Maria Sabina’s life changed forever when R. Gordon Wasson published a story about the power of the Mazatec healer’s mushroom ceremonies.
His 1957 Life magazine article “Seeking the Magic Mushroom” attracted droves of tourists, upending daily life in her hometown of Huautla de Jiménez in Oaxaca, Mexico — and the fascination with Sabina continues to this day.
Her name and face are ubiquitous to travelers who visit the area, but her personal story is less well-known.
Teatro Dallas co-founder Cora Cardona wants to change that, and she’s using a play to do it. Cardona is the writer and director of "Los Niños Santos de María Sabina," which will make its world debut Friday at the Latino Cultural Center. The show is performed in Spanish with English subtitles.
Cardona hopes the play will help people “get closer to the origins of our continent, embracing the people that were here before Western cultures arrived.”
“Many people know pieces of her story without knowing her name or her humanity,” said Lucila Rojas, one of three actors who play Sabina, each representing a different stage of the healer’s life. “After the outsiders discovered her ceremonies in the 1950s, her community and personal life changed dramatically. The resources in her community changed completely.”
Wasson later lamented how his story upended life in Oaxaca. In 1970, he described the influx of tourists to the area in The New York Times:
“What I have done gives me nightmares: I have unleashed on lovely Huautla a torrent of commercial exploitation of the vilest kind. Now the mushrooms are exposed for sale everywhere—in every market‐place, in every village doorway.”
While details of Wasson’s visit are well-documented, Cardona covers its aftermath and the events that shaped Sabina’s life leading up to it.
Armando Monsivais, who plays Sabina’s biographer Álvaro Estrada, said he’d never heard of Sabina before Cardona approached him about the play.
“Every time that I work with Teatro Dallas or especially with Cora Cardona, I'm always going to learn something,” he said. “She's so knowledgeable about the subject that you feel like you're earning some type of degree and certification on the subject.”
While others capitalized on her fame, Sabina did not. She died in poverty at 91. Her commitment to healing serves as an example to us all, Monsivais said.
“There's a scene where her son is talking about, ‘Hey, they're not even giving you what [the mushroom ceremony] is worth.’ She's like, ‘I'm here to heal. I'm here to help people,’” he explained. “‘I'm going to take what they can give me, and if it's just some fruit, then that's what I'll take.’ To live a life like that, it's amazingly humbling.”
Rojas hopes audiences will come away from the play with a greater respect for Indigenous traditions and a better understanding of what is stripped away from sacred acts when they become commercialized.
“It's really important to connect to our ancestry and the immense wisdom that they've carried and honor that and protect our culture and to listen to those stories that history often pushes to the margins,” Rojas said.
Details: “Los Niños Santos de María Sabina,” an original play about the Mazatec healer, runs May 15-24 at The Latino Cultural Center, 2600 Live Oak St., Dallas. Tickets start at $25.
Got a tip? Email Marcheta Fornoff at mfornoff@kera.org.
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