Our Lady of Guadalupe is an iconic manifestation of the “Dark Virgin” Mary celebrated widely throughout the Americas, particularly in Mesoamerica and the American Southwest. Represented in art, literature, and even politics as a unifying symbol of indigenous rights, the Virgen de Guadalupe and Juan Diego are classic and much-loved representations of modern Mexico—a blend of Mexican folklore, European religious influence and official sanction, and ancient myth. The Virgin of Guadalupe is celebrated as a Hispanic or mestiza version of the religious figure and has both has been accepted by the Catholic Church and has had its authenticity debated by some of its officials.
The Virgin Mary Shrine at the Santuario de Guadalupe in the Guadalupe District in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the oldest shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe in the United States. Immensely popular throughout Central America and the Southwest of the United States, Our Lady of Guadalupe offers a mestiza Madonna or “Dark Virgin Mary” which has fired the devotion of believers, most especially indigenous Catholics, for centuries. (Ralph Brannan/Dreamstime.com)
This Marian cult originated with a folkloric story that was largely accepted as official by the Catholic Church as early as 1648, with the approval of a version of the story recounted by Miquel Sánchez, titled Imagen de la Virgen María. Within that account, Sánchez dates the cult of the Virgin back to 1531, citing earlier oral versions as his source material. In this version, Sánchez describes the Virgin’s image as that of the Woman of the Apocalypse from Revelations 11:19 to 12:1–18 (and therefore, a sign of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ).
Canonical acceptance has been widespread, with twenty-five popes officially honoring the Lady. Pope John Paul II declared the Virgin of Guadalupe the patroness of the Americas in 1999, which was the most recent and vehement reaffirmation of her status as patroness. Previously, in 1754 Pope Benedict XIV created her official feast day, December 12, and celebrated the first mass of the Virgin of Guadalupe. In 1910, Pope Pius X proclaimed her patroness of Latin America, and in 1935 Pius XI granted her patronage over the Philippines. Pope John Paul II also canonized Juan Diego in 2002. This was the first-ever canonization of an indigenous American person.
However, the story is not without controversy. Some church officials have debated the authenticity and origins of the story, including Joaquín García Icazbalceta, a historian and the biographer of Bishop Zumárraga, who, in 1883, wondered why there were no official mentions of the story in Zumárraga’s surviving records of the time period. Other doubts were expressed in 1996 by an abbot of the Basilica of Guadalupe, Guillermo Schulenburg, who called the story symbolic instead of a true version of events. The controversy following Schulenburg’s remarks eventually forced him to resign from his position (Daily Catholic 1999).
These doubts about the story were raised during the canonization of Juan Diego in the 1990s and were largely dismissed by the church in 1995 when Father Xavier Escalada found and presented as evidence a deerskin codex, the Codex Escalada, which includes support in the names of Antonio Valeriano and Bernardino de Sahagún, who were church scholars and Zumárraga’s contemporaries. This is considered corroborating early written evidence for the authenticity of the events told in the original story.
The Original Story
Legend has it that the first manifestation of the Virgen de Guadalupe appeared to Juan Diego in December 1531 at the Hill of Tepeyac, a region in the northernmost part of Mexico City and the site of the modern-day basilica in her honor. The hill is also a former temple-site of a pre-Columbian Mother Earth goddess, Tonantzin.
In the legend, Juan Diego met with a young woman who spoke to him in Nahuatl, his local Aztec dialect, and told him to go to the Spanish bishop of Mexico City, who was at the time Fray Juan de Zumárraga. The young woman told him she was the Mother of God and instructed Juan Diego to tell the bishop to build a shrine to her on that spot. When met with skepticism from the bishop that a poor peasant man could have met the Mother of God, Juan Diego returned to the Lady and she further instructed him to gather the freshly blooming, out-of-season Castilian roses he would find and place them in his tilmátli (a peasant robe made out of agave cactus fiber). He was then to present the tilmátli filled with the roses to the bishop. When Diego did so, the roses fell out onto the floor and the tilmátli was miraculously transformed with the image of the Virgin that her devotees follow today. The Virgin also informed Juan Diego that his mortally sick uncle was cured, and these are considered her first miracles.
This tilmátli is still on display at the Basilica in Mexico City that was built in the Virgin’s honor, the Basilica de Guadalupe, and the image of the Lady is reproduced in everything from formal art to popular culture plastic statues. It depicts a woman with dark skin and dark eyes, head bowed demurely and hands clasped in prayer. She wears a blue cloak covered in scattered gold stars and trimmed in gold. She wears under the cloak a light-colored rose or pale-red dress that is embellished with flowers and leaf-like symbols that also appear very Aztec-influenced. She stands on top of an upward pointing crescent moon, which is being held up by a colorfully feathered angel. She is surrounded by golden, outward pointing sun rays that make a scalloped, shell-like frame, and her waist is drawn in by a dark or black girdle.
Some contemporary versions of the image will also include a snake crushed beneath the feathered angel’s feet; a famous reimagining of the icon from Yolanda López, titled Portrait of the Artist as the Virgin of Guadalupe and painted in 1978, shows a vibrant, active woman striding forcefully toward the viewer, dressed in modern clothing (including comfortable tennis shoes) and holding the crushed snake in one hand. These modern revisions of the icon show its persistence in the contemporary imagination as an important symbol that can continue to endure.
Mayan and Aztec Roots
There are many who believe that elements of the Virgin of Guadalupe story, as well as translation issues with her name, reference older pre-Columbian Aztec and Mayan belief systems that were transferred to or supplanted by Catholicism to convert the resistant indigenous populations of the area to Christianity. The temple at the site where Guadalupe instructed the bishop to build her shrine had been a temple to the Aztec mother goddess, Tonantzin. Many of the symbols in the iconographic vision can be explained with pre-Columbian religious imagery. The status of the Virgin as virgin-mother and therefore easily referenced as a mother goddess can be inferred by the black girdle the Virgin wears high up on her waist in the tilmátli, a sign that she is pregnant.
Tonantzin’s titles include “Mother Earth,” “Goddess of Sustenance,” “Honored Grandmother,” “Snake Crusher,” “Bringer of Maize,” and “Mother of Corn.” There is also debate that the name Guadalupe may be from a Spanish pronunciation of Coatlaxopeuh, or “the one who crushes the serpent”—referenced in the iconographic painting by the snake that is assumed to be under the Virgin’s feet. In Christian iconography, the snake often represents Satan, but the serpent she crushes could refer to Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec feathered serpent god, who was the god of wind, knowledge, the priesthood, and the dawn. Guadalupe could also be a reference to (and Spanish translation of) Coatlicue, the Aztec mother goddess who gave birth to the sun, moon, and stars. Coatlicue wore a dress of living snakes and is considered the patron goddess of women who die in childbirth. Coatlicue’s icons, then, are easily referenced by the moon under the Virgin’s feet and the stars on her cloak. The stars on her cloak have been argued to appear (by Mario Rojas Sánchez and in 1983 by Dr. Juan Homero Hernández Illescas) in the shape of the constellations of stars that would have been in the sky on the winter solstice before dawn on the morning of December 12, 1531 (“Our Lady” website). The winter solstice would have been an important ceremonial time to an agrarian culture. Many of the symbols of the image reference the pre-Christian iconography of the region and point to the mythologies that came before the Virgin, while at the same time preserving such images.
Miracles and Modern Observances
Miracles attributed to the Virgin of Guadalupe include the lack of structural decay of the tilmátli, which has been examined and shown to be in excellent physical condition. A 1791 ammonia spill that did no damage to the tilmátli, and a 1921 bomb that destroyed parts of the basilica but did not harm the cloth, are also counted as miracles.
The Basilica de Guadalupe is the most popular Marian pilgrimage site, with 18–20 million visitors yearly. Feast day celebrations for her take place in churches all across the Americas and are festive events filled with music, dancers, parades, special menus, and tons of red roses.
Another significant modern observance of the Virgin is that, because she is carrying the unborn Christ child in the imagery, she has become a symbol of the “Right to Life” antiabortion movement, and thus, Pope John Paul II declared her the “Protector of the Unborn.”
Kimberly Ann Wells
See also Saints’ Legends; Women in Folklore
Further Reading
Brading, D. A. 2001. Mexican Phoenix: Our Lady of Guadalupe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Daily Catholic. 1999. (10: 232). December 7. http://www.dailycatholic.org/issue/archives/1999Dec/232dec7,vol.10,no.232txt/dec7nv4.htm. Accessed September 24, 2015.
Elizondo, Virgil. 1997. Guadalupe, Mother of the New Creation. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.
“Liturgical Year: Activities, Celebrating for the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.” Catholic Culture. http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/liturgicalyear/activities/view.cfm?id=968. Accessed September 24, 2015.
“Our Lady of Guadalupe.” Catholic Online. http://www.catholic.org/about/guadalupe.php. Accessed September 24, 2015.
“Our Lady of Guadalupe: Patroness of the Americas.” Sancta.org. http://www.sancta.org/intro.html. Accessed September 24, 2015.
Poole, Stafford. 1995. Our Lady of Guadalupe: The Origins and Sources of a Mexican National Symbol, 1531–1797. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
“Symbolism of the Image.” Our Lady of Guadalupe. http://www.olgaustin.org/symbolism.shtml. Accessed September 24, 2015.