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 News from Around the Americas | December 2006 
Mexico's Patron Saint Impacts Lives Worldwide
 Tom Ragan - Santa Cruz Sentinel
| | Cardinal Roger Mahony kisses the altar as he arrives Dec. 3 for Mass in the East Los Angeles College stadium. An image of Our Lady of Guadalupe from Mexico City is seen behind him. (Associated Press/Danny Moloshok) |
Thousands of Latino communities stretching from the US to South America will be holding early morning, candle-lit processions Tuesday to honor the 475th anniversary of the Blessed Virgin's sighting on a Mexican hillside.
And it will be La Virgen's image leading the way, hoisted in the form of statue or photograph, with the sound of mariachis surrounding her, a Mexican tradition that awakens even the birds.
"She's the all-powerful. She's the mother of Mexico," said Augustin de Paz, a devout Catholic. "We pray to her and if you believe in her, she'll protect you and answer your prayers."
But who is this woman whose name will be uttered in prayer until the end of time?
It was in December 1531, a decade after the Aztec empire fell to the invading Spanish conquistadores, that the Holy Mother first appeared to Juan Diego northwest of Mexico City, and urged the Aztec to build a temple in her honor.
But since then her shrouded image has been miraculously popping up all over the place. It's appeared not just in the formation of clouds and on tortillas or in the bark of trees, but also on belt buckles, bars of soap and, most recently, on telephone cards — in which the customer can actually receive a Spanish blessing before the call is connected.
The commercialization of something so sacred is nothing new. Porcelain statues and candles that bear the Virgin's likeness have been sold for eons in Mexican barrios from Chicago to Los Angeles to Guadalajara. But some wonder whether the religious aspect of the dark-skinned Madonna is beginning to blur in exchange for a simple buck.
"I'm usually not shocked by the sketchy marketing tactics that some companies use to promote their products to the Latino market," reads a posting on VivirLatino, an online blog dedicated to Latino readers. "But when I read about the Mexican Catholic Church getting kickbacks from a calling card company for use of the image of the Virgen de Guadalupe, I just felt ... 'ick.' "
The telephone cards, distributed by the thousands in Southern California over the summer and expected to hit the Central Coast soon, are the product of New Jersey-based U.S. Starcom, a telecommunications company that defends itself against allegations that it is somehow being sacrilegious.
"We're officially sanctioned by the Catholic Church of Mexico," said Jack Lennon, a spokesman for the company, in a telephone interview from his Boston office. "We're the only company that has the exclusive marketing rights to use her image."
Plus, one quarter of all proceeds are donated directly to the church to help rebuild the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which contains the famous cloak that bears her image, he said.
Legendary presence
Protected behind glass, the cloak, known as a tilma, was once worn by Diego, who, according to legend, carried roses he had picked on the barren hillside as "a sign" for Bishop Juan de Zammorga, who didn't believe in the apparition.
When Diego dumped the roses at the feet of the bishop, the Virgin's image mysteriously appeared on the tilma. It is this image — that of a dark-skinned woman, her eyes cast downward — that is ever present today, in both works of art and in apparitions.
The Catholic Church officially recognized the miracle, proclaiming Diego a saint in 2002.
But some historians believe that the apparition was merely a concoction by the colonizing Spaniards to convert the Aztecs by providing them with some sort of miracle; and if such was the case, it worked.
In the eight years after her appearance, nearly 9 million Aztecs embraced Catholicism, according to Charles Wahlig, the author of "A Handbook on Guadalupe."
Fast forward nearly five centuries, and La Virgen de Guadalupe is as much a patriotic symbol as a religious one — one that rivals, if not surpasses, the colors of the Mexican flag.
Her place has been prominent in Mexican historical events, according to Heriberto Escamilla, a San Diego writer and Mexican native who writes commentaries for La Prensa de San Diego, a Spanish-language newspaper.
"She has been present at most of the significant events that have shaped the country's modern growth and development," he writes. "When the padre Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla incited the Mestizo army against the Spanish oppressors, it was the Virgen, emblazoned on a high-flying banner that led the way."
"Years later, when Felix Hernandez assumed the first Mexican presidency, he appropriately renamed himself Guadalupe Victory. When the humble Benito Juarez separated church and state, the only religious holiday he dared not touch was December 12th, when Mexicans all over the world celebrate the patron saint's appearance."
Closer to home and more recently, her image was carried in Watsonville by striking cannery workers in the 1980s, as they marched through town to call attention to their cause.
And in the 1950s, she was conveniently exploited for political reasons during the anticommunist era, when former Sen. Joseph McCarthy seized on the widespread news of her apparition in Wisconsin, suggesting her appearance was a sign of her disdain for communism.
Pop icon
Today, tough-talking Chicanos have tattoos of her. Her image is emblazoned on T-shirts worn by teens, and plastered to the rear windows of vans and pickups. A major motion picture on her life is now showing.
In short, she's everywhere.
"When we were growing up in Mexico, we'd wake up to her, start the day with her, get through it with her help, then end it with her," said the Rev. Miguel Grajeda, a Mexican native and priest at St. Patrick's. "She was on the walls, in the living rooms, outside in the gardens. She's a part of us, a part of the Mexican people. But, of course, she's much more than that: She's the mother of Jesus Christ, the son of God."
Elena Aguilar, who owns and runs a taco shop in Watsonville, put it this way.
"She's kind of like what the pope is in Rome, only greater," says Aguilar. "She's the mother of all humankind."
But her popularity and the high regard with which Latinos hold her has yet to trickle down to the white parishioners, even though years ago she was religiously deemed "The Queen of the Americas," according to the Rev. Marc Stetz of Holy Cross Catholic Church in Santa Cruz.
Many modern Catholics are skeptical, though, believing the original apparition and more recent sightings are merely tales intended to generate faith or to offer comfort in the face of despair.
"Like so many things in history, we put a lot of faith in the people who were there at the time," said Stetz. "There are apparitions and there are locutions, where people hear something miraculous but they don't see it. The church always looks into these, but rarely are they substantiated. But this seems to have been substantiated and well founded."
"But the bottom line is how does she draw one into deeper faith? That's what she was about centuries ago and that's what she's about today."
Contact Tom Ragan at tragan@santacruzsentinel.com. |
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