Estela Hernandez weaves a bag for a portable light kit on a backstrap loom. Photo by Stacy Schaefer

Weaving Light

Solar Power Empowers Huichol Indian Communities

by Stacy Schaefer Chair, Department of Anthropology

Deep within the rugged Mexican Sierra Madre in the state of Jalisco live the Huichol Indians, or Wixarika as they call themselves. Their long isolation in these mountains has enabled Huichols to exist as a “tribal village” in which community identity and a sense of shared fate run strong. Huichol identity continues to be defined by ancient cultural beliefs and practices such as conducting ceremonies in their aboriginal temples and making pilgrimages from the mountaintops to the ocean, and as far away as their sacred peyote desert in San Luis Potosi, an arduous journey that a century ago took several months on foot to complete.

I have been carrying out long-term ethnographic fieldwork in the Huichol community of San Andres Cohamiata for nearly three decades. Ethnographic fieldwork includes participation in the lives of the people. Over the years I have participated in temple ceremonies and pilgrimages to the sacred peyote desert, and I have apprenticed to become a master weaver, an endeavor that closely parallels the path of becoming a shaman. I have developed deep bonds of friendship with many people in the community, especially with my weaving teacher, Estela Hernandez, and her family. In the 1980s I was ritually made a godmother to a number of the children in this large extended clan.

Since 1977 I have witnessed many forces of change that have impacted Huichol lifeways. The forging of a dirt road and runway carved into the ground on the mountain mesa top of San Andres has facilitated the arrival of outsiders. A basic rural clinic has been built as well as a bilingual elementary school, and more recently a middle school and high school have been added. It fascinates me to see, despite the imposition of Western modernity on Huichol culture, how creatively and ingeniously Huichol people have adjusted to change and have adapted, even transformed, elements from the outside into something very Huichol in nature.

Now, in the 21st century, globalization has impacted the Huichol people more forcefully than any previous event since the arrival of the Spaniards to the sierra two and a half centuries ago. Presently the stakes for autonomy and self-determination are great. The newest challenge is the arrival of electricity to San Andres Cohamiata. The Mexican government did not ask the Huichols if they wanted electricity. Instead, logging trucks made their way through the mountainous terrain, wreaking environmental destruction, and workers indiscriminately cut down trees to turn into electrical poles. In less than a year, wires were strung and electrical meters were attached to the walls of individual houses in San Andres.

With the installation of electricity, the local economy—formerly based on the reciprocal sharing of food, goods, and services that is integral to their ceremonial cycle—is overshadowed by a commercial economy in which money is required to pay the electric bills and to buy the desired consumer goods that run on electricity, such as refrigerators, televisions, computers, radios, and CD players, as well as lights in Huichol homes, amenities welcomed by many Huichols.

As an alternative to the federal government and a commercial economy as the source of electricity, there are projects under way to help Huichols obtain sustainable energy. One such project, for which I am working as a collaborator, is the Portable Light Project being developed by Sheila Kennedy, adjunct professor at the Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design (GSD) and co-founder of the Boston-based Kennedy and Violich Architecture. The goal of the Portable Light Project is to develop off-the-grid power sources for Huichol people that can provide durable, energy-efficient illumination. In Kennedy’s system, sunlight is absorbed by lightweight, flexible photovoltaic power panels and stored in a single large-capacity battery (such as that used for a car) or directed to the equivalent of several rechargeable cell-phone batteries that power smaller detachable LEDs for bright light. Architecture and engineering students at the Harvard GSD visited a Huichol community and developed prototypes of light units for possible use by Huichols. I was invited to Harvard in December 2005 to critique their prototypes during their final review.

Huichols have been invited to participate in the design of the portable light units, giving their input so the end product will best serve their needs. Kennedy provided me with portable light kits containing photovoltaic cells and a small battery pack wired to LEDs. I took these kits in March 2006 to my Huichol family, discussed their utility, and then asked my weaving teacher, Estela, to design and integrate these kits into traditional Huichol bags. She and her family were fascinated with the components, quickly understood how they worked, and together came up with a prototype that could meet their needs. The bag that Estela wove had a special pocket inside to hold the battery pack, and she sewed the photovoltaic panel onto the outside of the bag so it could collect and store sunlight while being carried during the day on the shoulder or across the back. She integrated the wires that connected these components into the bag strap, with the LED at the end, and showed me how the strap could be used like a flashlight or hung on the wall to provide light at night. It was an exciting time participating with my Huichol family in their own invention using this technology.

The Portable Light Project participants will continue to work with Huichols to develop products that they can use and adapt to the changing technology. Ideally, in the future, Huichols will receive parts they can’t manufacture and continue to assemble units for themselves and their neighbors as part of a self-sustaining industry that will enable them to weave light that provides them an independent and cost-effective source of electricity better woven into their traditional social and economic systems.

Stacy Schaefer weaves with Estela Hernandez, her weaving teacher.