, the shields, and the cloud paintings that we leave there. These are things that we have already given toThem;they are spent, the arrows have already been shot, and they are no longer worth anything .But nevertheless,tewalis want these worthless things.They do not know that once these things are given, they are worthless.Worthless! There are many caves inTeakata, and they are full of the arrows and the things that we have given Them,” Jesús said angrily.“In those caves are our ancestors who used to talk to us and guide us.There are no bundles there with masks so that we can see their faces painted like pilgrims , adorned with fine cloth and beads.All the bundles were stolen by tewalis, destroyed. The priests took them and burned them. The Federales held them for ransom and stuck them in the juzgado, but they still speak to us, they still tell us things in dreams.| 65 xii To Teakata: The Center of the World They are still there! The Mothers and the Fathers still live there in those caves in the place we call the Womb of the Earth, in Teakata. They speak to us as I speak to you.” “What do they say to you?” I asked. “You wouldn’t understand,tewali,”Jesús declared,turning toward me and making the word tewali an obvious insult. A tewali is a non-Huichol. The word is sometimes glossed as “Christian,” but it refers to all the nonindigenous neighbors of the Huichol. It is a Huichol depreciative, and it was intentionally used as such. “They speak to you in dreams.They speak peyote talk.They speak in visions.” Jesús turned back toward the tape recorder and went on as if nothing had happened. I wondered if his outburst was really for the benefit of his Huichol audience, or if it was for me. He must have known that I had visited Teakata and that I had accompanied my Huichol friends on the peyote pilgrimage twice by that time.Was this anger, or was it a warning? “Everyone gathered in the Kaliwey. At dawn we left for Teakata to leave our offerings and tell Them we were off to hunt the peyotes. Everyone danced out of the Kaliwey single file all in the proper order as if they were going to go to Wilikuta. Grandfather gave us the things to carry for him toTeakata, very special things that help us find our life and death too.” “Jesús, these are not things for this man!” Matsiwa blurted out in Huichol. Jesús replied,“I will tell him what I like. I will tell him how we die. I will tell him how we live, how Our Mothers and Fathers came forth from the center of the world in Teakata and how we find our life on the hill of the dawn in Wilikuta,” he continued. “It is like that when someone is very ill.Very often they will know when it is their time to die, and they will just lie there and wait. Sometimes they do not know that it is time to die, and they will try to ward off death.They will struggle and fight, but finally it will come to them that it is their time,and like the deer they will give up their breath so that others may live.That is how it is.All things have a time to die. XII | To Teakata: The Center of the World 66 | They must know when it is time to die.They must also know how we find our life. We all danced in single file to...