Mazateca

Mazateca, or Mazatec, refers to the indigenous people of the Mazateca region in northern Oaxaca, Mexico, and to their cluster of related languages. The Mazateca inhabit the Sierra Mazateca and surrounding valleys, with the town of Huautla de Jiménez historically serving as a cultural and market center. They are a distinct cultural group within Oaxaca and have a long-standing presence in highland communities.

The Mazatec language group is part of the Popolocan branch of the Oto-Manguean language family. It consists of several closely related varieties commonly classified into northern, central, and southern Mazatec dialects. While there is some mutual intelligibility among dialects, differences can be substantial. Most Mazatec communities are bilingual in Spanish, and literacy in Mazatec is supported by community education initiatives and orthographies developed for local use.

Culturally, Mazatec society is village-based, with traditional agricultural practices centered on maize, beans, and squash, and with coffee as a significant cash crop in some areas. Catholicism integrates with indigenous beliefs, producing a syncretic religious landscape. The Mazatec have a rich tradition of healing and ritual practice, including a long history of plant knowledge used by healers and spiritual specialists.

Ritual plant knowledge is a notable aspect of Mazatec culture. They are known for ceremonial use of psychoactive plants, particularly certain psilocybin mushrooms, which have featured prominently in healing and divinatory rites and attracted international ethnobotanical attention in the mid-20th century. Salvia divinorum is also used in some communities.

Today, Mazatec communities confront modernization, language endangerment, and migration. Efforts to preserve and revitalize Mazatec languages and culture include bilingual education, documentation projects, and the maintenance of traditional practices in local contexts and diaspora communities in Mexico City and beyond.