Montagne dangereuse ou montagne en danger? Usages politiques, magico-religieux et touristiques du Chikon Tokoxo (Sierra Mazatèque, Mexique)

Abstract

Mountain in danger or dangerous mountain? Political, religious, and touristic uses of the Chikon Tokoxo (Mazatec Sierra, Mexico)In the Mazatec Country (Oaxaca State, Mexico), the Chikon are living in a mountainous region. These people are therefore human operators that allow the observer to analyze not only the relationship of man with environment, but in the same time his social life and his relationship with the others. The Nindo Chikon Tokoxo, a mountain that faces one of the most important mazatec chief towns (Huautla de Jimenez), is taken by some local actors as a means of new political, ethnic and cultural uses. Today celebrations of the mountain are very contrasted. As a place invented to promote a local culture, the Nindo Tokoxo is the means of various religious offerings. Uses of the space (alternatively rural, magical and religious, touristic, patrimonial and ethnic) are representative of the diversity of the people and of their ways of living. The Chikon Tokoxo, an emblematic landmark of power and tourism, is thus a tool to analyze the social change. A special look will be given to the articulation between the instrumentalization of Chikon Nindo Tokoxo and its conceptualization in the vernacular symbolic system.

Keywords

• mazatecos
• symbolism
• sacred mountain
• Mazatec