Foot Prints in Mexico

Concheros in the plaza

Yolotl González Torres
INAH, Mexico

Pilgrimages in Mexico are very common ritual practices which generally take place in Catholic sanctuaries with a strong pre-Hispanic syncretism as we shall explain later. According to written texts by the chroniclers there were many places of pilgrimages in pre-Hispanic times and several scholars think that many of the important pre-Hispanic archaeological ceremonial centers were also pilgrimage centers (Martínez Marín, Piña Chan) and that some of them developed into urban centers like Teotihuacan (Heyden) Besides, there is for instance the evidence of the Huicholes, an ethnic group very little affected by Spanish culture, for whom the pilgrimage to Wirikuta in search of the peyote plant plays a fundamental role in the religious life of the community; ” they pass along the roads where the cosmos is built as they move to the sacred places. They serve the gods, doing what they established, repeating their actions and the world they created” (Rajsbaum p.47). We must bear in mind also that one of the most important mythico-historical accounts of a journey of the Mexica people from Aztlan- their land of origin somewhere in the Northwest of Mexico- to the island in the lake in the Valley of Mexico where they founded their city Tenochtitlan, was called a “pilgrimage.” Continue reading →