|
veggie

Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,504
|
Troubled times for Texas hallucinogen harvesters
#7767945 - 12/16/07 11:41 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
|
|
Troubled times for Texas hallucinogen harvesters December 16, 2007 - Reuters
RIO GRANDE CITY, Texas (Reuters) - Mauro Morales has chickens in his yard, deer antlers hanging from the fence and a shed full of peyote behind his house.
A slight, balding man in his 60s, Morales is one of just three "peyoteros" in the country licensed by the government to sell the small green cactus that contains the hallucinogen mescaline.
His profession is an old one that used to be more common along the Rio Grande, the only place where peyote grows in the United States. Now it is threatened by the forces of modernity.
His customers are the 250,000 to 400,000 members of the Native American Church, the only people in the United States for whom peyote is legal.
The government warily allows them to buy it because it has been part of indigenous religious ceremonies for centuries.
The church members think the visions that peyote produces provide enlightenment and that the cactus has curative powers. They reverently call it "the medicine."
Morales has never tried peyote because it would be illegal for him to do so. He does not want to risk losing his peyote license, for which the main requirement is that he be law-abiding.
"You have to make sure you don't have a problem with the law, you know?" he said in a recent interview.
In the 1970s, Texas licensed as many as 27 peyote dealers. There were supposedly many more before peyote was outlawed in 1967. One of Morales' fellow peyoteros also lives in Rio Grande City, the other 70 miles north in Mirando City.
The profession seems barely legal in a nation perennially at war with drugs, but in the peyote region there is nothing clandestine about it.
Morales has a big sign out in front of his modest home that proclaims "Mauro Morales -- Peyote Dealer, Buy or Sell Peyote."
It includes his phone number should any prospective customers pass by.
"It's a business," he said with a shrug of the shoulders in a recent interview. "It's the only income I got."
It is not a bad business, either. State figures for 2006 show the peyoteros sold a combined 1.6 million peyote "buttons" -- the term for the harvested cactus -- for a total of $463,000.
But records also show volume has declined steadily from mid-1990s peaks of around 2.3 million buttons.
"NOT LIKE IT USED TO BE"
Several factors have contributed to the peyoteros' dwindling number, but the main one is the growing scarcity of peyote.
"There's still some peyote out there, but not like there used to be. It's getting kind of scary now," said Morales above the crowing of a rooster from the roof of his shed.
He has had his peyotero license for 16 years, and before that worked as a picker, walking the arid brush country of southern Texas with a machete in hand and lopping off the top of the cactus when he found it.
It used to be easy -- peyote was plentiful and landowners were happy to let peyoteros harvest the cactus for a small fee.
But urban development and widespread "root plowing," which scrapes natural vegetation off the land to replace it with grass for cattle grazing, destroyed many of the peyote fields that once sprawled along the U.S.-Mexico border.
And more and more peyote land is off-limits because it is being bought by rich Texans who turn it into hunting preserves, said Martin Terry, a biology professor at Sul Ross State University in Alpine, Texas.
They have no need for the few hundred dollars the peyoteros offer to pick over their land and often view them suspiciously, said Terry, who has helped start the Cactus Conservation Institute to protect peyote.
He estimates that peyote's natural range in Texas covers about 800 square miles, but much less is open to the peyoteros.
The result, said Terry, is that the slow-growing cactus is overharvested and the quality and quantity of peyote available for sale is declining.
"We've got a serious case of overgrazing by human herbivores, to put it in biological terms," he said.
Peyote also grows across northern Mexico, which has prompted suggestions that native Americans be allowed to get it there as Texas peyote becomes scarcer.
But Terry believes the wisest thing would be for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to allow what it currently does not: greenhouse cultivation of peyote.
That would save the cactus, but likely make the peyoteros extinct.
Morales said his pickers cut the peyote in a way that allows the plant to grow back. He grabs a machete and slides the blade horizontally along the ground to show the technique.
"It comes back, but it grows slow," he said. "It's hard to get enough medicine."
|
Sactown_Shroomer
Fool on the Hill

Registered: 11/30/05
Posts: 62
Loc: Sacramento, CA
Last seen: 1 year, 2 months
|
Re: Troubled times for Texas hallucinogen harvesters [Re: veggie]
#7768017 - 12/17/07 12:13 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
|
|
This is very interesting and sad. I read an article recently, I think here on the Shroomery, about a small city in Mexico called Rio de Catorce. This small town attracts tourists from all over the world because it's the only city in Mexico where it's legal to hunt and use peyote. Long story short, peyote is becoming harder and harder to find and because the cacti takes thirty years to mature it makes thing even more difficult. We could soon be looking at an endangered species. What a shame that would be. Save a peyote and opt for San Pedro.
|
unborn
i had a title then i lost it.


Registered: 10/06/07
Posts: 191
Loc: soon to be your asshole.
Last seen: 13 years, 5 months
|
Re: Troubled times for Texas hallucinogen harvesters [Re: Sactown_Shroomer]
#7768863 - 12/17/07 10:35 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
|
|
it doesnt take 30, it takes 3-5 to go from seed to flowering. but yeah overhavesting sucks, we should all grow peyote and sell it to that guy.
|
marshalldylan1
Stranger


Registered: 11/09/06
Posts: 2,485
Last seen: 13 years, 23 hours
|
Re: Troubled times for Texas hallucinogen harvesters [Re: unborn]
#7768877 - 12/17/07 10:40 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
|
|
They only grow in Texas in the US?
Coincidentally, like in the article, a family friend owns a huge piece of desert land on the border in Laredo that is used for hunting.
Maybe next time I'm there I should look for some buttons?
|
nepalnt21
12tnlapen



Registered: 09/14/06
Posts: 114
Last seen: 5 years, 9 months
|
Re: Troubled times for Texas hallucinogen harvesters [Re: unborn]
#7769230 - 12/17/07 11:53 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
|
|
Quote:
unborn said: it doesnt take 30, it takes 3-5 to go from seed to flowering. but yeah overhavesting sucks, we should all grow peyote and sell it to that guy.
when cultivated, it might take that little time, but in the wild it takes MUCH longer.
|
psilotatsic
useless



Registered: 04/21/05
Posts: 331
Loc: Here
|
Re: Troubled times for Texas hallucinogen harvesters [Re: nepalnt21]
#7769414 - 12/17/07 12:35 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
|
|
I called the guy.. "No paperwork No medicine"
-------------------- "Those whoe truely get high never come back"
|
sui
I love you.



Registered: 08/20/04
Posts: 31,853
Loc: Cali, Contra Costa Co.
|
Re: Troubled times for Texas hallucinogen harvesters [Re: psilotatsic]
#7769445 - 12/17/07 12:43 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
|
|
Quote:
psilotatsic said: I called the guy.. "No paperwork No medicine"
-------------------- "There is never a wrong note, bend it." Jimi Hendrix
|
Visionary Tools



Registered: 06/23/07
Posts: 7,953
Last seen: 1 year, 7 months
|
Re: Troubled times for Texas hallucinogen harvesters [Re: sui]
#7769630 - 12/17/07 01:25 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
|
|
I'd hate to see the peyote cactus die out, but there'll always be people growing this attractive plant, right?
I like the functional design of the san pedro, quicker growing to.
And hopefully, Wiccan/chemistry bods will figure out how to make magic with gallic acid.
--------------------
|
GGreatOne234
Stranger
Registered: 12/23/99
Posts: 8,946
|
Re: Troubled times for Texas hallucinogen harvesters [Re: veggie]
#7769659 - 12/17/07 01:30 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
|
|
...I am kind of liking that sign he made.. that would look good on my wall.
Anyways, the American indians and the ones in Mexico will always find a way.. to get their medicine out to the people who deserve it most.
I personally would be extremely apprehensive to even touch their wild peyote buttons. That is sacred indian medicine, for the indians-church-only in my eyes.
But whatever-
I gave my cultivated peyote and cultivated san pedro's away to an American indian, before I moved away from Florida to a colder climate.
I did tell him that I did not feel right about giving them to him for free.. and he completely agreed. I traded him my whole psychoactive cactus garden for 20 American dollars. it was a steal-
|
2859558484
Growery is Better



Registered: 01/10/06
Posts: 8,752
Last seen: 3 years, 4 months
|
Re: Troubled times for Texas hallucinogen harvesters [Re: veggie]
#7769714 - 12/17/07 01:45 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
|
|
they need to stop harvesting the fuck out of an endangered species. they need to get thier buttons from the endless veins in mexico instead of picking south texas dry.
--------------------
|
Robo
R Series 66Y
Registered: 05/08/07
Posts: 14,861
|
Re: Troubled times for Texas hallucinogen harvesters [Re: veggie]
#7770189 - 12/17/07 03:54 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
|
|
Where can I sign up to be a peyotero?
|
HugaDeadHead
yogi


Registered: 11/09/06
Posts: 417
Loc: here, there, and everywhe...
Last seen: 10 years, 7 months
|
Re: Troubled times for Texas hallucinogen harvesters [Re: Robo]
#7771080 - 12/17/07 07:23 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
|
|
PeyoteWay.org
|
ocarina
C9H13NO3 + C8H11NO3 = >8)


Registered: 07/18/07
Posts: 249
Last seen: 13 years, 7 months
|
Re: Troubled times for Texas hallucinogen harvesters [Re: HugaDeadHead]
#7773228 - 12/18/07 09:57 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
|
|
Wow, I just realized this guy lives about an hour and a half away from me.
|
Robo
R Series 66Y
Registered: 05/08/07
Posts: 14,861
|
Re: Troubled times for Texas hallucinogen harvesters [Re: ocarina]
#7773242 - 12/18/07 10:01 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
|
|
Raid his peyote shed
|
seldom seen
April Fool


Registered: 11/03/07
Posts: 1,032
|
Re: Troubled times for Texas hallucinogen harvesters [Re: veggie]
#7773473 - 12/18/07 11:25 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
|
|
Another species and habitat at risk at the hands of the American cattle industry. Futhermore, I respect the Native American Churh and their right to use peyote, but we all know there is evidence of mushroom use dating further back in time in several regions of the world. I'm sure there are many of us who would consider the use of mushrooms sacramental, spiritual, however you want to phrase it, and many have argued the first human "religion" was centered around use of the almighty fungus. The bottom line, in my opinion, is that as humans we are all connected to the earth and the use of psychoactive plants is part of our heritage. We are supposedly entitled to freedom of religion, not just the Native American Church, and all humans, if they choose to do so, should be allowed to enhance their worldview through psycoactive plants.
|
|