For his fourth exhibition at Peyton Wright in as many years, William Frej sought, and was granted permission to photograph the rituals of this year’s Holy Week by the Mayordomo, Nacho Gonzalez, of Santa Teresa del Nayarit, Mexico, a remote, indigenous Cora village in the rugged Sierra del Nayar, nine hours on a dirt road from Tepic and twelve hours from Guadalajara. Frej learned of this Semana Santa (Holy Week) ceremony from a Mexican anthropologist/archaeologist Marina Aguirre, an expert on indigenous cultures of Mexico, who accompanied Frej and his spouse Anne on this journey. 

Frej’s black and white photography document and memorialize a four-day ceremony embodying Christian iconography while simultaneously undertaking accompanying rituals that pre-date the Spanish conquest of Mexico. To date, few known photographic records exist documenting this important and centuries-old Holy Week ritual.  

 These indigenous people, known as “Cora”, live in western Mexico’s rugged Sierra del Nayar mountains in the state of Nayarit, bounded by the states of Sinaloa and Durango to the north, Jalisco to the south. The Cora’s remote and difficult to reach location, combined with with their fierce response to Spanish conquerers explains why they retain so much of their pre- Hispanic belief system within a loose Catholic framework.  

The Coras or Náayerite, as they call themselves, were not subjugated by the Spanish until the Sierra del Nayar region was conquered in 1722 by Juan de la Torre. It was incorporated into the Crown’s  lands under the title of the New Kingdom of Toledo. The Jesuits then took charge of evangelizing the indigenous people in the region and gathered them into towns founded around mission churches. After the Jesuits were expelled by the Cora in 1767, the influence of Catholicism became intermittent and remains so today.
Santa Teresa, with about 1,500 inhabitants, is one of the most remote of the villages in Nayarit. The road to the village is rough and the villagers like it that way, better to maintain their isolation and keep outsiders away.