Our Lady of Guadalupe: An Ambiguous Symbol

Abstract

Documentos guadalupanos: Un estudio sobre las fuentes de informacion tempranas en torno a las mariofanias en Tepeyac. By Xavier Noguez. (Mexico City: El Colegio Mexiquense, A.C., Fondo de Cultura Economica. 1993. Pp. 280; appendixes 11; illustrations 27.) The Image of Guadalupe. By Jody Brant Smith. Second and revised edition. (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press in association with Gracewing/Fowler Wright Books Ltd. 1994. Pp. xvii, 132; appendices 8; illustrations 15. Paperback.) Our Lady of Guadalupe: Faith and Empowerment among Mexican-American Women. By Jeanette Rodriguez. (Austin: University of Texas Press. 1994. Pp. xxxvi, 227; appendices 8; illustrations 4; tables 9. $35.00 clothbound; $13.95 paperback.) The devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe of Mexico, based on story of Virgin's appearance to a native neophyte named Juan Diego at hill of Tepeyac in December 1531, has an enduring fascination. The Virgin Mary was said to have directed Juan Diego to go to bishop of Mexico, Juan de Zumarraga, with a request to have him build a church on place where she appeared. There, she promised, she would be natives' mother, comfort them in their sorrows, and hear their prayers, tears, and entreaties. As proof of this, she had Juan Diego collect Bowers from hill at a time when they were not in season and take them in his cloak (tilma) to Zumarraga. When Juan Diego unfolded his tilma, Virgin's image was imprinted on it. In past two centuries Guadalupe has become central to Mexican religion and nationality and today is one of most powerful religious/national symbols in world. Though traditional date of apparitions is 1531, there is no incontrovertible evidence for them before 1648. In that year Oratorian priest Miguel Sanchez first made story known in his book Imagen de la Virgen Maria. Sanchez's thesis was that mariophany was an affirmation of special position and divine election of rriollos of New Spain. Six months after Sanchez's work appeared, Luis Lasso de la Vega, vicar of Guadalupe, published Huei tlamahuicoltica (1649), an extended treatment in Nahuatl (Aztec) of apparitions, shrine, and miracles worked there. The description of apparitions, known by its opening words as Nican mopohua, has come to be regarded in many quarters as authentic version, perhaps dating back to very time of apparitions. Its authorship is often attributed to famed Nahua scholar and governor, Antonio Valeriano. The story and meaning of Guadalupe has fascinated and continues to fascinate scholars in a variety of disciplines. Historians, ethnologists, anthropologists, linguists, and theologians have mined it for a variety of cultural, political, and religious interpretations. The result has been strong, sometimes acrimonious debate. As Xavier Noguez remarks, el tema parece inacabable (the subject seems endless). The three books reviewed here reflect this ongoing fascination, and each approaches controversial devotion from a different point of view. Noguez's Documentos guadalupanos, an outgrowth of his doctoral dissertation at Tulane University, is a study of earliest sources of Guadalupan account. The author has set certain limits to this study, the more basic and useful objectives (p. 13), that is, a detailed examination of written documentation principally during first two centuries of Spanish rule. The documents include both originals and those that have survived only in copies. In latter case Noguez has chosen only those of some certainty and has excluded such hearsay evidence as account that, according to some testimonies, Zumarraga supposedly wrote. He also excludes Zumarraga's letter to Fernando Cortes, published by Mariano Cuevas and dated by him December 24, 1531, which has no real connection with Guadalupe phenomenon. Noguez shows how various documents add to our knowledge of this phenomenon in an incremental way. …