Description
The Cora are an indigenous ethnic group of North Western Mexico which live in the municipality El Nayar, Rosamorada, Ruiz, Tepic, in the Mexican state of Nayarit, Mezquital in Durango and in a few settlements in the neighboring state of Jalisco. They call themselves naayerite whence the name of the present day Mexican state of Nayarit. They reside within a series of colonial land grants and contemporary agricultural communes. The 2000 Mexican census reported that there were 24,390 people who were members of Cora-speaking households, these being defined as households where at least one parent or elder claims to speak the Cora language. Of these 24 thousand, 67 percent (16,357) were reported to speak Cora, 17 percent were nonspeakers, and the remaining 16 percent were unspecified with regard to their language.
Language
The Cora language belongs to the Corachol languages branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family.
Culture
The Cora religion is a syncretism between the pre-Conquest religion and Catholicism. The ancestral Cora religion has three principal divinities. The supreme god is the sun god, Tayau, "our father". He travels across the sky during the day, sitting down in his golden throne at noon. The people are farmers, planting corn (maize), beans, squash, and cucumbers in steep hillside plots. Burning is used to clear undergrowth, plows and planting sticks being the chief cultivating implements. Most families keep a cow for milk and cheese, and sheep are sometimes kept for wool; however, very little meat is eaten. Other barnyard animals are also kept, and hunting, fishing, and gathering of wild foods augments farming.