COMMUNICATION AND IMAGES OF THE BODY
IN HUICHOL PHOTOGRAPHS (1)
[ introduction ]

Dr. Sarah Corona
The University of Guadalajara
Guadalajara, Mexico
March 8, 2003

While the visual mass media—television, cinema, photography, and the Internet—have all been studied individually, there is also a need currently to analyze the production of images from the point of view of the actual subjects themselves. This paper sets out to describe such a study. It is based on an analysis of 2700 photographs taken by young Indigenous people belonging to a tradition of oral culture, a people almost completely isolated from the visual media. This provided an increasingly more rare opportunity to discover what is actually seen by the eye of subjects who live far removed from the images generated by visual technology.

There are certain properties inherent in a photographic camera, as technology, that impose themselves on the actual taking of photographs. I wanted to demonstrate, on the one hand, the characteristics of what is specifically photographic—the impact of which was observed even among the Huicholes—despite the fact that they are a community unaware of the established codification of the camera, and unaware of Western images in general. Yet on the other hand, it is also clear that each photograph is also illustrative of a choice made by the actual photographer.

What is it that is seen by the eye of a community that has no access to media images? What do they look at—and how—when using a camera? What is the relationship between what is perceived in the Huichol gaze, the universe that surrounds it, and photographic technology? These are just a few of the questions that came to mind, when watching these young Huicholes taking photographs of their own community for the very first time.

Theoretical Background
Human beings communicate with the world through their senses. Technological means of communication alter the senses of sight, hearing, smell and touch. Such is the opinion of McLuhan, for whom a dis-equilibrium of the senses is what constitutes modern man. Leaving to one side the criticisms of McLuhan’s work—criticisms occasioned by the historical and political decontextualization with which he approaches technology and its contents—and despite his hasty conclusions, I would, nevertheless, like to keep in mind here his reflection on mass media and the transformation of the senses. I feel that McLuhan’s ideas should be reconsidered in the light of disciplines such as ethnology, sociology and semiotics. This, in my opinion, would lead to a better understanding, not only of the technological specificities of the mass media, but also of the ways in which McLuhan’s ideas relate to given contexts, and mark the different communicative practices of individual subjects.

San Miguel Huaixtita, the Context
Research for this study was carried out among the students and teachers of the Tatusi Maxakwaxi (“Our Grandfather Deer Tail”) secondary school, in the village of San Miguel Huaixtita. 710 Huichol Indians inhabit this community, which lies in the northern part of the State of Jalisco, in the Sierra Madre Occidental.

This difficulty of access is the first obstacle preventing contact with Western images; newspapers, magazines and books only arrive sporadically. Another factor is the absence of electricity, which inevitably affects the operation of any communication technology such as the television or cinema. However, battery-operated radio-receivers are not unknown.

There are no Mestizos living in San Miguel Huaixtita. The Huicholes are one of the Indigenous groups in Mexico with the greatest incidence of monolinguals. In other words, they only speak their own language.

Religion for the Huicholes is more abstract than figurative. Their places of worship (2) are not decorated, and only sometimes will there be temporal votive objects inside—perhaps a few arrows or the antlers of a deer. Huicholes do not worship images. What they consider sacred are features in the natural world (caves, hills, springs, the sea). Nor do they fabricate images to represent their gods. When the Huicholes take peyote (3), they may see the gods revealed to them in their dreams, or else the gods communicate with man in their own way. Huicholes do not even resort to images as a means of “instruction,” as the ancient Christians used to do. Jorge, a Huichol father, told me: “it is here (in the kaliguey) where our customs are learnt, not in school, nor in books, nor in writings.” Huicholes learn by seeing, hearing, feeling, memorizing.

San Miguel Huaixtita, Jalisco, has no advertising, newspapers, nor even a mirror large enough for people to see their own body full-length, although there are some pocket-sized mirrors. House walls are rarely decorated, either inside or out, and calendars with photographs are uncommon. Neither the primary nor the secondary school has any posters or decorations of either pictures or photographs, in their classrooms. Illustrations in the textbooks, the few photographs that visitors bring to the community, photographs for official documents, and the labels on the few packaged products sold in the local shops, are all the Western images these people receive.

The Experience
This research can be divided into three phases. In the initial phase, armed with bibliographic information on the Huichol culture, and the general objective of making contact with subjects who live cut off from the influence of the mass media, I entered into negotiations with the inhabitants of San Miguel Huaixtita. They only had a vague idea of my aims, but with their many disappointing experiences involving mestizos or foreigners, the local people themselves suggested an agreement: permission to carry out my research, in exchange for some community service which would take the form of my support, as a teacher. This support turned into a workshop on Spanish language teaching, using the newspaper as teaching material (Corona 1999). In its turn, the newspaper that I took to the workshop on several occasions, also gave me the opportunity to observe their first contacts with the printed press, and the importance of images contained in those messages.

During the second phase, the teachers and traditional authorities agreed to the presence of 100 cameras in the secondary school. This is most unusual, because they are generally opposed to the taking of photographs inside their community. Inevitably, the school context will have marked the results of these photographs.

Over the course of a week, the 100 secondary school students and teachers took photographs of their community, producing a total of 2700 photographs between them. For the majority, it was their first experience with a camera. One copy of each of their own developed photographs was returned to each participating student and teacher.

The image as a source of multiple meanings, ran the risk of being interpreted only according to my own frame of reference. To avoid such a potential distortion, in a third phase, I used various devices to seek out the photographer’s own version. On returning the photos to each young person, I asked them to choose, from their own collection, the photo they liked most, the one they liked least, and to tell me why. This gave me the first clue as to their objectives in the taking of those particular photos, the value judgements they were making, their tastes and preferences. Then, in addition, I also showed them a battery of professional photos taken in the city, and registered the classifications and arguments in their responses.

To these findings, I also added the information I myself had gathered during other visits paid to the community over the span of three years.

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