Saturday, August 26, devout Catholics in Guadalajara gave air to their outrage at what they see as the sacrilegious nature of a piece of public art erected last month on Calzada Federalismo, combining as it does Catholic iconography with that of a “pagan” religion.
The name of the piece, by sculptor Ismael Vargas, is “Sincretismo” and was erected August 14, one of many commissioned by Guadalajara Mayor Enrique Alfaro and his government in the past year.
Syncretism is the combining of disparate cultural elements, be they cultural, artistic, philosophic or religious. However, the term is most often used in relation to the latter element, i.e., “religious syncretism,” wherein a new belief system is constructed from the fusion of attributes taken from two or more pre-existing credos.
Vargas’ metallic creation “Sincretismo” is little else than what its title suggests: a merging of an Aztec deity (Coatlicue) with a Catholic one (the Virgen de Guadalupe). Following the Conquest, the Spanish destroyed a temple to the mother goddess Coatlicue (also known as Tonantzin) at Tepeyac outside Mexico City – where the dark-skinned Virgin of Guadalupe is said to have appeared to Juan Diego, an Aztec Indian, in 1531 – and built a chapel dedicated to her on the site. The Virgin subsequently played a significant role in the conversion of thousands of indigenous natives to Catholicism, as a new “Mother of God” replaced an older one.
The protestors seem resistant to these historical connections, believing Vargas’ creation insults millions of Catholics, and that the artist is guilty of blasphemy by using Aztec symbols such as serpents and skulls in a work of art that also features the sacred image of the Virgin of Guadalupe.
Adding to their ire is that the nine-meter-tall sculpture stands just 350 meters away from the Templo de Nuestra Señora del Refugio, a church so beloved that, when constructing Calzada Federalismo, it was decided to part the wide arterial like the Red Sea around the church, rather than razing the structure or moving it somewhere else.
Saturday, protesters clad in white t-shirts and carrying umbrellas paced back and forth between the offending work and the church, praying and singing.
The demonstrators have the full backing of church leaders, including outspoken Cardinal Juan Sandoval, the former archbishop of Guadalajara. This week, he mocked what he sees as Alfaro’s crass attempt to propagate an image of himself as a patron of the arts, adding that the piece “needs to disappear.”
Sandoval’s acid commentary didn’t seem to cause Alfaro to lose much sleep.
“Everyone is entitled to their opinion,” commented the mayor. “We’re going to keep moving forward with our program of public art, which we are very proud of.”