[Plenty board member and videographer, Jeffrey Keating accompanied CAFSI Project Director, Chuck Haren to Huejuquilla in December, 2004. Jeffrey documented the installation of the soy processing equipment and conducted interviews with Huichol Center staff. Following is part of his interview with Susana Valadez, Founder and Director of the Huichol Center for Cultural Survival and Traditional Arts.]

(Jeffrey) Is food security an issue here with the Huichols?

The population has a 70% malnutrition rate in kids 10 and under. One remedy is having secure reservoirs of food. They can be growing their own soybeans. The soy agriculture part of the project is what Candelario Vasquez is working on, figuring out which varieties are best suited to this environment. He has made great progress on this and is definitely coming up with some winners. We intend to distribute that seed out to families in the rural areas so that people can have banks of seeds to draw on for future food security. I think this is an absolutely critical part of this project. It's of major importance to not just be teaching people how to utilize soy in a variety of ways, but how to be self-sufficient and grow it in their own plots.

(Jeffrey) When you say that 70% of Huichol kids are malnourished, how did that come to be?

Susana stirs a new batch of soy milk

Because of their remote location the Huichol people haven't had much contact with the outside world and have always been one of the poorest groups in Mexico. But previously, in their own little space and time, they would forage for nutritious foods, wild onions growing by the riverbeds, hunting small game, and were pretty self-sufficient as hunters and gatherers. In recent times with new roads and airstrips penetrating their world, there has been an invasion of big trucks bringing them junk food, potato chips, white flour and sugar, all these new fast foods added to their diets. Their whole nutritional system has broken down because of the intrusion from the outside world. Foods that have no nutritional value whatsoever, but are quick sellers like coca-cola, beer, instant noodles, white bread, canned goods and sweets are now replacing the wild foods. Instead of bringing good nutritional foods in like fruit trees, good seeds, and teaching people how to keep their kids healthy, the roads are bringing in truckloads of beer. The beer trucks are full going to the mountains, and they come back empty. And conversely, the lumber trucks go in empty and come back full, with stolen lumber.

This is a good example of how the isolation of the Huichol people makes them so vulnerable to the negative forces of the outside world----nobody is watching what is happening. I call it the "modern day conquest"----these days the "conquistadores" aren't dressed in their armor with their swords and cannons, rather they appear as beer and processed foods, the agro-chemical companies and the genetically altered seed, and the evangelists, and eco-tourists, and wanna-be Huichol shamans. The contemporary conquistadores are devastating the way of life that the Huichol people have practiced for centuries. This beautiful tapestry that used to be Huichol life is just unraveling. We are witnessing the demise of one of the last and greatest civilizations of Meso-America.

Another reason for the 70% malnutrition rate is that previously the Huichols were a corn trading society. Now they need cash in order to participate in the modern world, but where do they get cash? There aren’t too many options for them so they leave the homeland to work in the tobacco fields in far off Nayarit where they lose contact with their traditions and their healers. They get sick with epidemic diseases. They don't eat right when they're working in the tobacco fields. They're getting sprayed in the fields with pesticides from the planes flying overhead, and they're drinking out of the discarded insecticide containers that they find laying around.

Outside of their homeland in the tobacco fields they are like fish out of water. The rugged terrain and the immense awesome canyon-like environment where they have lived for all these centuries protected them from the outside world. They had their own ecosystem and balance of life and equilibrium. But now things are really changing at an accelerated rate, and at this point what we are trying to do at the Huichol Center boils down to rescue measures, where we are trying to retrieve what I now consider to be "the lost generation", the disenfranchised members of the culture who have lost touch with the profound wisdom and the ancient knowledge that the culture has kept alive for so long. The Huichol Center is a life raft for a sinking ship at this point, but I am hopeful. Just the fact that we've been able to manifest a soy dairy and this collaboration with Plenty and future collaboration with CAFSI is an amazing step forward. It just shows you the power we have as individuals to dare to have faith in what we're dreaming and bring our visions to reality.

My vision for the Huichol people is that through our combined efforts on many different fronts, through our educational projects, through right livelihood programs, by giving people an opportunity to learn about their culture and value it, through teaching people modern technological skills that can be used to keep this second century culture alive, that the Huichol people will choose to keep their culture going, rather than just standing by and watching it fade into oblivion. We are teaching the Huichol people to make choices that will honor their culture and promote their right to self determination while providing them with the skills they need to navigate the rapids of radical social change. I personally feel very blessed to be a part of this whole process and am very grateful to all the people that have joined in with us to help make the big vision a reality. We have a lot of hard work ahead, and I invite you all to join us in this valuable work and send my heartfelt thanks to you all.