right|thumb|Indians Yaqui The Yoeme or Yaqui are Amerindian which were, in the beginning, established in the valley of Rio Yaqui in the north of the Mexican state of Sonora and in the south-west of the Arizona, with the the United States. Yaqui were called “Yoeme” between them, which is the Yaqui term to nominate a person (“yoemem or yo' emem meaning “the people”). Yaqui called their Hiakim country, word that some see like a possible origin of the name Yaqui.

History of Yaqui

Yaqui were always separated from the empires Aztèque and Toltèque. Their grounds never were conquered by the Spanish which always lost the battles against them. But they however converted with the Christianisme with the Jésuites which also managed to the convainvre to be established in eight cities: Pótam, Vícam, Tórim, Bácum, Cócorit, Huirivis, Belem and Rahum.

During many years, Yaqui lived in good terms with the missionaries Jesuits. In 1730, the Spanish government colonial deteriorated this harmonious relation and made evacuate the Jesuits of Sonora, which led to rebellions on behalf of Yaqui.

Their people undergo a continuation of repression brutal on behalf of the Mexican authorities, of which a massacre in 1868 with Bacum where 150 Yaqui were alive flarings by the army inside a church.

A Yaqui chief, Cajemé, tried to gain their independence. But it failed and that produced other bloody repressions under the mode of Porfirio Diaz which carried out the displacement of Yaqui out of Sonora so as to leave the free place for the European and American immigrants. The government moved tens of thousands of Yaqui in the peninsula of the Yucatan where they were sold like slaves in the plantations. Many Yaqui have flees in the United States to escape their fate. Today, the Mexican municipality of Cajemé took the name of the Yaqui chief.

Yaqui spirituality

Yaqui have a perception of the world very different from the neighbouring tribes. For example, according to them, the world (ania) is divided into four: the animal world, the world of the “people”, the world of the flowers and the world of deaths. The majority of ritual Yaqui are devoted to the improvement of these worlds and the repair of the evil which was made to them, particularly by “the people”. With time, the practices Catholiques are deeply frays with the older Rituels of the tribe. The flowers are very important in the Yaqui worship. According to them, the flowers were born from the blood drops which fell from the body of the Christ at the time of the Crucifixion. One of the beliefs of Yaquis is that the existence of the four worlds is dependant on ritual annual on Easter and of Lent.

Yaqui in the United States today

In 1964, the yaqui accepted 817.000 m2 of grounds of the American federal government in the surroundings of Tucson, Arizona. The recognition of the existence of the tribe of Pascua yaqui comes only the September 18th 1978. At the end of the years 1960, a group of yaqui, with Anselmo Valencia and Fernando Escalante, developed New Pascua, or in espagno Pascua Nuevo, a village of a population estimated in 2006 at 4000 inhabitants and which became the administrative center of the tribe. The majority of its inhabitants speak three languages: English, Spanish and Yaqui. Another group was established close to Temple in Arizona in the hurdy-gurdy of Guadalupe. Today, about half of this village is composed of Amerindians who speak the three languages, the others are American of European origin. There exists another Yaqui community close to Scottsdale in Arizona.

Yaqui acquired a certain popularity following the works of Carlos Castaneda which describe his experiment with a Yaqui wizard, Don Juan.

External bond

The official site of the Yaqui tribe

exhaustive site on Yaqui

Bibiliography

• lesson of a wizard Yaqui of Carlos Castaneda, Gallimard (the work, although popular, is discussed on its descriptions and is not necessarily representative of the Yaqui culture and its Chaman S)