You express your culture, personal stories and traditions with your works of art. This is de facto a different form of written expression. What else do your products express? For example, these pieces of jewelry?

Juan played with a pile of bracelets and necklaces, which abounded in bright colors and natural patterns, throughout the interview.

Basically every item expresses something. Some tell the stories from the mythology of our tribe. For example, the dog is something like our mother.

Yes, Don Pablo wanted to be photographed with a calendar, where the current week was accompanied by a picture of a statue of a dog. It was a Huichol product, covered, of course, in brightly colored seed beads. Pablo did not want to leave without a reminder of this coincidence.

Juan showed me patterns on pieces of jewelry and on their clothes. We have an eagle in our "coat-of-arms". The eagle is our symbol. Our shamans wear eagle feathers in their hats, as you can see with my father, which they use to communicate with the gods during rituals and as such they are able to heal the sick and otherwise provide assistance. My father is a Marakame. This means a healer and a singer of the sacred songs.

Are there any pieces which are made purely for commercial purposes?

Not at all, everything means something, everything bears a story. Nothing is made merely for sale.

The Huichol spend a significant part of their lives making each single item. How long did it take, for example, to make this bracelet ?

That kind of bracelet takes about 3 days. And the dog statue from the calendar, which is about 25 cm, takes about two weeks.

Do you work exclusively with Czech seed beads or do you also use seed beads of different origins? Do you differentiate during work between which seed beads are Czech, which are Japanese or Chinese?

Czech. And mainly the 11/0 size, it is just right. Japanese seed beads easily become transparent and the Chinese seed beads are all different sizes. There is no other seed bead which will do.

The color pallet is typical for your works of art. Do the colors have a symbolism, a meaning or a message ?

We use all colors, all "living". (Juan picked up a bracelet and pointed to the individual colors.) Green represents nature. Red and yellow symbolise fire, soil and the earth. Black represents darkness. Blue represents water or the sky.

One of the bracelets includes a green flower. Juan explains that this is a Peyote. A thornless cactus - a sacred flower which is associated with the beginning of their existence for the Huichol. They collect it using knives and literally gouge it out of the desert. And they do this in one specific area, San Luis Potosí, about 400 km from their home. Their ancestors regularly undertook this journey every two years. It took about two weeks. Nowadays, they use automobiles - they hitchhike. This shortens the journey to three days. But that is only the journey one way.

Peyote is a teacher for us. According to the mythology of our tribe, a blue stag brought our ancestors from the sea. It transformed into this plant at Potosí. Our ancestors began eating it and since that time we have used it in our rituals, where we learn everything we need - singing, prayer, healing - from Peyote while consuming it in the vicinity of fire. It allows us to see our lives - it is our "university". We also see, for example, when it is necessary to sow, what events are approaching and so on.

During your visit, you saw the production process ranging from melting the glass through to the final seed bead. What are your impressions of the tour? Did it come close to what you had imagined?

No, absolutely not. I had imagined something much smaller. It's amazing here. And the machines!

Huichol products are known worldwide. However, they try to sell them on their own behalf and to avoid middlemen who would otherwise "bleed them dry". They need to transfer the sense and story of every item they sell. Santiago also pointed to the fact that Huichol products can admittedly be found on global internet sales networks, but that this does not involve "fair trade". For this reason, they recommend purchasing directly from the Huichol.

The Huichol make a very modest living. Even purchasing the seed beads for their products is not easy. In order to purchase the rocailles for their work, they must first make a ca 700 km long journey to the nearest point of sale on foot, by hitchhiking and so on. Despite that, they still place seed bead after seed bead with humility and patience in order to create amazing original pieces of art. We can only hope that the seed beads will become more accessible to them in the mountains. Who knows - perhaps the difficulties of the Huichol will be reduced with the help of Preciosa Ornela.