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Thus that June evening found us, Allan
Richardson and me, deep in the south of Mexico, bedded down
with an Indian family in the heart of the Mixeteco mountains
at an altitude of 5,500 feet. We could stay only a week or
so: we had no time to lose. I went to the municipio or
town hall, and there I found the official in charge, the sindico,
seated alone at his great table in an upper room. He was
a young Indian, about 35 years old, and he spoke Spanish
well. His name was Filemon. He had a friendly manner and I
took a chance. Leaning over his table, I asked him earnestly
and in a low voice if I could speak to him in confidence.
Instantly curious, he encouraged me. "Will you," I
went on, "help me learn the secrets of the divine
mushroom?" and I used the Mixeteco name, 'nti sheeto,
correctly pronouncing it with glottal stop and tonal
differentiation of the syllables. When Filemon recovered from
his surprise he said warmly that nothing could be easier. He
asked me to pass by his house, on the outskirts of town, at
siesta time.
Allan and I arrived there at about 3 o'clock.
Filemon's home is built on a mountainside, with a trail on
one side at the level of the upper story and a deep ravine on
the other. Filemon at once led us down the ravine to a spot
where the divine mushrooms were growing in abundance. After
photographing them we gathered them in a cardboard box and
then labored back up the ravine in the heavy moist heat of
that torrid afternoon. Not letting us rest Filemon sent us
high up above his house to meet the curandera, the
woman who would officiate at the mushroom rite. A connection
of his, Eva Mendez by name, she was a curandera de primera
categoria, of the highest quality, una Senora sin
mancha, a woman without stain. We found her in the house
of her daughter, who pursues the same vocation. Eva was
resting on a mat on the floor from her previous night's
performance. She was middle-aged, and short like all
Mixetecos, with a spirituality in her expression that struck
us at once. She had presence. We showed our mushrooms to the
woman and her daughter. They cried out in rapture over the
firmness, the fresh beauty and abundance of our young
specimens. Through an interpreter we asked if they would
serve us that night. They said yes.
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BOUT 20 of us gathered in the lower chamber of
Filemon's house after 8 o'clock that evening. Allan and I
were the only strangers, the only ones who spoke no Mixeteco.
Only our hosts, Filemon and his wife, could talk to us in
Spanish. The welcome accorded to us was of a kind that ,we
had never experienced before in the Indian country. Everyone
observed a friendly decorum. They did not treat us stiffly,
as strange white men; we were of their number. The Indians
were wearing their best clothes, the women dressed in their huipiles
or native costumes, the men in clean white trousers tied
around the waist with strings and their best serapes over
their clean shirts. They gave us chocolate to drink, somewhat
ceremonially, and suddenly I recalled the words of the early
Spanish writer who had said that before the mushrooms were
served, chocolate was drunk. I sensed what we were in for: at
long last we were discovering that the ancient communion rite
still survived and we were going to witness it. The mushrooms
lay there in their box, regarded by everyone respectfully but
without solemnity. The mushrooms are sacred and never the
butt of the vulgar jocularity that is often the way of white
men with alcohol.
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At about 10:30 o'clock Eva Mendez cleaned
the mushrooms of their grosser dirt and then, with prayers,
passed them through the smoke of resin incense burning on the
floor. As she did this, she sat on a mat before a simple
altar table adorned with Christian images, the Child Jesus
and the Baptism in Jordan. Then she apportioned the mushrooms
among the adults. She reserved 13 pair for herself and 13
pair for her daughter. (The mushrooms are always counted in
pairs.) I was on tiptoe of expectancy: she turned and gave me
six pair in a cup. I could not have been happier: this was
the culmination of years of pursuit. She gave Allan six pair
too. His emotions were mixed. His wife Mary had consented to
his coming only after she had drawn from him a promise not to
let those nasty toadstools cross his lips. Now he faced a
behavior dilemma. He took the mushrooms, and I heard him
mutter in anguish, "My God, what will Mary say!"
Then we ate our mushrooms, chewing them slowly, over the
course of a half hour. They tasted bad—acrid with a
rancid odor that repeated itself. Allan and I were determined
to resist any effects they might have, to observe better the
events of the night. But our resolve soon melted before the
onslaught of the mushrooms.
