For The Day That's In It

Guadalupe shrine in Cuernavaca, Mexico

Today is the feast day of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico. Actually, the patron saint of the U.S. and all the Americas. For this day, I'm sharing this pic of a little shrine to the Virgin in Cuernavaca, Mexico. This shrine was set up in a little nook or square cutaway in the wall surrounding the city's cathedral. It was in the part of the wall near the entrance to the Church of the Third Order of St. Francis.

There are at least three images of the Virgin in this shrine: the statue of her on the right, the picture of her hanging on the back, and a small image of her on the front of the vase holding the flowers on the left. If I'd pulled back the camera a bit when I took this pic (in 2010), there would probably be one or two more images of her visible, perhaps on the votive candle holders seen at the bottom of the photo.

The image of the Virgin of Guadalupe is all over the place in Mexico--in homes, in churches, in shops and restaurants, in parks, in the zocalos or plazas that form the center of Mexican cities and towns, in jewelry, on people's bodies, in graffiti, on tee-shirts and skirts and dresses, in people's hearts, in the history books and mythologies of Mexico and the Mexican people. The story goes that the Virgin first appeared to a peasant indigenous man named Juan Diego on December 9th, 1531, on a hill near modern-day Mexico City. She appeared to him 4 times over the next few days, asking him to have a church built in her honor on the site where she appeared. When Juan Diego took her message to the archbishop, he was asked for proof of the Virgin's appearance. So the Virgin healed Juan Diego's uncle and told him to gather Spanish roses from the hilltop where he saw her, even though it was December and Spanish roses didn't grow at the site any time of year. Juan Diego collected the roses in his tilma (a cloak made of rough fabric such as cactus fibers) and took them to the bishop. When he opened his tilma to show the roses, they fell to the floor and an image of the Virgin was visible on the inside of his cloak. The image of the Virgin on the tilma remains visible today, which can be seen at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City.

Apart from its miraculous origins, the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe is striking and significant for the ways her physical appearance differs from depictions of European madonnas. The Virgin of Guadalupe is darker-skinned and wears a mantle of turquoise blue--turquoise being a stone and color native to the Americas and well known to the Aztecs--rather than the traditional Marian blue of European art. Underneath the Virgin and the crescent moon she is standing upon, an angel with eagle's wings holds up her the train of her dress--the eagle being another native species to the Americas, a powerfully symbolic bird to the Aztecs, and a reference to the indigenous name of Juan Diego (Cuauhtlatoatzin, "one who speaks like an eagle").

I'm a fan of the Virgin of Guadalupe. I don't know if the story of her and Juan Diego is true or just a clever conversion story, or if the imaged tilma in the Basilica is the real deal, but I like what Guadalupe represents. I like her style. Even here in the U.S., her image is rather common, especially in communities with large Mexican populations like Chicago. There's a painting by one of my favorite artists, Kelly Vivanco, that reminds me of the Virgin of Guadalupe, though I'm sure there's no relation between the subjects. I also have a friend who is a teacher at a public high school in Chicago, a school in a Latino neighborhood with a large number of Latino students, and she told me a revealing story about an image of the Virgin. Across from the high school is a house with a garage door that kept getting covered in graffiti by some of the students. Every time the door got tagged with graffiti, the owner of the house would paint over the graffiti. Soon as his paint dried, it never failed--the door would get bombed again. Finally, the man (who was Hispanic himself) thought to place a poster or portrait of the Virgin of Guadalupe on his garage door. The kids never tagged it again. This is a woman who commands respect.

For English speakers who'd like to read more about the Virgin of Guadalupe, I recommend a book of stories and essays curated by Ana Castilo called Goddess of the Americas. It has some great pieces in there by Castilo, Sandra Cisneros, Richard Rodriguez, Octavio Paz, and many others (my favorite in the collection is Luis Rodriguez' "Forgive Me, Mother, For Ma Vida Loca"). The author Clarissa Pinkola Estes (of Women Who Run with the Wolves fame) also has a book about the Virgin called Untie the Strong Woman--the chapter called "Guadalupe Is a Girl Gang Leader in Heaven" is the best of the bunch.