Mazatec people

The Mazatec are an American Indian people in Mexico. The mazatekisch speaking population of Mexico was one of 168 374 persons ( Census in the 1990s ).

Settlement areas

The main settlement area is the north of the state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico and covers an area of ​​approximately 2,400 km ². The Mazatec are ethnically related to the Mixtecs and the Otomi.

Name ( ethnonym )

The Mazatec call themselves ha Shuta Enima, "modest and articulate-speaking people." The Mazatec are a poor people, and they see themselves as such. The name is derived from the Mazateca located in the same province city Mazatlan, which was named by the nahuatlsprachigen auxiliary troops of the Spanish conquerors so. The name means "place of the deer " ( Mazatl "Deer" and locative - tlan ) in Nahuatl.

Natural drugs

The Mazatec were in the Western industrialized countries ( Psilocybe mexicana, Salvia divinorum ) by the traditional use of psychoactive fungi and plants known to be used by the shaman to spiritual acts. The first reports on which were spread by the Ethnomykologen - R. Gordon Wasson couple and Valentina Pavlovna Wasson and led in the 1960s to a lively drug tourism to Mexico.

Religion

The religion of the Mazatec is a synthesis of traditional beliefs and Christianity, which was introduced by the Spanish conquistadors. This explains the case to the people of the Mazatec common for Salvia divinorum Ska María Pastora name, where " María " the Christian Virgin Mary is meant.