Why this Mexican American woman played a vital role in the US sacramental peyote trade

MIRANDO CITY, Texas – The late Amada Cardenas has been called many things – “peyote angel”, “peyote rose” or simply “Grandma Amada”.

The beloved Mexican-American peyotera—who was the first licensed peyote dealer in the United States—not only played a vital role in the history of the peyote trade, but was also revered as an elder and healer by Native American peyote people.

Her home still stands in the heart of Mirando, a small South Texas border town 30 miles east of Laredo with a population under 200, as a shrine and museum to her legacy. It is in an area that Native Americans call peyote gardens because the spineless cactus that contains the hallucinogenic mescaline, a plant they consider sacred, grows naturally only in this region and northern Mexico.

Cardenas, a native of this land who grew up in a community where Catholicism was the way of life, learned the trade of peyote at a young age from her father. She and her husband, Claudio Cardenas Sr., were the first federally licensed peyote dealers to harvest and sell the sacramental plant to Native American Church members in the 1930s. After her husband’s death in 1967, she continued to welcome generations of church members into her home until her death in 2005, just before her 101st birthday.

Her biographer and peyote scholar, anthropologist Stacy B. Schaefer, wrote that the Cardenases got into legal hot water with state and federal government officials over how peyote laws were interpreted and implemented throughout most of the 20th century. 20th. Schaefer says they strongly supported the rights of Native Americans to acquire and use peyote in religious ceremonies, risking prosecution and imprisonment for doing so.

In 1957, Claudio and Amada Cardenas were appointed major delegates from Texas for the Native American Church of North America. In 1987, Amada Cardenas was appointed as an officer of the Native American Church in the United States.

The living room of her home, which has welcomed thousands of guests over the decades, is now filled with framed family photos and gifts from the peyote people she hosted. Chests of drawers in the bedroom hold hundreds of handwritten letters from natives asking for his prayers, blessings, or thanking him for receiving them for a harvest or ceremony.

Cristala Allen, who is Caddo and often visited Cardenas in the 1990s, said Cardenas had a holy presence.

“The love was palpable every time I visited,” she said. “She lived in a humble little house. But she welcomed them all. Tibetan monks went to visit her. It’s a vibration. When you walk into that realm, you can feel it.”

Allen said Cardenas is “the matriarch of the Native American Church.”

“Amada lived where medicine grows and thrives,” she said. “She cuts the drugs, squeezes the peyote juice, and it goes into your body and into your bloodstream. It’s like she became the embodiment of it.”

Sandor Iron Rope, an Oglala Lakota spiritual leader and president of the South Dakota Native American Church, said Cardenas is a living representation of the words “love, faith, hope and charity,” written as mantras in her home. They are some of the core values ​​of the church.

“She wanted everyone to get along and for the natives to have access to peyote,” he said. “She wanted to bring peyote back to our people, for healing.”

Sky Groove, which looks after the property, said he became familiar with the area in the 1990s and met Cardenas from whom he learned some of the Spanish peyote songs he sang during ceremonies. He remembers and sings it: “Manana, manana, venga la manana”, which means “morning is coming”.

“He was a very deep person,” said Groove, who is not Native American but has been associated with the Native American Church for decades. “She lived around the drug her whole life. There is a certain amount of magic in medicine that is impossible to describe. It is said to be the peyote spirit. Amada knew it was there.”

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