La Isla del Rey
The Playa del Rey (Beach of the King) on the island of the same name, on the Riviera Nayarit, in front of San Blas, is a wonderful place “where the green palm trees are allowed to go where the wind decides, while the arrival of the waves is accompanied by serenity, a relief for those who arrive in this paradise”. But the king's real secret is located 300 meters away, it is a monument that nature has created over time, a white rock called Haramara, sculpted by salt water and which the Huichols of the Sierra Nayarita consider sacred.
Haramara, according to the  Wixarika legend, was the first solid object that was born on earth, when it was still very young and there was nothing but boiling water in the world. For this reason, it is believed that the origin of life is found in the rock. The Huichols say that the gods left the white stone to shape the planet, and that inside it rests the goddess Haramara, who is beaten by the sea, to first become a cloud, and then rain; which causes life to grow in every corner of the earth; all thanks to the mother, the sea; from where the first beings were born. This is the sacred place of Tatei Haramara, Mother of the Sea. The mother of humanity.¹

Tatei Haramara, sacred site.
Throughout the year there are different pilgrimages to worship Tatei Haramara, one of the most important deities of the Wixarika culture and every May 20 baptism rituals are organized. This magical place is one of the five cardinal points of the Wixarika sacred space, visited in ritual pilgrimages. Near the beach there is a small shrine, a Xiriki, where offerings are left to Kauyumari, the blue deer god who guides the Huichol people on their pilgrimage from here to Wirikuta, to gain knowledge and assume their role as guardians of the planet.
According to their traditions, the Huichol pilgrims visit the playa del Rey to deposit offerings such as jícaras (gourd bowls), lit candles, arrows and other elements that little by little are taken by the sea by way of gratitude.

Pacta sunt servanda: agreements are to be kept
In 2008, in Pueblo Nuevo, Durango, the Hauxa Manaká pact was signed by the president of Mexico, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa and the governors of the states of Jalisco, Nayarit, Durango and San Luis Potosí; all of them wearing colorful Wixárika attire. The agreement was signed in the midst of strong international pressure, in which the United Nations Organization asked the government to respect the territories and the collective decisions of the Huichol people. In the Hauxa Manaká pact, the president of the republic undertook to take care of and guarantee the historical continuity of the sacred places of the Wixárika people.

The federal government soon "offered its support" to the Wixárika Union of Ceremonial Centers (UWCC), which had received the mandate of the Wixaritari communities to protect the sacred sites. The National Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples (CDI: Comisión Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas) thereupon urged the UWCC to seek a “concession" on the grounds of Isla del Rey for the construction of a Xiriki where the offerings could be deposited, and the protection of this place reinforced. What the government did not say is that the concession had to be paid by the communities or otherwise could be canceled and sold. What had been an ancestral right had become a commercial lease. The alleged concession to the UWCC was no more than a part of the division of the whole land into concessions or pieces of land that can be privatized by tourist capital. The federal government, through the CDI, with its supposed help had become a fundamental operator for the privatization and dispossession of the sacred Tatei Haramara, Our Mother of the Sea. Finally, the government put the island on sale, leaving only a small area where the Wixárika people can make offerings to their gods. The agreements with indigenous peoples did not need to be maintained.²

Open war on the Huichol nation
The history of the process of privatization of the sacred site of Haramara mirrors the government’s policies towards the other Huichol sacred sites -the pillars that sustain the Huichol cosmos, our world; a strategy of constant betrayal, presented as assistance but designed to end the Huichol claims to their ceremonial places and with it its chances of survival. Today in 2018, the offerings to Tatei Haramara no longer arrive, everything stays at sea. For several years they have been prevented from entering Isla del Rey, even by boat. The Huichols are convinced they want to take away their millennial center of worship.
Unable to find redress at the state level, a Wixarika delegation traveled to Mexico City to hand a letter to president Enrique Peña Nieto, in which they appeal for his intervention for the protection of their sacred site. There came no answer from the president.³

On August 9, 2018, the International Day of the Indigenous Peoples, the Huichols of Nayarit visited their temple on the beach of Isla del Rey in San Blas, Nayarit, to thank their gods in the sacred place of Tatei Haramara, Mother of the Sea. The temple had been burned down, by the Department of Public Safety and on express orders of the local mayor, as the stunned Huichols learned from the Press ⁴. When the Huichols organized a protest meeting with the mayor, she refused to receive them.
However, a few days later it was reported that the president of the Wixárika Union of the Ceremonial Centers, Francisco Gonzalez de la Cruz, disclaimed any responsibility for the fire on the part of the mayor of San Blas, Candy Yescas. He explained that the current city administration of San Blas had facilitated transport to help the Huichols reach the island. Ms Yescas herself stated that she was committed to help the indigenous peoples conserve their sites in good conditions ⁵.

¹ See "Los Huicholes creen que la vida inicio en esta Piedra Blanca", por Lucy Nuño Parra.
² See "Abierta traición, ahora en Haramara", por Tunuary y Christian Chavez
³ Letter of support for the Wixárika demand for the return of their sacred land.
⁴ Alcaldesa del PRI manda quemar centro ceremonial Wixárika en Nayarit.
⁵ Tras incendio se vigilará Tatei Haramara, acuerdo entre Unión Wixárika y Alcaldesa de San mBlas