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Part 2. Conquest, Suppression, and Syncretism

Important Disclaimer: This series explores the historical and cultural context of psychedelic substances. The information presented is for educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice or endorsement of any particular substance or practice. Always consult with qualified professionals for health-related concerns. Compassion Retreats encourages safe, legal, and intentional exploration within appropriate contexts.

The Spanish arrival in the early 16th century marked a violent rupture in Mexico's long history of psychoactive plant use. Armed with Catholic doctrine and imperial ambition, the colonizers encountered practices deeply alien and threatening to their worldview.1

Almost immediately, Spanish missionaries and chroniclers began documenting the use of substances like peyote, teonanácatl, and ololiuqui.2 Figures like Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, whose Florentine Codex provides invaluable, detailed accounts of Aztec life including mushroom ceremonies, paradoxically preserved this knowledge while condemning the practices.3 Sahagún described Indians eating mushrooms with honey, experiencing visions, dancing, weeping, and consulting them for divination and healing.3 Fray Toribio de Benavente Motolinia offered a more harrowing account, describing users seeing snakes, feeling worms eating them, and sometimes despairingly hanging themselves, calling the mushrooms a "bitter food" for demonic communion.4

This interpretation—framing indigenous psychoactive use as devil worship, idolatry, and witchcraft—became the dominant colonial perspective, drawing parallels with European witch-hunt narratives linking drugs to demonolatry.3 The visions induced were seen not as spiritual insights but demonic deceptions.3 This hostile framing justified systematic suppression. The Spanish Inquisition, established in Mexico (New Spain), actively persecuted traditional practitioners.5 Peyote was officially outlawed by the Inquisition in 1620, leading to numerous trials in subsequent centuries.1 Teonanácatl and ololiuqui use was similarly targeted.6 This persecution, coupled with priests' deliberate destruction of indigenous codices to eradicate "paganism," drove many traditional practices underground, obscuring parts of their history.7

However, suppression was never complete. Cultural traditions' resilience, sometimes aided by geographic isolation—like the Wixárika retreating into the Sierra Madre Occidental or practices persisting in Oaxaca's remote mountains—allowed knowledge and rituals to survive, passed through generations of healers and community members.8

Furthermore, a fascinating syncretic process blended indigenous beliefs with elements of the imposed Catholic faith.9 This was partly a survival strategy, allowing indigenous people to maintain aspects of their cosmology "hidden in plain sight" by associating their deities with Catholic saints or incorporating Christian symbols and prayers into rituals.10 For instance, Mazatec veladas often feature Catholic saint images and the Virgin of Guadalupe alongside traditional elements like copal incense and tobacco.11 Some believe the Virgin of Guadalupe's veneration at Tepeyac hill overlays pre-Hispanic worship of the Aztec mother goddess Tonantzin there.12 Curanderismo, Mexican folk healing, explicitly blends indigenous plant knowledge and ritual with Catholic spirituality.13 This fusion was not just camouflage but a dynamic cultural adaptation, creating new, unique spiritual expressions.13 The Spanish themselves were sometimes drawn in, with records of colonists using peyote or employing indigenous healers, further complicating matters.1 Authorities viewed this syncretism suspiciously, often deeming it heresy, yet it persisted.8

Copal offerings

Interestingly, some colonial authorities distinguished, tolerating or even incorporating certain "rational" non-psychoactive medicinal plant uses like peyote (e.g., topical treatments for wounds, bites, or pain; low-dose preparations as heart tonics listed in official pharmacopeia into the 19th and early 20th centuries) while condemning visionary applications.1 This nuanced view might have inadvertently created space for the plants, if not their full traditional use, to persist more openly. The collision of worlds resulted not in simple erasure, but in a complex layering of suppression, hidden persistence, and creative cultural blending that shaped the landscape for centuries.

Next: Whispers from Oaxaca: The West 'Discovers' Sacred Mushrooms

Previous: Psychoactive plants in pre-Columbian Mexico

Sources

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Footnotes

  1. Peyote | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History, https://oxfordre.com/latinamericanhistory/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780199366439.001.0001/acrefore-9780199366439-e-1139?d=%2F10.1093%2Facrefore%2F9780199366439.001.0001%2Facrefore-9780199366439-e-1139&p=emailA8zqTpvR9NOZs ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  2. Hallucinogenic drugs in pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures - PubMed, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21893367/ ↩

  3. Teonanácatl and Ololiuqui, two ancient magic drugs of Mexico - unodc, https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/bulletin/bulletin_1971-01-01_1_page003.html ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  4. THE TEONANACATL - Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl, https://nahuatl.historicas.unam.mx/index.php/ecn/article/download/78624/69566/231757 ↩

  5. Old Uses of Peyote in Traditional Mexican Medicine and its Inclusion in Official Pharmacopeia - Chacruna, https://chacruna.net/history-of-peyote-science-in-mexico/ ↩

  6. Indigenous psilocybin mushroom practices: An annotated bibliography in: Journal of Psychedelic Studies Volume 8 Issue 1 (2024) - AKJournals, https://akjournals.com/view/journals/2054/8/1/article-p3.xml ↩

  7. Psychoactive and other ceremonial plants from a 2,000-year-old Maya ritual deposit at Yaxnohcah, Mexico - PMC - PubMed Central, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11051596/ ↩

  8. Peyote and Diabolism in New Spain - Early Modern History in 28 Objects, https://emh30.ace.fordham.edu/2018/12/09/peyote-and-diabolism-in-new-spain/ ↩ ↩2

  9. Religious Syncretism in Colonial Mexico City - OER Project, https://www.oerproject.com/OER-Materials/OER-Media/HTML-Articles/Origins/Unit6/Religious-Syncretism-in-Colonial-Mexico-City ↩

  10. Syncretism and the Tzeltal Rebellion - Esther M. Zimmer Lederberg, http://www.estherlederberg.com/Eugenics%20(Mayr)/Tzeltal%20Rebelion.html ↩

  11. Mazatec Shamanic Knowledge and Psilocybin Mushrooms - Chacruna, https://chacruna.net/mazatec-shamanism-and-psilocybin-mushrooms/ ↩

  12. The syncretism Problem in Catholicism - Reddit, https://www.reddit.com/r/Catholicism/comments/1au7zm3/the_syncretism_problem_in_catholicism/ ↩

  13. El curandero actual: Preserving Indigenous Identity through Mexican Folk Healing's Chants - ShareOK, https://shareok.org/bitstreams/1b9e3544-91b6-4bc6-82c9-28b3e02c7c41/download ↩ ↩2