Guadalupe: the heart of Mexico

December 12 is a very important date for Mexico and the entire American continent: the Marian apparitions of Guadalupe (1531).

There is even a saying: a Mexican may not be Christian, but he is undoubtedly a devotee of Guadalupe. Let's try to understand why.

The context

Before the arrival of the Spanish, the Mexicas, also known as the Aztecs, had dominated some three hundred tribes and peoples in the Mesoamerican region. The Spanish were impressed by their large cities, aqueducts, water canalization systems, and political organization, but above all by the precision with which the Mexicas observed and recorded celestial movements.

This precise knowledge of astronomy was related to their religious conception of the cosmos. For them, everything was sacred, and the balance of the universe was based on a series of fundamental rituals, including human sacrifices.

The diverse Mexica pantheon included deities such as Huitzilopochtli, Quetzalcoatl, Coatlicue, and others.

Huitzilopochtli was the main deity: linked to the sun and war, he was depicted as a fierce being. The Mexicas believed that, in order for the sun to rise each morning, it was necessary to feed Huitzilopochtli with the blood and entrails of human sacrifice victims, so that the god would not devour the sun.

Huitzilopochtli's mother (and «collective» mother) was Coatlicue, which in Nahuatl means «clothed in serpents.» In Nahua mythology (a term that defines all peoples who speak the Nahuatl language, including the Mexicas), the snake is a symbol of fertility, and Coatlicue was an ambivalent deity: mother of the earth and living beings on the one hand, destroyer on the other.

Huitzilopochtli had his main temple where Mexico City's cathedral now stands, in the Zócalo. His mother Coatlicue, on the other hand, probably had hers on a hill called Tepeyac.

With the fall of Tenochtitlán in 1521, brought about not only by the Spanish but also by other Nahua peoples opposed to the Mexicas and allied with the Europeans to defeat their rulers, a period began for the Mexicas that, in Nahuatl, is called nepantla: «being in the middle.» In fact, they felt «suspended,» without roots and without their cultural and religious reference points. With the temples destroyed and the impossibility of continuing human sacrifices, the possibility of the world moving forward also came to a halt for them.

The arrival of the Spanish was interpreted as the end of the Fifth Sun. The Mexicas believed, in fact, that the history of the universe was divided into five Suns (Tonatiuh), each of which was destined to end in catastrophe. The «light-skinned men from the east» coincided with the return of the god Quetzalcoatl, and their weapons, horses, epidemics, and the fall of Tenochtitlán marked precisely the end of the era of the Fifth Sun, that is, of their sacred, political, and cosmic order.

However, the sun continued to rise.

Mother arrives

In those dramatic times, Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, a Nahua convert to Christianity, of noble but poor origin, was walking at dawn on the slopes of Tepeyac Hill, the same place where the Nahua mother goddess Coatlicue (or, in any case, a female deity called Tonantzin, «our beloved mother,» which could be a title attributed to Coatlicue), he heard a sweet woman's voice calling him in Nahuatl, using a poetic and ritualistic register (Nahuatl is an extremely complex language with different colloquial registers among speakers, depending on social class or degree of affection or kinship).

The woman named him Juandiegotzin (like saying: Juandieguito) and addressed him with terms of endearment such as noicnocahuatzin, noconetzin («my beloved, my little son»), delicate linguistic forms, typically Mexica, which we find today in Mexican Spanish (hijito, etc.).

Juan Diego did not immediately understand who she was, because the mestizo features of this female figure did not correspond to the image of the Virgin that the Spanish missionaries had shown him. He understood when the woman, dressed like a Nahua princess, introduced herself as the ever-Virgin Mary, Mother of the true God.

The apparitions

For a detailed reconstruction of the events, I invite you to read Nican Mopohua, the chronicle written in Nahuatl around 1550 by Antonio Valeriano.

Here we will only give a chronological summary of the five apparitions:

• December 9, 1531 (first). The Virgin appears to Juan Diego on Tepeyac Hill and asks him to tell the bishop to build her a church.
• December 9 (second). Juan Diego sees the Virgin again after the bishop's refusal; she encourages him to persist.
• December 10 (third). The bishop asks for a sign, and the Virgin promises it to the visionary.
• December 12 (fourth). The Virgin instructs Juan Diego to gather some Castilian roses that have miraculously bloomed and then imprints her image on the seer's cloak (tilma).
• December 12 (Friday). The Virgin appears to Juan Diego for the last time and promises to protect him, announcing that his uncle Juan Bernardino, who was ill, has been cured. She also appears to his uncle, presenting herself for the first and only time with the title by which she is famous («of Guadalupe»).

The words spoken by the Lady of Heaven

The woman of the apparitions said, in Nahuatl (Nican Mopohua, nos. 26-28), among other things:

«Nicuicahua in noisotlaxōchīuh, nicān nicān niquīz;
Nehuatl in teteoh īnantzin, in tloque nahuaque,
in īpalnemoāni, in teyocoyani;
nicān nimitstlatlauhca, nimitstlatlauhtiliz:
nicān niquimati in notech monequi in notech nehua;
Nicán Nimitzmotlaloa,
ca ni in monantzin,
in the night of the stars,
in Monantzin in Tlalticpactlacatl,
in monantzin in nochi in intlācah.

What it means

«I am the Mother of Teteoh (the true God of the teōtl, that is, the Divinity from which all others emanate),
from Tloque Nahuaque (He who possesses all that exists),
of Ipalnemoani (He through whom men live),
from Teyocoyani (He who creates people).
I am your Mother,
the Mother of all of you who live on this earth,
and the Mother of all men and peoples who will invoke me, love me, and trust in me.

However, his most famous words are as follows:

«Listen, my son, the youngest, the youngest of my children:
Do not let your heart be troubled; do not be afraid.
Am I not here, who am your Mother?
Are you not under my shadow and protection?
Am I not the source of your joy?
What else do you need?.

At Tepeyac, a Mexica saw a Mother who was very different from Coatlicue, who had previously been venerated there. This new mother was sweet and respectful, like the one who appeared to Bernadette in 1858, and spoke the seer's language in such a kind manner that Bernadette said that the Lady had spoken to her «as one person speaks to another» (the poor girl was not used to being treated that way).

La Guadalupana proclaimed herself not only the mother of the true and perfect God, but also of Juan Diego and of all men and peoples who invoked her and whom she would be willing to listen to, console, protect, and guide.

Guadalupe

Why is the Virgin who appeared to Juan Diego known as «Our Lady of Guadalupe»?

Two things should be clarified: the Lady never used this expression with him; the «original» Virgin of Guadalupe is located in Extremadura (Spain) and is linked to the Reconquista and the expeditions to the New World, to such an extent that Columbus and many conquistadors from that region (Cortés, Pizarro) were devoted to her and took her name to America.

If today we know the Virgin of Tepeyac by this title, it is perhaps due to a phonetic distortion, also related to a European interpretation. On December 12, 1531, in fact, Juan Diego's uncle, Juan Bernardino, who was ill at home, also had an apparition of the Virgin, who appeared to him saying:

«Nican nicā Tepēuh ican nicā Tequantlazopeuh»
«I am the one who is born/appears on the hill, the one who crushes the serpent.».

Probably, then, when both Juan Diego and his uncle recounted the episode, the Spaniards who did not speak Nahuatl understood Tequantlazopeuh as if it were Guadalupe. Or the indigenous people, knowing the Europeans' veneration for the Virgin of Guadalupe, associated that title with the one that had been defined as Tequantlazopeuh.

However, the meaning was very clear to both the indigenous people and the Europeans: for some, this Mother crushed the serpent, overcoming and replacing the deity worshipped on that hill; for others, she defeated evil and fulfilled the prophecy of Genesis 3:15.