Texas' Peyote Hunters Struggle to Find a Vanishing, Holy Crop

But he's not immune to the transformations going on in his hometown. His eyes light up when the name Brad Pitt is mentioned. "He was so cool," Hernández says. "We all hung out with him for two months when he wasn't filming."

Mauro Morales looks a little worried when he talks about Mexican peyote. He knows that there's much more medicine on the other side of the border, but he's not crossing the river to seek it out. Even though he's a licensed dealer, transporting the stuff across the border would land him in jail. And he's skeptical of the Mexican police.

Daniel Kramer

Cactus spines and the occasional rattle snake are all in a day's work for Mauro Morales, one of three legal peyote hunters in Texas.

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"You don't want to get caught with medicine over there," he says. "In Mexico, you're guilty until proven innocent. Here, you're innocent until proven guilty."

Still, like many people following the decline of the peyote trade in Texas, he hopes that, someday, he might be permitted to import peyote into Texas. But time may be running out for him. Morales says that he knew he was getting older when Indians started calling him "grandpa" a few years ago.

Morales gets part-time help harvesting peyote from his sons in February, when deer season ends and Indians start arriving. But one son has a full-time job, and the other is more interested in his hobby of cockfighting than in picking medicine.

Morales has his eye on his 14-year-old grandson Angel, who's doing well in school and has good manners. Angel might be able to take over the family business someday. But he's not sure. "The medicine might be extinct in 25 years. Then everyone will have to go to Mexico."