For centuries the Huichol (Wixárika) Indian women of Jalisco, Mexico, have been weaving textiles on backstrap looms. This West Mexican tradition has been passed down from mothers to daughters since pre-Columbian times. Weaving is a part of each woman’s identity—allowing them to express their ancient religious beliefs as well as to reflect the personal transformations they have undergone throughout their lives. In this book anthropologist Stacy B. Schaefer explores the technology of weaving...

Amada Cardenas, a Mexican American woman from the borderlands of South Texas, played a pivotal role in the little-known history of the peyote trade. She and her husband were the first federally licensed peyote dealers. They began harvesting and selling the sacramental plant to followers of the Native American Church (NAC) in the 1930s, and after her husband’s death in the late 1960s Mrs. Cardenas continued to befriend and help generations of NAC members until her death in 2005, just short ...

Mediante una combinación de enfoques históricos, antropológicos y anecdóticos, esta colección revela algunas de las maneras en que las mujeres han influido en nuestra comprensión de las plantas y los fármacos psicodélicos, y los tipos de relación que históricamente, de manera individual, han establecido con ellos. Este conjunto de historias, algunas personales, otras desde la colectividad, busca ir más allá de las fronteras de Estados Unidos, pues aunque la explosión de este movimiento sí ...

Tracing the troubled roots of American capitalism and imperialismCoedited by noted Masters scholar, Jason Stacy, and his class, “Editing History,” this annotated edition of Edgar Lee Masters’s The New Star Chamber and Other Essays reappears at a perilous time in US history, when large corporations and overseas conflicts once again threaten the integrity of American rights and liberties, and the United States still finds itself beholden to corporate power a...

This book explains the role that peyote—a hallucinogenic cactus—plays in the religious and spiritual fulfillment of certain peoples in the United States and Mexico, and examines pressing issues concerning the regulation and conservation of peyote as well as issues of indigenous and religious rights.Why is mescaline—an internationally controlled substance derived from peyote—given exemptions for religious use by indigenous groups in Mexico, and by the pan-indigenous...