Mushroom Foraging in Mexico 🇲🇽 🍄

Howdy Mycopreneurs,

Today we get the first peek at a new documentary titled ‘Juntando Moní’ (Joining Mon) that I’m producing in collaboration with Chiapanecan mycologist Ezequiel Cruz of Fungaria and several others. The documentary is in Spanish with English subtitles, as it is primarily intended for regional audiences to learn about and reconnect with the mushroom traditions of their homeland.

The Moní mushroom (Lactifluus chiapanensis s.l.) is a regionally important wild fungi in Chiapas, Mexico comprised of a bunch of different species that await description. The “s.I” at the end of the current species ID stands for ‘Sensu Lato”, Latin for ‘in the broad sense’.

Chiapas is the southwesternmost state of Mexico and has one of the world’s richest Funga (Flora, Fauna, and Funga). Across the jungles, cloud forests, and various other microclimates throughout the state dwell an estimated 50,000 different species of fungi - only 2% of which have been identified according to leading Chiapanecan mycologist Dr. Felipe Ruan Soto.

In his paper ‘Traditional Processing and Preservation of Wild Edible Mushrooms in Mexico’, Soto and his co-authors Marisa Ordaz-Velasquez and Erika Perez Ovando write that

“Wild edible mushrooms are relevant rural dietary resources during the rainy season across Mesoamerica.

…In  Mexico,  the  tradition  for  wild  mushroom  consumption dates  back  to  Pre-Hispanic  times.  Today,  around  371 different species  of wild  mushrooms are consumed (mostly by peasants and indigenous peoples) in the country.In  order to  make  use  of  these  resources,  indigenous  and rural people have historically accumulated and transmitted deep knowledge of the seasonality, ecology, morphology, and general biology of the mushrooms in their environments.”

The Moní mushroom is one such regional delicacy that provides sustenance and economic opportunity in the face of scarcity - the markets in indigenous areas across the state of Chiapas have wild mushroom vendors selling ‘Canastas’ (buckets) of mushrooms during the rainy season. Beyond Moni, you’ll also find ‘Yuyos’ (Amanita hayulyuy - ‘Yuy’ is the Tzotzil indigenous word for ‘Amanita’), my personal favorite Lobster Mushrooms (Hypomyces lactifluorum), Honey Fungus (Armillaria) and others according to availability.

This is the first trailer for a documentary I’m producing in collaboration with Chiapanecan mycologist Ezequiel Cruz that details the importance of the species to the regional ecosystem and the people who forage and sell it at the markets there.

This is the first trailer for Juntando Moní, which follows Berenice Reyes into the forests of Chiapas in search of the mushroom as a way to reconnect with her family heritage.

Part of the narration reads: “Her mother used to forage these mushrooms, but then her family moved to Tuxtla Gutierrez, the state capitol, and that tradition was put on hold”

This is an all too familiar scenario in Chiapas, across Mexico, and many other regions around the world. The accelerating force of globalization and urbanization has encroached upon traditional indigenous mushroom knowledge and connections to the ways of generations past. As these traditions dwindle and cling to the fringes of society, they remain alive in pockets here and there and are at great risk of being lost entirely for future generations. To rectify this, a new class of citizen mycologists around the world are stepping up to reclaim and spread this traditional knowledge to who it belongs: The native inhabitants of the region.

We will be ramping up production on Juntando Moní as the rainy season in Chiapas starts to pick up across July and August on through the last rains in mid-October. The month of August is known by some as ‘Hongosto’ in southern Mexico, a play on the words ‘Hongo’ (mushroom) and August due to the explosion of wild mushrooms that emerge from their subterranean mycelial networks during that time.

The film is actively seeking sponsorship and production partners - I will be contributing financial support to the film, and ask that anyone who wants to support this important work consider doing so as well. The money will primarily go towards enabling the film team to prioritize work on the project, as everyone involved is working full-time and is doing this as a labor of love and commitment to spreading awareness and knowledge of critically endangered fungal traditions.

Along those lines, this newsletter is brought to you by The Fungivore, an organization that leads mushroom foraging trips in Chiapas. Ezequiel and myself will be present for the MycoChiapas trip September 24 - October 2nd, which currently only has 3 remaining spots available before it sells out for this year’s only trip to the region.

These are some of the different species that the Fungaria team who will be co-leading this expedition regularly finds and cooks into haute cuisine after thanks to the extraordinary culinary prowess of Fungaria team member and chef Karla Jimenez Patishtan.

Here’s a sample of part of the itinerary for the trip:

To learn more about this trip and the other Summer 2025 expeditions with The Fungivore (also in southern Mexico), check out their site below and tell them we sent you:

In other global mushroom news in line with spreading traditional mushroom knowledge, yesterday I was featured in the Jamaica Gleaner newspaper - a 190 year old oublication that is the main newspaper in Jamaica. The article is about Shontelle Pinch, a pioneer in the legal psilocybin mushroom industry on the island through her brand Choose Happy and multiple other related projects. I had the chance to interview Shontelle on stage at Psychedelic Science 2025 in Denver recently as part of the Global Psychedelic Week popup event that we sold out.

Shontelle told our audience about traditional mushroom use as part of the ‘bush medicine’ lineage in Jamaica. The Marley family has also spoken about mushrooms as being a part of their traditional cultural practices, though little if any broader knowledge of the subject area is available to many residents of the island and to the world outside due to the legacy of colonization and the dwindling of ancestral knowledge in the face of urbanization and industrial development.

Catch Shontelle as one of our speakers at the inaugural Global Psychedelic Week coming November 3-9.

No Incubator today due to family time here in San Diego - If anybody wants to take the reins on leading an incubator or two in the coming months, please get in touch.

Thanks for reading the Mycopreneur Newsletter,

And hit me up in the replies to this email to connect about anything that resonated with you in here -

DW