[AGL] Peyote en Catorce

[Harry Edwards]

 Peyote intrigues many in Mexico

Desert drug remains a small-town attraction amid Mexico's raging drug 
war.

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Ricardo Sandoval/FOR COX NEWSPAPERS
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Huichol Indian Martina de la Cruz and her granddaughter sell crafts 
sporting symbols of peyote in downtown Real de Catorce. The 
hallucinogenic drug holds great importance to the Mexican tribe.

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Ricardo Sandocal/FOR COX NEWSPAPERS
(enlarge photo)

The button-shaped cacti, which are eaten or drunk, can produce visions 
as well as a heightened sense of energy and perception.

By Susan Ferriss
MEXICO CITY BUREAU
Sunday, October 23, 2005

REAL DE CATORCE, San Luis Potos ? The fleshy, button-shaped plants 
barely peek from the desert floor, but Enrico Baldella knew how to 
scout for them. Walking gingerly through waist-high cacti and mean 
thorns, he quickly spied a cluster of peyote, a hallucinogenic plant 
considered sacred by some Mexican Indian tribes.

"There's a colony of them," said Baldella, an Italian expatriate who 
has lived in Mexico for years. He knelt and sliced an inch-high, 
palm-size button carefully from its long subterranean root. It may have 
taken a decade for it to reach this size.

Before leaving, Baldella built a small fire and coaxed smoke toward the 
remaining colony, bowing his head and murmuring prayers he learned from 
Mexican Indian and American Indian acquaintances.

Peyote (pronounced pay-O-tay) is an attraction for Mexican, American 
and European tourists in Mexico's San Luis Potosí state, on the 
southern edge of the vast Chihuahua Desert.

Not everyone who visits Real de Catorce, an old mining and tourist 
town, is looking to get high. But the little mountaintop town has a 
reputation for being a place where one can readily ? albeit illegally ? 
seek peyote to eat fresh, dried or mixed into a drink. Under the watch 
of guides such as Baldella, tourists can descend to the desert valley 
below, harvest and chew the plant, and contemplate their surroundings 
for hours in an altered state of consciousness.

The tolerance for peyote experimentation is an odd juxtaposition to 
Mexico's violent drug cartel wars. Peyote, which is also found in the 
deserts of Texas, grows naturally. It isn't of interest to traffickers 
because, police say, there is no big money in it.

In contrast, more than 900 people have been killed this year alone as 
organized crime cartels battle over the lucrative trafficking of 
cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana into the United States.

Mexico's Huichol (wee-CHOL) Indians have consumed peyote for millennia 
as part of a traditional spiritual pilgrimage they make from Mexico's 
Pacific coast to San Luis Potosí. Mexican law permits the use, an 
exemption that allows the Indians to collect and consume the cactus as 
long as they don't possess substantial amounts for the purposes of 
trafficking.

In theory, non-Indians are prohibited from possessing any peyote and 
can face stiff sentences if convicted of trafficking large quantities. 
But the law doesn't seem to deter on-the-spot experimentation.

Residents of Real de Catorce complain that local police sometimes 
extort money from tourists if they discover the outsiders have a few 
buttons in their pockets.

Environmentalists, though, seem more concerned that peyote tourism is 
endangering the slow-growing plant.

"In general, there's always been quite a bit of tolerance when it comes 
to peyote," said Pedro Medellin, a professor at the University of San 
Luis Potosí who in 1994, as a state ecology coordinator, helped turn a 
swath of peyote-laden desert here into a state protected area.

Communities allow outsiders to enter the protected zone as long as they 
present identification and submit to a search when they leave to make 
sure they haven't loaded up their cars with peyote.

On highways here, soldiers regularly search vehicles at roadblocks for 
weapons and drugs. In the past three months, only one person has been 
detained, for possessing about 30 buttons of peyote, enough to trigger 
an accusation of suspected trafficking, said Enrique Buendia, the San 
Luis Potosí representative of the federal attorney general's office.

The accused could face a minimum sentence of 10 years or up to 25 years 
in prison, Buendia said.

Officials in the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey declined to respond to 
requests for information about American citizens arrested for peyote 
possession.

"It's a small number of people who do this," Buendia added, denying 
that peyote is the main draw in the area.

"It's a great place to come to just rest, to get away from the summer 
heat," said Natalie Lake, a midwife from Austin who has close friends 
who live in the town.

Hotel owner Humberto Fernandez, a fountain of knowledge about Real de 
Catorce, said that, on occasion, he's had to deal with youths who got 
high, regretted it and wandered back to his hotel to request help.

"Once, a big blond guy came and said he wanted to search for the plant 
by himself. He would come back every night, sunburned and 
disappointed," said Fernandez, who has been invited to peyote 
ceremonies with the Huichol.

"Some people think they can do it on their own," the hotel owner said 
with a shake of his head.

Huichol Indian Martina de la Cruz, 51, sells beaded jewelry and boxes 
emblazoned with peyote designs. She smiled at inquiries about the 
plant. She's heard the questions before.

"Where do you think we get the design ideas for the things we make?" 
she said. "We all consume it."