Peyote Effect
September 4, 2018
Alexander S. Dawson
The 1972 Vienna Convention on Psychotropic Drugs established frameworks for controlling international trade in psychedelic drugs while exempting indigenous communities using them for traditional religious purposes. This exemption suited U.S. law but conflicted with Mexico's view of peyotism as a vice akin to alcoholism. The treaty enabled activists and scholars to reframe peyotism as a right tied to indigenous self-determination. In Mexico, this shift emerged through concerns over peyotism, yet federal officials continued treating peyotists as incapable of self-governance. The tension peaked in 2009 when mining concessions threatened Wirikuta, the desert where peyote grows, with ecological damage.
Peyote Effect
September 4, 2018
Alexander S. Dawson
The chapter examines the downfall of psychiatrist Salvador Roquet after Mexico outlawed peyote in 1971, a ban fueled by conservative fears that non-indigenous youths were using drugs and that this signaled a civilizational crisis. Older, middle-class Mexicans often expressed disgust by lamenting that young people were becoming Indian through psychedelic use. Roquet, who disliked hippies and claimed many of his patients were former drug abusers, became a casualty of this anxiety. He continued using the banned drugs with help from government friends until 1974, when a magazine article accused him of being a drug-peddling degenerate—which Roquet called a hit-piece by jealous rivals. He was jailed for months but released without charge.
Peyote Effect
September 4, 2018
Alexander S. Dawson
In the late 19th century, European and American scientists began documenting peyote, a cactus used in Indigenous ceremonies. John Briggs wrote about it in 1887, and James Mooney described his experiences with the Kiowa in Oklahoma in 1891. German chemists identified four alkaloids in peyote by the mid-1890s, outpacing American efforts. In the United Kingdom, researchers including Havelock Ellis conducted dramatic self-experiments with peyote. Though their work did not produce widely accepted breakthroughs, these early pioneers explored peyote and mescaline as tools for mental health professionals.
Peyote Effect
September 4, 2018
Alexander S. Dawson
In October 1918, a group of Native American peyotists gathered in El Reno, Oklahoma, to found the Native American Church, responding to the near-passage of a national ban on peyote earlier that year. The deep history of peyotism north of the border remains somewhat unclear, though the practices had consolidated in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Their efforts to create an institutionalized church legible to the U.S. government did not immediately succeed, as anti-peyotists dominated the Bureau of Indian Affairs through the 1920s, but began to see significant success after John Collier became chief of the BIA in 1933.
Peyote Effect
September 4, 2018
Alexander S. Dawson
After decades of slow progress, psychiatric research into hallucinogens expanded in the 1950s. Mexico became involved in 1957 when Dr. José Rodríguez initiated a mescaline study at a Mexico City psychiatric hospital. Salvador Roquet, a young doctor who participated, was initially terrified and incapacitated by his experience but later believed psychedelics were powerful psychiatric tools. Over a decade, Roquet learned from Mazatec and Huichol shamans and built a medical practice translating that knowledge for his urban, ladino, well-educated patients. His Clínica de Psicosíntesis operated in Mexico City from 1967 to 1974.
Peyote Effect
September 4, 2018
Alexander S. Dawson
In the late 1800s, Mexican scientists knew little about peyote while researchers in the US, UK, and Germany advanced rapidly. This changed when Mexico's Instituto Médico Nacional (IMN) began peyote studies around 1900, using historical accounts, reports from government agents in indigenous regions, and experiments on animals and hospital patients in Mexico City. Unlike foreign researchers, Mexican scientists could not extract mescaline and used whole peyote buttons. They focused on peyote's physical effects, especially its potential as a heart tonic, rather than its psychoactive properties. Their work ended when the Mexican Revolution closed the IMN in 1915.
Peyote Effect
September 4, 2018
Alexander S. Dawson
The chapter examines 'white shamans,' a term often associated with charlatanism and cultural appropriation, focusing on figures like Carlos Castaneda who have used Wixárika peyotism to claim special wisdom. Rather than dismissing them outright, the chapter situates them within the long history of non-indigenous interest in peyote. It argues that, viewed historically, white shamans represent more than a simple binary of authentic indigenous mysticism versus inauthentic imitation. While some are hucksters, as a whole they reveal a Western history where rationality has not always been universally embraced. They become figures who both reinforce the West-Other distinction through romanticizing indigeneity and destabilize it by seeking to transcend those categories.