The Shamans of Eastern Avenue

Francisco "Paco" Loza has found himself and his art at the intersection of cultures. Born in Guadalajara, this artist-in-residence at southeast Baltimore's Creative Alliance has lived for the past twenty years in the mountainous western Mexican state of Nayarit. In Nayarit's capital city of Tepic and its surroundings, he works and makes art with members of the Huichol tribe. 

Some 26,000 Huicholes�about the population of Cumberland, Maryland�live in small communities spread across the Sierra Madre in four Mexican states. Their topographical buffer has allowed the Huichol more time to maintain their traditions than indigenous groups along the coast and on the plains, but now Huichol culture faces an uphill climb to keep thriving. Most recently, silver miners acquired rights to lands where Huichol spiritual leaders have sourced peyote for important rituals since before written history.

Loza established Baltimore as his American base through visits and exhibitions throughout the years, and has begun a tradition of bringing his Huichol friends to Highlandtown to represent their people, interact with Native Americans, and use the same artistic methods they have imparted to Paco in order to connect with potential allies. This spring Paco brought four Huichol artisans to Baltimore�two of whom had never left their village previously. 

Music and visual art are linked in daily life in Huichol communities. "Our art is the root of our culture," says Macario Matias Carrillo, a soft-spoken artisan and musician who fashions violins and ukelele-like guitarritas from holy wood found near his settlement. As Macario and his village shaman, Jes�s Carrillo Romero, tune their instruments before performing a joyful ritual dance melody, Paco says, "Their music reaches certain parts of the brain, and it wakes you up in places that were asleep." In contrast to the more obvious variation in their visual art of brightly-colored yarn and beadwork, Paco finds that many people are slow to recognize the beauty of Huichol music: "Many people hear ni-ni-ni-ni-ni, but if you pay attention, the whole song is different."

While cultural ambassadors like Macario sell crafts to get by while they spread word of their plight, younger generations of their own tribe prefer working and living in Tepic, Guadalajara, and Mexico City. "They don't want to wear the garments or speak their language out of embarrassment," he says.

Creative Alliance Outreach Coordinator Maria Aldana says that Mexican-born children comprised the majority of a group of ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) students from Highlandtown Elementary School 215 who visited the Huichol artisans at the Creative Alliance in April. The children reflect a Mexican population that is eighty percent mestizo with approximately equal parts European and indigenous ancestry nationwide. Now part of Baltimore City's rapidly growing Latino community (which reached above 26,000 in the 2010 census), the children experienced Mexican indigenous culture at the Creative Alliance in a way they might not have been able to in their parents' hometowns. "For me it's a great pleasure. I wouldn't have thought of getting to know the United States this way if it weren't for Paco," Macario says.

Basilia Mu�oz de la Cruz is one of two Huichol women to join Loza at the Creative Alliance and take part in events at the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian this spring. Back home, she works with over two hundred women in her village, teaching them to embroider and make beaded jewelry that they can sell to help their families. In Baltimore, she appreciates the ability to interact with Latinos from El Salvador and other ethnic groups like the Greeks, Italians and Polish families who have called East Baltimore home for generations. She's also happy to convey art that represents her people's history even as it supports their efforts to hold steady in the face of assimilation. "It's very interesting and important for us that people understand our culture, our arts and crafts, and that we get to know other Indians and natives like ourselves. It fills me with joy that we're all indigenous and children of the same God," she says. 

Macario says he's thankful to participate in the cultural exchange Paco has faciliated, but he reinforces his group's mandate: "We're presenting what we know because we have a need. Our community is very poor and there's no work. We don't have much communication, much light--very little." 

Basilia describes life in her village as if it were in front of her: "The houses are made from palm leaves and grass and wood that's found locally. We live very comfortably because where we live there's less pollution--so we still have oxygen. We breathe clean, pure air. It's very healthy for us." 

Macario elaborates on the connection between the crafts he and his companions share abroad and the culture they have at home to protect: "We and our ancestors have preserved it for many years: Traditions, music, song and dance..." He emphasizes the importance of agriculture in Huichol culture and religion: "Our religion requires that we give thanks to the sea--the water--that gives us rain, to the sun that gives us light, and to the land." In ceremonies five nights a year, the Huichol drink a fermented corn whiskey called naguale and consume peyote to experience visions that inform their art. They also welcome visitors. "It's not prohibited for anyone to see what our ceremony and culture are like. All of what we do is part of a heritage that was left to us. It all has to do with being one unified group to thank our Lord, our God that you see in all of the world. It's for everything."

As stewards of arts, culture, agriculture, religion, and language at home, as well as representing all of those elements to the outside world, Macario points to the tightrope he and his companions walk every day and cautions against setting traditional culture aside:

"In this world there are two paths: the Good and the Bad. We have to think: If we follow the Good, we have a calm community in the world. And if we don't, then it will all be over."

Huichol art will be on display during the Maryland Traditions Folklife Festival, Saturday, June 18 from 10 am to 7 pm at the Creative Alliance, 3134 Eastern Avenue. A workshop on Huichol pressed-yarn art will be held starting at 1 pm in the second-floor studio of Paco Loza.

Sam Hopkins is a Baltimore-based freelance writer and publisher of Bmore Media.

You can hear the words and music of Huichol artists and Paco Loza in this interview from The Signal on 88.1 WYPR FM:

http://soundcloud.com/bmore-media/huichol-indian-artists-on

Photos by Arianne Teeple:

1) Artist Francisco "Paco" Loza along with members of the Huichol Tribe
2-4) Huichol Indian Artists
5) Artwork by a Huichol Indian Artist
6) Hu�chol Shaman Jes�s Carrillo Romero
7) Artist Francisco "Paco" Loza
8) Artwork by artist Francisco "Paco" Loza