3: You can’t understand politics in the Gran Nayar – even today – without understanding local ceremonial practices, such as the Semana Santa (Holy Week) festival pictured here. Religious beliefs, rituals, prayers, fiestas and thanksgivings still permeate every aspect of Náayari, Wixárika, O’dam, and Mexicanero life, from farming and hunting to politics and warfare. And so the Mexican Revolution was locally experienced—and is today remembered—as both a political and a supernatural event: an era of widespread intercommunal and factional conflict, when the still-unfinished agrarian reform that today divides the region was first begun; but also a time when local warlords channelled occult forces to defend their communities from raiders, and when miraculous statues of Catholic saints resisted the attacks of bandits or soldiers, or even took on human form to lead the charge against their enemies. It is natural, then, to find historical narratives of the Mexican Revolution embedded in the modern ceremonial practices of the Gran Nayar’s inhabitants, whether in the form of bandolier-draped dancers demanding gold from village elders in Tuxpan de Bolaños; painted “devils” shouting their allegiance to the Carrancistas, Villistas, or cristeros in Santa Teresa; or glazed-eyed peyote pilgrims in Santa Catarina irreverently yelling “Long live the supreme government!” as they romp around their ritual dance grounds. Many of the political outcomes of the revolution are also conceived of in terms of their effects on local ethno-religious identities.