Feast Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe (Dec 12) 
Feast of Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin (Dec 9)

I have been intrigued by the intense devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe, especially among Mexicans, and wanted to better understand it.

One of my favorite songs (I have many!) is Guadalupe by Tom Russell, as sung by Gretchen Peters. It has such wonderful lyrics as: “The mountains glow like mission wine and turn gray like a Spanish roan,” and “Who am I to doubt these mysteries, cured in centuries of blood and candle smoke.” Have a listen:

Juan Diego, Messenger

In 1524, an indigenous Chichimeca (Aztec) man named Cuauhtlatoatzin (Talking Eagle) was among the very first of his people to convert to Christianity at the age of 50.  He took Juan Diego as a Christian name.

In 1531, seven years after his conversion to Christianity, Juan Diego was approached by Mary, the Blessed Mother of Jesus, in a series of apparitions in which she asked him to be her messenger. He did exactly what was asked of him and acted with faith and persistence. After the events of 1531, Juan spent the rest of his life dedicated to honoring the memory of Mary in the form of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and offering aid to her pilgrims.

Juan Diego, Saint

Although it has been questioned whether Juan Diego existed at all since Bishop Juan de Zumárraga made no mention in his writings of these events, the Vatican confirmed Juan Diego’s existence, and Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin was canonized as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church by Pope John Paul II in 2002.  His feast day is Dec 9, the date he witnessed the apparition for the first time.  Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin is the first indigenous saint from the Americas and was named the patron saint of indigenous people of the Americas.  

Mary Appears to Juan

Mary, the Blessed Mother of Jesus, is said to have appeared in Mexico to Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin in a vision on Dec 9, 1531. She instructed him to go to the bishop and tell him to build a shrine to her on top of Tepayac hill near what is now Mexico City. Upon the hill had once stood a temple to the earth and fertility goddess, Tonantzin, known to the people as “Our Revered Mother.”  Juan Diego did as he was told, visited Bishop Zumárraga, and delivered the message. The bishop did not believe him and sent him away. After another failed attempt, Juan was again visited by Mary on Dec 12.  She instructed him to gather roses from a hillside and bring them to her. Even though it was winter, Juan found many roses growing on the hillside, where roses would never grow. The Blessed Mother arranged the flowers inside Juan’s cloak (or tilma) and sent him back to the bishop with instructions to open his cloak only in the presence of the bishop.

Miraculous Roses and Image

When Juan did open his cloak for the bishop, Castilian roses, which are non-native to Mexico, fell to the floor, and in their place on his cloak, an intricate and colorful image of Mary miraculously appeared.

The image on the cloak shows a woman with the appearance of a mestiza, a mixed-race indigenous and European woman. She is supported by an angel. The crescent moon is beneath her feet and her blue cloak is covered with gold stars. Her hands are in a prayer position. A black ribbon tied around her waist was an indigenous symbol, signifying that she is pregnant. This has been interpreted as meaning that Christ would be “born” again among the people of the New World.

The bishop was convinced.

A small chapel on Tepeyac Hill was built immediately and on Dec 26, only two weeks after it appeared, the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe was carried in procession to this first chapel where it was displayed.

Juan is said to have spent the rest of his life living in a hut next to the church. He spent his time in prayer, caring for the church, and providing aid to the pilgrims who came to the shrine. When he died, his body was buried at that first church.

From 1695-1709, a large church was built. It was named a Basilica, the highest permanent designation for a church building in Catholicism in 1904.

A larger Basilica was built in 1974-6. The image on Juan Diego’s cloak remains on display at this Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. 10 million pilgrims visit each year to honor Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Indigenous Personhood

The apparition appears to have had a significant influence on race relations in what is now Mexico. The event occurred only ten years after Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés had defeated the Aztecs in war and claimed the land for Spain. The Church itself was in a debate over the personhood of the indigenous people of “New Spain.” It was not a new thing for European people to identify enemies in such a way as to deny them personhood so that they could deal with them in ways that their Christian faith would otherwise forbid. Anthropologist Eric Wolfe described the views this way:

One view, held by the Conquistadors and many others. said that the “Indian was incapable of conversion, thus inhuman, and therefore a fit subject of political and economic exploitation.” Another view was that “the Indian was human, capable of conversion and that this exploitation had to be tempered by the demands of the Catholic faith.” Remembering that this was all happening in the general period of the Spanish/Mexican Inquisition offers some context for the arguments. Meanwhile, auditors sent by the Spanish government impoverished the indigenous people of New Spain through taxation, sold them into slavery, branded them with hot irons, sent shiploads of people to the Antilles, and committed terrible violence against Indian girls.

King Charles V had sent Fray Juan de Zumárraga, the priest who received news of the Virgin’s apparition to Juan Diego, to the New World with the title, “Protector of the Indians” to serve as bishop (and later archbishop) of New Spain. He also served as its first Inquisitor. Fray Zumárraga did in fact, strain to defend the indigenous people at their own request and the pleas of the Franciscan missionaries who advocated for the. According to historian Lewis Hanke, “The greatest contribution Zumárraga made to the Mexican culture was his belief that there could be such a culture.”

Mary’s appearance to an indigenous man in the midst of these abuses and the debate about indigenous personhood was to have far-reaching impact. Not only did she appear to an indigenous man, but she herself appeared as brown-skinned with indigenous features, and spoke to Juan in his native language, Nahuatl. She told him that her apparition was a symbol of her love for the native people of the New World. As a result, millions of indigenous and mestizo people converted to Christianity. The veneration given to Our Lady of Guadalupe for quite a long time was influenced by the earlier pagan worship of Tonantzin. Many of the pilgrims even called her Tonantzin.

In 1537, six years after the apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Pope Paul III issued a proclamation stating that indigenous people were “true men,” capable of receiving the faith and establishing that they did, indeed have full personhood, even if they choose to remain heathen. He opposed their enslavement, stating. “The said Indians and all other people who may later be discovered by Christians, are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property, even though they be outside the faith of Jesus Christ; and that they may and should, freely and legitimately, enjoy their liberty and the possession of their property; nor should they be in any way enslaved; should the contrary happen, it shall be null and have no effect.”

When Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin was canonized in 2002, he was also named patron saint of indigenous people.

Patron Saint of Mexico, Symbol of National Identity

Many books have been written about Our Lady of Guadalupe and the far-reaching impact that the story of her apparition and its attached symbolism had on religious, social, and political spheres, and even the national identity of Mexico. She became the patron saint of Mexico, gaining a deep and widespread devotion of the Mexican people, in particular the indigenous and mestizo (mixed European and Indigenous Mexican descent) people. She inspired Mexican nationalists and was considered the patroness of the revolt against the Spanish in the Mexican War of Independence in 1810, appearing on the flags that preceded the insurgents into battle. 100 years later, Emiliano Zapata and his agrarian revolutionaries would also carry her emblem as they fought the Mexican Revolution.

Dr. Arturo Rocha, Secretary of Colegio de Estudios Guadalupanos (College for Guadalupan Studies) in Mexico City has said, “[Our Lady of Guadalupe] embodies, in her mestizo complexion, the races (Indigenous and Spanish) that gave rise to Mexican identity, races that at first could not tolerate, neither one nor the other, the new people that had been born orphan in the same land: the mestizo people.”

Claims About the Image

There are many ongoing claims about the cloak and the image. Although I will list the ones I am aware of here, I have not had the opportunity to do proper research on them all and these statements are merely the claims I have heard. In most cases, I’ll just state them without comment.

• The material of the cloak has maintained its chemical and structural integrity for almost 500 years, despite being displayed with no protection for over 115 years. When other items made of the same cactus fiber cloth begin to decompose after only 15-20 years.
  
• Several ophthalmologists have discovered that in the image, Mary’s eyes show the triple reflection called the Samson-Purkinje effect, which was completely unknown at the time the image was formed, so no person could have created it at that time. The course cactus-fiber cloth would not have allowed that level of detail even if they had known about it.
  
• The image of the people reflected in the eyes follows the normal curvature of the cornea just as it would appear in a human eye.
  
• Engineer, Jose’ Aste Tonsmann, identified that there are 13 figures in two scenes shown in the reflections of her eyes. Among the figures are St. Juan Diego and Bishop Zumárraga.
  
• It is said that, according to Nobel Prize-winning biochemist Richard Kuhn, who is said to have analyzed a sample of the fabric, the pigments used are from no known natural source, whether animal, mineral, or vegetable. Given that there were no synthetic pigments in 1531, this enigma remains inexplicable.
  
• The fabric of the cloak remains at a constant temperature of 98.6 degrees.
  
• A bomb once exploded at the foot of the cloak, destroying the altar in the Old Basilica but the cloak was unharmed. (I have been able to confirm this. It happened in 1921.)
  
• A doctor once placed a stethoscope over the belly, under the ribbon in the image, and heard a fetal heartbeat. (This has been debunked.)
  
• It does not appear to have been painted, as confirmed by Phillip Callahan, a biophysicist from the University of Florida, in 1981 after subjecting it to infrared light examination, published in a paper titled, “An Infrared and Artistic Analysis of the Image of the Virgin Mary in the Basilica of Guadalupe.” I haven’t been able to find this paper online to see if this is actually what it says, only references to it. Published by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, a Georgetown-affiliated research center.
  
• The stars on Mary’s mantle are a constellation map, identical to the constellation positions that were in the sky on the day of her apparition.
  
• The constellations tell the story of the Gospel with the arrangement of “Leo” in the womb of “Virgo.”

Who am I to Doubt These Mysteries?

Some say that Our Lady of Guadalupe and her image is nothing more than a myth used to convert indigenous people to Catholicism or to elevate the circumstances of the indigenous people. They say that the image was likely painted by an Aztec painter named Marcos Cipac de Aquino. Some say the images found in her eyes are nothing more than the tendency among the pious to find patterns where none exist.  They say that Juan Diego never existed and that Bishop Zumárraga made no mention of any of this in his writing.

On the other end of the spectrum are those who pray to Guadalupe daily and revere saint Juan Diego for his role in facilitating the miracle. Guadalupe’s words to Juan Diego are taken to heart by these people:

“Let not your heart be disturbed… Am I not here, who is your Mother? Are you not under my protection? Am I not your health? Are you not happily within my fold? What else do you wish? Do not grieve nor be disturbed by anything.”

Her faithful accept all miraculous signs as being from God and rejoice in Our Lady of Guadalupe’s role in creating the very fiber of Mexican identity.  They pray to Guadalupe for her help and intercession.

I don’t claim to know the factual truth. I do know that her story has important symbolic truth that had a greatly significant influence on the people, faith, culture, and history of Mexico, not least of all the indigenous population and their rights and place in Mexican society.

“But who am I to doubt these mysteries
Cured in centuries of blood and candle smoke?
I am the least of all your pilgrims here,
But I am most in need of hope”

Tom Russell, Guadalupe