Brother John M. Samaha, S.M.
One would be hard pressed to find a
better example of a highly evocative national symbol than the Virgin of
Guadalupe of Mexico. Like her famous Polish counterpart, the Black Madonna of
Czestochowa, Our Lady of Guadalupe embodies abstract principles and precepts of
the nation where she dwells.
The complexity and heterogeneous
nature of Mexico are reconciled in Our Lady of Guadalupe in a special way that
no other symbol can rival. Political overtones are blended with individual and
societal aspirations, especially for the Indian, because it was an Indian to
whom she revealed herself in 1531.
Several decades ago Eric Wolf
(1923-1999), noted anthropologist, compiled a masterful analysis of the
Guadalupe phenomenon. This is an attempt to summarize his findings. With the
recent canonization of St. Juan Diego, this topic is timelier than ever.
Now and then we encounter a symbol
that seems to embody the major hopes and aspirations of an entire society. Such
a master symbol is Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mexico’s patroness – and Empress of
the Americas.
During the Mexican War of Independence
against Spain, her image preceded the insurgents into battle. Emiliano Zapata and his agrarian rebels fought
under her emblem in the Great Revolution of 1910. Today the Guadalupe image of
Juan Diego’s tilma adorns house exteriors and interiors, churches and home
altars, bull rings and gambling dens, taxis and buses, restaurants and houses
of ill repute. Our Lady of Guadalupe is celebrated in song and poetry popular
and sacred. Annually her shrine at Tepeyac, a little north of Mexico City, is
visited by millions of pilgrims ranging from the Indian villages to the members
of the socialist trade unions. As one scholarly observer reported, “Nothing to
be seen in North America or Europe equals it in the volume and vitality of its
moving quality or in the depth of its spirit of religious devotion.”
Eric Wolf referred to the holy image
and the ideology surrounding it as the Mexican master symbol. He identified it
as a cultural form or idiom of behavior operating on the symbolic level, and
not restricted to one set of social ties, but referring to a wide range of
social relationships.
The history of the image and shrine
are well known. The Virgin Mary appeared to Juan Diego, a neophyte Indian of
ordinary standing, and addressed him in Nahuatl, his native Indian language.
The encounter occurred on the hill of Tepeyac in 1531, ten years after the Spanish
Conquest of Tenochtitlan. Mary directed Juan Diego to visit the bishop of
Mexico and to inform him of her desire to have a church built in her honor on
Tepeyac. Twice unsuccessful in his mission, Mary miraculously provided her
messenger colorful roses in a spot where normally only desert plants would
grow. Juan Diego gathered the roses into his tilma, and was told by the Virgin
Mother to present the roses and tilma to the Franciscan Bishop-elect Zumarraga.
When St. Juan Diego unfolded his tilma before the bishop, the roses cascaded to
the floor and the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe was miraculously impressed to
the cloth. The bishop acknowledged the miracle and ordered a shrine to be built
where Mary had appeared to her humble servant.
Now the tilma bearing the sacred image
of Mary is displayed above the main altar of the basilica, showing a young
woman with her head lowered demurely in her shawl. She wears an open crown and
flowing gown, and stands upon a half moon.
This Marian shrine, however, had been
preceded on Tepeyac hill by the pagan temple honoring the earth and fertility
goddess, Tonantzi -- our lady mother, who like Our Lady of Guadalupe, was also
associated with the moon. In pre-Hispanic times, that temple was the site of
large-scale pilgrimages.
The veneration accorded Our Lady of
Guadalupe at first commingled with and was influenced by the earlier pagan
worship of Tonantzin. Several Spanish
friars attest to this over those early years.
Fray Bernardino de Sahagún writing
fifty years after the Spanish Conquest bemoaned the fact that the Indian
pilgrims to the shrine were calling Our Lady of Guadalupe Tonantzin, too. “The
term refers to that ancient Tonantzin,” he wrote, “and this state of affairs
should be remedied, because the proper name of the Mother of God is not
Tonantzin but Dios and Nantzin. It seems to be a satanic device to mask
idolatry.”
Later, Fray Marin de León expressed a
similar concern: “On the hill of Our Lady of Guadalupe they once adored an idol
of the goddess called Tonantzin, which means our mother. This is the name they
also give to Our Lady, and they always say they are going to Tonantzin, or they
are celebrating Tonantzin; and many of them understand this in the old way, and
not in the new way.
In the 17th century the
syncretism was still alive. Discussing the pilgrimages to the shrine at
Tepeyac, Fray Jacinto de la Serna noted, “It is the purpose of the wicked to
worship the goddess and not the Most Holy Virgin, or both together.”
The cult of Our Lady of Guadalupe
increased steadily in the 16th century and thereafter, and gathered
emotional impetus during the 17th century. The 17th
century saw the first pictorial and artistic representations of the miraculous
original; poems were composed in honor of the Virgin and her chosen messenger;
sermons presented the implications of her supernatural appearance in Mexico and
among Mexicans. Wolf’s opinion is that historians tended to neglect the 17th
century, which seemed “a kind of Dark Age in Mexico.” But in this period the
institution of the hacienda begins to dominate Mexican life, and “New Spain”
ceases to be “new” and is regarded as Spain. These new experiences required a
new cultural idiom, and in the Guadalupe cult the various segments of colonial
society found cultural forms in which they expressed their parallel interests
and longings.
The evolution of the Guadalupe symbol
took on functional aspects in relation to the major social relationships of
Mexican society. Primary among these relations are the ties of kinship, and the
emotions arising in the interplay of relationships within families. Wolf
suggests that some of the meanings of the Virgin symbol in general and the
Guadalupe symbol in particular derive from these emotions. He says “derive”
rather than “originate” because the form and formation of the family in any
given society are themselves determined by other social factors: residence,
economy, technology, and political power. The family is one relay in the
circuit within which symbols are generated in complex societies.
Mexican family life may be understood
in terms of two major types of families. The first type of family is congruent
with the closed and static life of the Indian village. This is the Indian
family. The husband is ideally dominant, but in reality labor and authority are
shared equally between both marriage partners. Exploitation of one sex by
another is atypical; sexual feats do not add to a person’s status in the eyes
of others. Physical punishment and authoritarian treatment of children are
rare. The second type of family is congruent with the much more open,
manipulative life of a nation, a life in which power relationships between
individuals and groups are of great moment. This is the Mexican family. The
father’s authority is unquestioned on both the real and ideal planes. Double
standards regarding sex prevail, the male sexuality is charged with a desire to
exercise domination. Children are ruled with a heavy hand. Physical punishment
is common, even frequent.
The Indian family pattern is
consistent with the behavior toward Our Lady of Guadalupe noted by John
Bushnell in the Matlazinca-speaking community of San Juan Atzingo in the Valley
of Toluca. There the image of the Virgin Mother is addressed in passionate
terms as a source of warmth and love; and the pulque (century plant beer) drunk on ceremonial
occasions is identified with her milk. Bushnell assumed that Our Lady is
identified with the mother as a source of early satisfactions, never again
experienced after separation from the mother and emergence into social
adulthood. She embodies a longing to return to the pristine state in which
hunger and unsatisfactory social relations are minimized. The Mexican family
pattern is also consistent with a symbolic identification of Virgin and mother,
within a context of male and adult dominance and sexual assertion, discharged
against submissive females and children. In this context the Guadalupe symbol
is charged with the energy of rebellion against the father. Her image is the
embodiment of hope in a victorious outcome of the struggle between generations.
The symbolism is further extended by
that struggle. Successful rebellion against power figures is equated with the
promise of life; defeat is equated with the promise of death. John A. McKay saw
additional symbolic identification of the Virgin Mother with life, of defeat
and death with the crucified Christ. Mexican artistic tradition and Hispanic
artistic tradition in general seldom depict Christ as an adult man, but usually
as a helpless child, or as a person beaten, tortured, defeated, and killed.
This symbolic equation strikes at the roots both of the passionate affirmation
of faith in the Virgin Mother, and of the fascination with death that
characterized Baroque Christianity in general, and Mexican Catholicism in
particular. Our Lady of Guadalupe stands for life, for health, for hope; Christ
on the cross, for despair, for death, for salvation.
Supernatural Mother and natural mother
are equated symbolically, as are earthly and other-worldly hopes and desires.
However, family relations are seen as
only one element in the formation of the Guadalupe symbol. They illuminate the
feminine and maternal attributes of the more widespread Virgin symbol. Our Lady
of Guadalupe is important to Mexicans not only because she is a Supernatural
Mother, but also because she embodies their major religious and political
aspirations.
To the Indians the symbol is more than
an embodiment of life and hope. It restores to them the hopes of salvation. The
Spanish Conquest signified not only military defeat, but the defeat also of the
old gods and the decline of the old ritual. The apparition of Our Lady of
Guadalupe to an Indian commoner represented in one way the return of Tonantzin. Tannenbaum had observed, “The Church gave the
Indian an opportunity not merely to save his own life, but also to save his
faith in his own gods.” But on a deeper level the apparition served as a
symbolic testimony that the Indians as much as the Spaniards were capable of
being saved, capable of receiving Christianity. To be understood properly, this
must be seen against the background of the bitter theological and political
disputes that followed the Conquest and divided clerics, religious, officials,
and conquerors into two camps: those who believed that the Indian was incapable
of conversion, was inhuman, and therefore a subject of political and economic
exploitation; and those who held the opposite and knew that this exploitation
had to be tempered by the demands of the Catholic faith and of orderly civil
processes of just government. Consequently the Guadalupe event validates the
Indian’s right to legal defense, fair government, citizenship, and salvation
from random oppression.
If that sacred event guaranteed a
rightful place to the Indians in the social system of New Spain, it held
special appeal to the large group of illegitimate offspring of Spanish fathers
and Indian mothers. These progeny were disinherited, impoverished,
acculturated, and bereft of any status with the Spanish population or the
Indian. For these people there was no proper place in the social order for a
considerable length of time. Their very right to exist was questioned because
of their inability to command the full rights of citizenship and legal protection.
While the Spaniard and the Indian stood squarely within the law, the mestizo
landed in the intersections and margins of constituted society. Although they
acquired influence and wealth in the 17th and 18th
centuries, they still found themselves outside the pale of social recognition
and power by prevailing economic, social, and political order. For them the
Guadalupe event symbolized not only the possibility of a place in heaven, but
also an assurance of their place in society here and now. Politically the
desire for a return to a paradise of food and warmth, a life without defeat and
sickness, gave rise to a wish for an earthly Mexican paradise. There the
illegitimate would possess the country and the irresponsible Spanish overlords
who never acknowledged the social obligations of their paternity would be
driven from the land.
In the writings of 17th
century clerics, the Guadalupe event looms as a harbinger of this new order. A
book published by Miguel Sanchez in 1648 offered the view that the Spanish
Conquest of New Spain is justified solely on the ground that it allowed the
Virgin Mary to become manifest in her chosen country, and to found in Mexico a
new paradise. As Israel was chosen to produce Christ, Mexico had been chosen to
produce Guadalupe. Sanchez equated Our Lady of Guadalupe with the apocalyptic
woman of Revelation 12:1, “arrayed with the sun, and the moon under her feet,
and upon her head a crown of twelve stars,” who is to realize the prophecy of
Deuteronomy 8:7-10 and lead the Mexicans into the Promised Land. Hence,
colonial Mexico became the desert of Sinai; independent Mexico the land of milk
and honey.
Writing in 1688 Fray Francisco de
Florencia coined the slogan that made Mexico not merely another chosen nation,
but the Chosen Nation: non fecit taliter omni nationi (he
did not act in such a way for every nation) – words which still adorn the
portal of the basilica and shine in lights at night.
An additional elaboration had been
expressed on the eve of Mexican independence when Servando Teresa de Mier
claimed that Mexico had been converted to Christianity long before the Spanish
Conquest. St. Thomas the Apostle had brought the image of Guadalupe Tonantzin
to the New World as a symbol of his mission, just as St. James the Elder had converted
Spain with the image of Our Lady of the Pillar. This made the Spanish Conquest
unnecessary and erasable from the annals of history. In that perspective the
Mexican War of Independence marked the final realization of the apocalyptic
promise. The banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe led the insurgents. Their cause
was labeled “her law.”
In this ultimate extension of the
symbol, the promise of life proffered by the Supernatural Mother has become the
promise of an independent Mexico, liberated from the Spanish father oppressors
and restored to the Chosen Nation whose election had been manifest in the
apparition of the Virgin Mary on Tepeyac. The land is finally possessed by the
rightful heirs. The symbolic circuit is closed. Mother; food, hope, health, life;
supernatural salvation, rescue from oppression; Chosen People, national
independence. All find expression in a single master symbol.
The symbol of Our Lady of Guadalupe
links together family, politics, and religion; colonial past and independent present;
Indian and Mexican. This reflects the salient social relationships of Mexican
life, and embodies the emotions generated. It provides a cultural idiom through
which the import and emotions of these relationships can be expressed.
Ultimately the Guadalupe symbol is a way of talking about Mexico: a “collective
representation” of Mexican society.
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