Lady of Guadalupe to Understand

¶ … Lady of Guadalupe

To understand Our Lady of Guadalupe, it is important to appreciate that her appearance was in response to the agony of the indigenous people faced at the hands of the Spanish invaders, and that her message was one of loving presence (Gift). Since the sixteenth century apparition of Mary to the Indian Juan Diego outside what is now Mexico City, Our Lady of Guadalupe has been a prism, for some people see her as an image of Mary, while others see her as showing humanity the maternal face of God or even an image of the Holy Spirit (Gift). No matter how her devotees interpret her, Our Lady of Guadalupe is a reminder of God's unconditional love and challenges humankind to make God accessible to everyone (Gift). For many Latinos, the Guadalupe story is the lifeline to their culture, their homeland, the connection to their past and culture (Gift).

The Guadalupe story dates back to December 1531 in Mexico-Tenochtitlan (what is today Mexico City) when the Virgin Mary appeared four times to the Christianized Indian Juan Diego (Gift). On his way to Mass, a beautiful woman surrounded by a body halo appeared to him with music of songbirds in the background, and when the birds quieted, she announced, "I am the entirely and ever virgin, Saint Mary," (Gift). She assured Juan Diego that she was the "compassionate mother" and that it was her desire to love and protect "all folk and every kind" (Gift). She then requested that a temple be built in her honor at the place where she stood, Tepeyac Hill, on the eastern edge of Mexico City (Gift). This site has been identified as the location where a temple to the Aztecan goddess Tonantzin once stood (Gift).

Juan Diego went immediately to the bishop-elect of Mexico, Zumarraga, to tell him of this incredible event, however he was skeptical and dismissed the humble peasant (Gift). Juan Diego returned to Tepeyac Hill and begged the Virgin Mary to find a more prominent person who was less "pitiably poor" than he to make her requests, yet she rejected his protestations and urged him to return to the bishop-elect and "indeed say to him once more how it is I myself, the ever virgin Saint Mary, Mother of God, who is commissioning you" (Gift). Juan Diego once again returned to the church, and waited after Mass to enter his second plea on behalf of the Virgin (Gift). This time, Zumarraga asked Juan Diego to request a sure sign directly from the "heavenly woman" as to her identity (Gift). The next day, Juan Diego rushed to the bedside of his dying uncle, Juan Bernardino, who begged Juan Diego to fetch a priest for the Last Rites of the church (Gift). The next morning Juan Diego set off to find a priest, all the while trying to avoid the Virgin because of his uncle's worsening condition, however she intercepted him and asked, "Whiter are you going" (Gift). When he explained his mission, she assured him that his uncle was healed since she had already made a separate appearance to him. This third vision would start a tradition of therapeutic miracles associated with Our Lady of Guadalupe (Gift). The Virgin also told Juan Diego that she would give him certain proof of her real identity (Gift). On December 12, 1531, the Virgin made a fourth and final appearance to Juan Diego. She appeared and told him to go to the top of Tepeyac Hill and pick "Castilian garden flowers" from the normally barren summit. She helped him by "taking them up in her own hands," and folded them into his cloak woven of maguey plant fibers, the now-famous tilma (Gift). Juan Diego then went to Zumarraga's palace, and when he unwrapped his tilma, the flowers tumbled at the bishop's feet, and "suddenly, upon that tilmo, there flashed a portrait...a sacred image of that ever virgin Holy Mary, Mother of God" (Gift). Zumarraga now had the sure sign as to the true identity of the heavenly woman.

Author Arvind Singhal notes that the Cult of Our Lady of Guadalupe has served as a tool of empowerment, dominion, and accommodation (Singhal). Central to this cult is an indigenous reinvention of the Virgin Mary that is simultaneously index, icon, and symbol (Singhal). When Hernan Cortes led a small Spanish expeditionary force into the heart of the Aztec Empire in 1519, one of the main goals was the religious conversion of the indigenous peoples of Meso-America (Singhal). The Spanish conquistadors seized sites sacred to the Aztecs, destroyed any idols they found and inserted in their place Christian images they had brought with them from Europe (Singhal). The Aztecs did not passively accept the Roman Catholic religion, nor did they outright reject, but rather they actively transformed Catholicism even as they converted to it (Singhal). They did so by appropriating Catholicism's most popular saint, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and giving Her a new name, a new history, and new religious meanings that responded to their socio-cultural needs and reflected their historical experience (Singhal). In response to the popularity of this new Aztec version of the Virgin, the Church has tried to co-opt the Virgin and claim Her as its own (Singhal). It is said that the Virgin imprinted her image on Juan Diego's cloak, and it is this cloak which remains the center of the cult (Our). Singhal writes that the cult that has developed around this reinvented Virgin, "is a site of on-going semiotic struggle in which elements of Aztec and European, Christian and non-Christian religious and cultural systems meet, mingle, combine, and conflict with one another" (Singhal). It has served as a unifying force and source of empowerment for the diverse peoples of Meso-America, a tool of conquest and oppression that exploits those same people, and a syncretistic blending that mediates between the traditions of the pre-contact Meso-American Aztec religion and European Catholicism (Singhal). Moreover, it ahs provided a context for the continuation of some Aztec religious traditions and for the extension of the Catholic Church's power into the Western Hemisphere, where approximately 512 million of the world's 1 billion nominal Catholics now live (Singhal).

Few historians have succeeded in unraveling the theological implication of the Guadalupe event, for the transformation and process of the cult speak not only of the course of Mexican history but also of the evolution of its religiosity, in a manner that few other symbols can (Maya). In the minds and hearts of the people, Our Lady of Guadalupe replaced another great lady, Tonantzin, whom the Aztecs revered as the Mother of God (Munguia). Since that time, She has been in the forefront of all Mexican endeavors. Our Lady of Guadalupe has been the banner of the revolutionary forces that gained Mexico's Independence, protected the nation from foreign invasions, led in the great civil battles that constantly sought for all Mexicans freedom from want, exploitation and abuses (Munguia). Sister Irma Avila says, "The Lady of Guadalupe is an important figure in Spanish culture. We are taught early on to see her as our mother and as an intercessor because she leads us to her son" (Bowen).