THE CULTURAL TERRITORY IN REAL DE CATORCE-WIRIKUTA

Abstract

This paper will present the case of the region of Real de Catorce-Wirikuta, that includes not only the town of that name (with mestizo population, local and national, and foreigners) but the territory known as Wirikuta, that is the sacred indigenous cultural area Wirrárika (commonly known as Huichol), as well as the natural environment with fauna and endemic flora and other settlements such as mine, mine shafts, hacienda mining profit, towns and some villages inhabited by mestizo population and others abandoned. The idea is to make the approach to the identification of the territory, its characterization, function and what holds your future, because it is currently threatened by: open-pit mining and the benefit with cyanide; “cultural peyotero” tourism and religious; wildlife traffic and benefit; and by the arrival of people from other cultures. The bases for this are in the geography, the history of appropriation of the geographical space by various cultural groups and interests, and social practices: use profane and sacred; daily and cyclic use, its significance and social resignification; and the exercise of territorial domain, property, and legislation which there opera. All of which shows the various modes of life, worldview, use and appropriation of the territory, and relationship with nature that each culture has and therefore come into confrontation by the domain of the space, but also reveals the misunderstanding of each other in all aspects.