19 Dec Lady Guadalupe – Our love unites the world
Lady Guadalupe decorates my life. She’s on t-shirts, stickers, collages, and jewelry. When the last bit of wax turns to smoke in one of her candles, I can’t get myself to throw it away. Every corner in my room houses her folded hands at her heart, yellow blazing around her dark green cloak. Her image pacifies something within me. She’s affected me without knowing much about her.
Turns out I’m not the only one she affects. The Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City receives over twenty million visitors a year. That’s more visitors than the Vatican in Rome, or all of Israel, or Disneyland!
What makes Lady Guadalupe so special?
Lady Guadalupe first appeared to Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, a Nahuatl man, in 1531, shortly after the Spanish conquest. At the late age of fifty, Juan was baptized by a priest, likely in fear of execution for practicing his Indigenous beliefs. In his native Nahuatl language, Lady Guadalupe asked Juan to build a shrine at Tepeyac Hill, an Indigenous sacred site dedicated to feminine goddesses, speculatively Coatlicue, the Great Earth Goddess. Lady Guadalupe appeared to Juan on two occasions asking him to tell the Bishop to build a shrine. Juan told the Bishop but the Bishop did not believe him. On the third visit, Lady Guadalupe asked Juan to pick flowers on top of the hill and bring them to the Bishop. Although it was winter, Juan found a variety of Castilian roses in full bloom. He placed them in his tilma, a Nahuatl cloak, and when he opened the tilma to the Bishop, an image of Lady Guadalupe’s likeness rolled down. What normally would have disintegrated in twenty years, is still visible today, some five hundred years later.
Lady Guadalupe’s skin is brown, her hair is black, she wears the colors of Nahuatl deities, and hovers over a black crescent similar to the sacred lake of Texcoco. She looks and speaks like the Indigenous people. She resurrected on the hill of the goddesses. She made the cloth of the common Nahuatl eternal. She insisted on appearing to a Nahuatl man and substantiated him with undeniable proof.
To the Catholics, she represented the Virgin Mary and gave the Indigenous people a sign to convert to Catholicism. She appeared as Mestizo, a mix of Spanish and Indigenous. She sent the Indigenous people to build a structure with the Catholics.
Regardless of the perspective, Lady Guadalupe brought two continents and entirely different belief systems into the same building. She brought peace and unification where there would have been more rebellions, executions, and wars.
In the last few years, I started attending the midnight Christmas Eve services devoted to her in Catholic churches. And now I understand why.
My father is Mexican and my mother is white. I feel the differences in my DNA pulling with different cultural expectations, different levels of cultural respect and supremacy, different levels of authority, different looks, foods, illnesses, and preferences. In the rural state of Idaho, I have family with republican and democratic political ideals. Once a Christian and now a questioning faithful Skeptic I have friends who are devoted Christians and Atheists. I am all of these things and none of them. I live in the paradox of differences.
This is the first season that I understand why so many people love her. She gave credence to the murdered, the conquered, the persecuted. She equated the value of what the rulers believed as lower. She represented true love, a love that does not discriminate. A love that proves all beings are equal.
Lady Guadalupe stands in each corner of my room because she inspires me. She says, “Peace be to you who loves all. Our love unites the world.”