Peyote Trip on Scorpion Ranch part 2

Read "Peyote Trip on Scorpion Ranch part 1 here"

Sitting at the kitchen table with Scorpion, he had a few more conspiracy theories to unload.

According to Scorpion, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was hellbent on reducing the population of the earth, specifically by sterilising developing nations through vaccines. I’d heard the rumours before, mostly based on an ambiguous quote from a speech that Mr. Gates gave. But no, the source was a whitepaper that mentioned targeting certain “blocks” - apparently a code word for racial groups - using genetically targeted poisons.

I remembered the quote from humorist Dennis Miller: “Bill Gates is just a monocle and a Persian Cat away from being one of the bad guys in a James Bond movie.” Of course, now with Gates’ humanitarian efforts, people like to believe that’s no longer true. It certainly does no favours to my positive attitude to believe that Gates intends to introduce eugenics to Africa under the guise of medicine - however, my cynical side knows that in the real world, supervillains always have good PR agents.

Scorpion complained that none of the Huichol would listen to him when he explained the fluoride in the salt was affecting their brains. He would see their eyes glaze over and he’d know that his message wasn’t getting through.

I asked his granddaughter, (presumably actually his step-granddaughter) Majo if Spanish was her mother tongue, thinking that she spoke Wixárika. She said yes, Spanish was her mother tongue, and her only tongue. Scorpion said that the Huicholes had been robbed of almost everything, including their language. Drug tourists would go to Wikarruti - the sacred spot where earth began, according to Huichol beliefs - and take kilos of peyote, filling a gunny sack in each hand. The Peyote Way Church of God and the Native American Church pilfered the beliefs of the first nations and watered it down with new age nonsense. Writers mistranslated the beliefs and made millions, contributing none of it back to the communities.

Scorpion’s dream was to create sustainable, organic farming all over the ranch - greenhouses, aquaponics and earthships. His said the problem was that, being robbed of their language, and after generations of having their traditional education chipped away, the Huicholes couldn’t understand verbally. They had to see something before they understood it. I didn’t imagine that his level of Spanish helped - only knowing one conjugation of a verb in a language where that verb can have more than a hundred conjugations. To his credit, my Mexican friend said later that he was impressed with his level of communication, despite his limited vocabulary.

The next day, I broke fast with nopales in mole, guacamole, and beans, wrapped in blue corn tortillas. I had arrived to the ranch a few days before the ceremony. My friends from Guadalajara were to arrive that night, Tuesday, and my friends from Acapulco would arrive on Thursday. The reason I’d arrived early was because Scorpion had said I could help with the preparation. I was a little puzzled when it didn’t seem like there was any work to do. Even when I offered to help the women filling up the water tank or washing the dishes, they had it under control. So I had plenty of time to sit and think, and try to tolerate the heat.

In the afternoon, Scorpion told me that I might as well get started on some peyote. He gave me five gel caps filled with powder. He said “There you go, take those.” I told him that I was rather sensitive to psychoactive drugs, and after a little back and forth, he said I should take the caps over a couple of hours. The effects were slow to come on, but into the night things started to get a little weird.

To be continued...