Now the town has something of a story... pure legend... an enduring notoriety and fame. In 1955 a certain article was published in ‘Time’ magazine that drew worldwide attention to a hitherto secluded Indian community. The title of that article was ‘Seeking the Magic Mushroom’ and it described the use of hallucinogenic fungus in Mazatec healing rituals. The author of the article was a retired wall street banker, R. Gordon Wasson... he’d been researching the cultural role of mushrooms for nearly thirty years... secretly pursuing the theory that man had once worshipped and reverred them. At that time, western science knew not of any visionary toadstools... nethier psilocybe nore fly agaric (... despite their use in cultures since ancient times). Wasson was the enlightening force. When in 1955, his search finally led him into the Sierra Mazateca of northern Oaxaca, he met with the healer Maria Sabina. Sabina was a renowned and powerful shaman initiated into the ‘language’ of the mushrooms which she calle ‘the little ones’ or ‘the saint children’. From an early age she’d unwittingly consumed them... frequently and in the forest when food was scarce. In her twenties she received a vision that allowed her to heal. The ‘ancient ones’ revealed a giant book where the knowledge of everything was noted... past, present and future. Maria was permitted to comprehend the words inside... the ‘language’ of the ‘child saints’. She professed that during healing rituals ‘the little ones’ would speak to her and describe the actions necessary to enact a cure. The ceremonies themselves bore a remarkable semblance to Catholic communion... indeed, the mushrooms were considered the body of Christ and the spots where they grew the site of his blood shed. Wasson met Maria and partook of the ‘child saints’... revelled in visions... ‘glorious palaces’, mountains, caravans... regal chariots and mythological beasts. He described his experiences in the ‘Time’ article with some enthusiasm... as an old world adventurer might of high peril and daring feat and wondrous spectacle. Ultimately it all had repercussions. With the birth of psychedelia... the well publicised spoutings of lunatic persons like Timothy Leary... Huautla received a tirade visitors. These included Leary himself, the Beatles allegedly and thousands of American hippies hoping to get turned on. By the end of the sixties, the locals had tired of the party. The youngsters were fucking publically, smoking dope in the streets, drinking and puking, running amok generally. The army were brought in to drive them out... a road block was set up just outside of town. According to Maria, the mushrooms had been ruined permanently... that they would not speak anymore, their magic was gone. She herself died in poverty. During her life she’d been shot and victimised... driven from the town with her property burned to the ground. Several of her children had died by disease or murder. Today she is held as a saint... her image abounds in Huautla... upon shops walls and vehicles... she’s a source of pride for the community. Ritual consumption of mushrooms is till practised... mostly by visiting foreigners... the second wave of pilgrims to which Katriona and I had the dubious honour of belonging...
The streets were wet when we arrived... visibility diminished by fog. The bus dropped us near a juncture on the edge of town. Half the male community seemed to be congregated in the spitting rain... laughing... watching the trucks go splashing through the brown... cheering and telling jokes. One of them approached us immediately.
“Where are you staying? You want a cabana? I have a cabana. Very, very cheap. You come now... come see the cabana. You stay in the cabana...come, come... come and see the cabana...”
And so, unable to deter him, we went off to see the cabana... a little way from the centre... up a slippery stone path, accross the road... a little scramble up steps. The cabana was located in a grey brick building... hopelessly drafty... musty, bare, crude... a barn... a storeroom with a bare switchless light bulb for illumination. We were tired and the man kept pushing... it was cheap, cheap and cheerless... we said ‘okay’.
Once I’d paid him his money he started in on another sale... came on all dramatic and peering;
“You understand me... the ceremonia... it can be arranged... you come now to see the boss...”
So I followed him outside, down the steps, accross the muddy courtyard. He led me into another grey brick building. The Temple... a great altar dominated it... all cluttered up with religious icons, framed photos, candles.
“Maria Sabina,” he said... pointing her out from the others. Then he bade that I sit and I took the bed against the wall. He began to speak very quietly... as if with respect to our surroundings... he spoke of the mushrooms and ceremony. I was tired from our trip and I couldn’t focus... I couldn’t understand his words... an unfathomable Spanish garble. He brought in the ‘boss’... a little old lady... she shook my hand with feathery lightness. They kept on at me with their sale... their questions... I couldn’t work it out... I was all hemmed in... between their strange altar, their voices, their motions. I stood up and tried to explain... Later! Later! I must think!... And finally they backed down and let me go. Upstairs Katriona was getting a pitch from a woman... all kinds of embroidered artesanias spread over the bed. We bought up a top just to get rid of her... when cold silence had failed to work. She left and we were alone with the bare bulb and icy drafts. It was then we noticed all the freakish graffitti etched on the back of the door... ‘He is the life, the light, the way’... a lot of mushrooms crudely rendered... forming the sides of some great, strange valley. We quit the cabana and went for a walk.
Huautla de Jimenez descended the hillside with rusty brown roofs... no roofs... bare pillars with protruding wires and spikes. The roads splayed something erratic... between grey concrete buildings, open platforms, cluttered balconies... crossed overhead by a web of black wires... from posts to houses to satellite dishes and between bunting of blue and white. Around the market, the streets took increasingly irregular turns... falling away here and there with stone steps... roads trisected by acutely angled alleys... everything cramped and wet and no hint of colonial elegance at all. Away from the centre, muddy walkways weaved between residences... front or backyards draped with washing lines... assorted objects in chaotic arrangement... great black water storers, gas canisters, potted plants... piles of sand, rolls of cable, sheets of corrugated metal. Between the crude stone walls and rickety fences and where the paths broke off suddenly... vegetation sprouted... palms and weedlike folliage. We wandered the streets taking stares from the locals. The purpose of our visit was obvious.