December 12, in the rural villages throughout Jalisco — and Mexico — early-morning prayers, hymns and celebration began long before daylight, honoring the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Queen of Mexico.
This celebration, especially for many Indigenous and the poor, does not honor another of those many manifestations of Mary, the Mother of Jesus. Guadalupe is the Queen of heaven, Queen of the angles, the patriarchs, of the prophets, of the apostles and the martyrs, of all those who confess her faith, of the virgins of all the saints, Queen conceived without sin, Queen of the most holy rosary, Queen of peace and, most of all, La Morenita (the dark-faced Virgin), Protectress of all Mexicans and of Mexico.
Cuauhtlatohuac hears songs
The legend of La Virgin de Guadalupe tells us of Cuauhtlatohuac, a lower-middle-class Indian, born in 1475, who had sought instruction in Roman Catholicism and baptism just two years after the Franciscan friars landed in Mexico and had acquired a rudimentary education.
At 57, Juan Diego (his baptismal name), on the morning of Saturday, December 9, 1531, was stopped on his early-morning journey to Mass at the Franciscan templo de Santa Cruz at Tlatelolco (near Mexico City) by the sound of singing on Tepeaquilla (Tepeyac) Hill, the ancient home of the Aztec goddess Tonantzin. A dark-complected manifestation of the Virgin Mary appeared, telling Juan Diego to inform Mexico’s first Archbishop, Juan de Zumarraga, to build a church on the spot where she stood. After a series of frustrating adventures, Juan Diego overcame the doubts of the Spanish clergy on Tuesday, December 12, and the Virgin’s appearance was recognized.
But several elementary questions immediately arise concerning this event. First of all, the name “Guadalupe.” When Archbishop Zumarraga demanded some “proof” of the appearance, the Virgin had Juan Diego pick a bouquet of roses (growing suddenly among the dry rocks of Tepeyac) and take them to the cleric. But the Indian told her he couldn’t be running off on such an errand because he was caring for his critically ill uncle, Juan Bernadino. The Virgin told him to hurry to the archbishop with the flowers, and she would care for the uncle.
She then appeared to Juan Bernardo in Topetlac, not only healing him but revealing her name. Now, Juan Bernadino spoke no Spanish, and neither he nor his nephew had ever heard the word “Guadalupe” — a word that can be neither pronounced nor spelled in Nahuatl, which does not have the letters D and G. Speaking in Nahuatl (it has appeared to scholars of the event),, that the Virgin called herself te quantlaxapeuh or te coatlaxopeh. It is significant in those areas where Nahuatl was still spoken in the 1970s, she was referred to as Santa Amria Te Quatlasupe (a cut-down version of te quantlxopehu).
Virgin in eclipse
But for a long time, she wasn’t called anything by most people in Mexico because they didn’t know about her. The indigenous inhabitants around Tepeyac referred to her as Tonantzin, a familiar name that drew on the Indian’s pagan past and drove Spanish clerics to fits.
But 117 years after the event, contemporary historians noted the general absence of images of the Virgin of New Spain. As late as 1753, even for those making the pilgrimage to the church at Tepeyac, the Spanish name “Guadalupe” was unknown. From the beginning, there was no little opposition by the Spanish, both inside and outside the Catholic Church, to the cult of Guadalupe precisely because she was “Indian.” Indeed, even as the Guadalupana phenomenon gradually grew in popularity among common worshipers (the Virgin’s “miraculous” cures attracted attention in 1556), its unique significance seemed to have gone into something of an eclipse among many others, including some of the clergy.
Then Miguel Sanchez published “Imagen de la Virgin Maria de Dios de Guadalupe Milagrosamente Apracida en Mexico” in 1648, describing the event as “produgious,” insisting that it was different from the appearances of the Virgin Mary in other venues and awakening even those priests attached to the Basilica of Guadalupe to the theological foundations—and implications—that made it more than a vague legend. A year later, the Vicar of the Chapel of Guadalupe Lazo de la Vega published a Nahuatl version of the event saying the same thing. These two books changed how both clerics and lay people saw La Morenita.
Guadalupe means patria?
The most secular and easily observed difference was the total independence from the Spanish religious models that the Guadalupana appearance emphasized. (Though the Spanish insisted that any observance of the event be made on September 10, the day the Spanish Church celebrated the Blessed Virgin of Guadalupe of Estremadura, Spain, but that was changed.)
Soon, the criollos (those Spaniards who had been born in New Spain) adopted the Virgin of Guadalupe in part to emphasize their difference from peninsular Spaniards. Indeed, in some historians’ minds, the idea of a Mexican patria was created with the appearance of the Virgin, though it took nearly three centuries for that concept to blossom.
Center of Mexican being
While these theological, philosophical and political implications are all inherent in the image and belief in the Virgin of Guadalupe, December 12 strikes to deeper, less supervised, more primordial ground.
Those murmuring forms gathered in the early-morning darkness around dozens of Guadalupan shrines in every rural village throughout the Republic on December 12, warming themselves over makeshift fires, eating breakfast in the presence of La Morenita, were honoring the devotional, nourishing center of the Mexican being, an ordering cultural core that stretches back before Tonantzin and forward to no one knows what.
When a campesino takes leave, saying “May the dark Virgin cover you with her mantle,” he’s not telling you to “Have a good day,” he’s talking about history, fate, destiny and the protection of your very soul — whether you think you’ve got one or not.