Our Lady of Guadalupe-Monterey Park

[10] Some believe that the Spanish transcribed or transliterated a Nahuatl name, as the site had long been an important sacred spot. The second is that the Spanish name Guadalupe, like the Spanish Our Lady of Guadalupe, Extremadura, is the original name. The first theory to promote a Nahuatl origin was that of Luis Becerra Tanco.[10] In his 1675 work Felicidad de Mexico, Becerra Tanco claimed that Juan Bernardino and Juan Diego would not have been able to understand the name Guadalupe because the "d" and "g" sounds do not exist in Nahuatl. He proposed two Nahuatl alternative names that sound similar to "Guadalupe", Tecuatlanopeuh [tekʷat͡ɬa'nopeʍ], "she whose origins were in the rocky summit", and Tecuantlaxopeuh [tekʷant͡ɬa'ʃopeʍ], "she who banishes those who devoured us."[10]

Ondina and Justo Gonzalez suggest that the name is a Spanish version of the Nahuatl term, Coātlaxopeuh [koaːt͡ɬa'ʃopeʍ], meaning “the one who crushes the serpent,” and that it may be referring to the feathered serpent Quetzalcoatl. In addition, Mary was portrayed in European art as crushing the serpent of the Garden of Eden.[11]

The theory promoting the Spanish language origin of the name claims that:

Juan Diego and Juan Bernardino would have been familiar with the Spanish language "g" and "d" sounds since their baptismal names contain those sounds. There is no documentation of any other name for the Virgin during the almost 144 years between the apparition being recorded in 1531 and Becerra Tanco's proposed theory in 1675. Documents written by contemporary Spaniards and Franciscan friars argue for the name to be changed to a native name, such as Tepeaca or Tepeaquilla, would not make sense if a Nahuatl name were already in use, and suggest the Spanish Guadalupe was the original.[10]
History
Following the Spanish Conquest in 1519–21, they destroyed a temple of the mother-goddess Tonantzin at Tepeyac outside Mexico City, and built a chapel dedicated to the Virgin on the site. Newly converted Indians continued to come from afar to worship there, often addressing the Virgin Mary as Tonantzin.[12]

The painting was first noted in records in 1556, dating from a sermon by Archbishop Alonso de Montufar, a Dominican, who commended popular devotion to "Our Lady of Guadalupe," referring to a painting on cloth (a tilma) in the chapel of the Virgin Mary at Tepeyac, where certain miracles had occurred. Days later Francisco de Bustamante, head of the Colony's Franciscans who oversaw the chapel at Tepeyac, delivered a sermon before the Viceroy. He expressed concern that the Archbishop was promoting a superstitious regard for a painting by a native artist, Marcos Cipac de Aquino:

"The devotion that has been growing in a chapel dedicated to Our Lady, called of Guadalupe, in this city is greatly harmful for the natives, because it makes them believe that the image painted by Marcos the Indian is in any way miraculous."[13]
The next day Archbishop Montufar opened an inquiry into the matter. The Franciscans repeated their position that the image encouraged idolatry and superstition, and noted that it was painted by "Marcos the Indian."[13] The Dominicans favored allowing the Aztecs to venerate the Virgin of Guadalupe, as supported by the Archbishop. He decided to end the Franciscan custody of the shrine[14] and had the tilma mounted and displayed within a much enlarged church.[15]

The first extended account of the icon and vision was reported in Imagen de la Virgen Maria, Madre de Dios de Guadalupe, published in 1648 by Miguel Sánchez, a diocesan priest of Mexico City.[16] Luis Lasso de la Vega wrote a 36-page tract in Nahuatl language, Huei tlamahuiçoltica ("The Great Event"), which was published in 1649 and is similar to Sánchez's narrative. This tract contains Nican mopohua ("Here it is recounted"), a text about the Virgin which contains the story of the vision the supernatural origin of the image. The sections: Nican motecpana ("Here is an ordered account"), describes 14 miracles connected with Our Lady of Guadalupe, and Nican tlantica ("Here ends"), gives an account of the Virgin in New Spain.[17]

Juan Diego


18th-century painting of God the Father fashioning the image. Such accounts of the image increased interest in the peasant Juan Diego, who had the original vision. In 1666 the Church, with the intention of establishing a feast day in his name, began gathering information from people who reported having known him. In 1723 a formal investigation into his life was ordered, and more data was gathered to support veneration. In the late 20th century, Pope John Paul II took a special interest in saints and in non-European Catholics. During his leadership in 1987, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints declared Juan Diego "venerable." ith the internal church process completed, on May 6, 1990, the Pope announced the beatification of Juan Diego during a Mass at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, when he was declared “protector and advocate of the indigenous peoples," with December 9 established as his feast day. Historians and theologians began to question the quality of the evidence regarding Juan Diego. The writings of bishop Zumárraga, into whose hands he purportedly delivered the miraculous image, do not refer to him or the event. The record of the 1556 ecclesiastical inquiry omits him, and he is not mentioned in documentation before the mid-17th century. Doubts as to his reality were not new: in 1883 Joaquín García Icazbalceta, historian and biographer of Zumárraga, in a confidential report on the Lady of Guadalupe for Bishop Labastida, was hesitant to support the story of the vision. He concluded that Juan Diego had not existed.[18] In 1996 the 83-year-old abbot of the Basilica of Guadalupe, Guillermo Schulenburg, was forced to resign following an interview published in the Catholic magazine Ixthus, in which he was quoted as saying that Juan Diego was "a symbol, not a reality."[19]

In 1995, Father Xavier Escalada, a Jesuit writing an encyclopedia of the Guadalupan legend, produced a deer-skin codex, (Codex Escalada), which illustrated an account of the vision and the life and death of Juan Diego. Previously unknown, the document was dated 1548, within the lifetime of those who had known Juan Diego. It bore the signatures of two respected 16th-century scholar-priests, Antonio Valeriano and Bernardino de Sahagún, which are considered to verify its contents.[20] Some scholars remained unconvinced, describing the discovery of the Codex as "rather like finding a picture of St. Peter."[21] With this evidence, the Church declared Diego a saint in 2002, named Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin. Technical analyses


The original tilma of Saint Juan Diego, which hangs above the altar of the Guadalupe Basilica, Mexico City. It is protected by bulletproof glass and low-oxygen atmosphere. Neither the fabric ("the support") nor the image (together, "the tilma") has been analyzed using the full range of resources now available to museum conservationists. Four technical studies were conducted between 1751–2 and 1982. Of these, the findings of at least three have been published. All were commissioned by the authorized custodians of the tilma in the Basilica. Studies conducted between 1751–2 and 1982

MC – in 1756 a prominent artist, Miguel Cabrera, published a report entitled "Maravilla Americana," containing the results of the ocular and manual inspections by him and six other painters in 1751 and 1752.[22]
G – José Antonio Flores Gómez, an art restorer, discussed in a 2002 interview with the Mexican journal Proceso, certain technical issues relative to the tilma. He had worked on it in 1947 and 1973.[23]
PC – in 1979 Philip Callahan, biophysicist and USDA entomologist, specializing in infrared imaging, took numerous infrared photographs of the front of the tilma. His findings, with photographs, were published in 1981.[24]
R – In 2002 Proceso published an interview with José Sol Rosales, formerly director of the Center for the Conservation and Listing of Heritage Artifacts (Patrimonio Artístico Mueble) of the National Institute of Fine Arts (INBA) in México City. the article included extracts from a report which Rosales had written in 1982 of his findings from his inspection of the tilma that year using raking and UV light. It was done at low magnification with a stereo microscope of the type used for surgery.[25]
Summary conclusions ("contra" indicates a contrary finding)

(1) Support: The material of the support is soft to the touch (almost silken: MC; something like cotton: G) but to the eye it suggested a coarse weave of palm threads called "pita" or the rough fiber called "cotense" (MC), or a hemp and linen mixture (R). It was traditionally held to be made from ixtle, an agave fiber. (2) Ground, or primer: R asserted (MC and PC contra) by ocular examination that the tilma was primed, though with primer "applied irregularly." R does not clarify whether his observed "irregular" application entails that majorly the entire tilma was primed, or just certain areas – such as those areas of the tilma extrinsic to the image – where PC agrees had later additions. MC, alternatively, observed that the image had soaked through to the reverse of the tilma.[26]
(3) Under-drawing: PC asserted there was no under-drawing. (4) Brush-work: R suggested (PC contra) there was some visible brushwork on the original image, but in a minute area of the image ("her eyes, including the irises, have outlines, apparently applied by a brush"). (5) Condition of the surface layer: The three most recent inspections agree (i) that significant additions have been made to the image, some of which were subsequently removed,[citation needed] and (ii) that the original image has been abraded and re-touched in places. Some flaking is visible (mostly along the line of the vertical seam, or at passages considered to be later additions). (6) Varnish: The tilma has never been varnished. (7) Binding Medium: R provisionally identified the pigments and binding medium (distemper) as consistent with 16th-century methods of painting sargas (MC, PC contra for different reasons), but the color values and luminosity are exceptional. The technique of painting on fabric with water-soluble pigments (with or without primer or ground) is well-attested. The binding medium is generally animal glue or gum arabic (see: Distemper). Such an artifact is variously discussed in the literature as a tüchlein or sarga.[27] Considered as a type of sarga, the tilma is not unique,[citation needed], but its state of preservation is remarkable. Religious significance
The iconography of the Virgin is fully Catholic:[28] Miguel Sanchez, the author of the 1648 tract Imagen de la Virgen María, described her as the Woman of the Apocalypse from the New Testament's Revelation 12:1, "clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars,".[21][29] "[W]hat is rarely mentioned is that the frame which surrounded the canvas was lowered to leave almost no space above the Virgin's head, thereby obscuring the effects of the erasure."[30] She is described as a representation of the Immaculate Conception.[21]

Virgil Elizondo says the image also had layers of meaning for the indigenous people of Mexico, which contributed to her popularity.[31] Her blue-green mantle was the color reserved for the divine couple Ometecuhtli and Omecihuatl;[32] her belt is interpreted as a sign of pregnancy; and a cross-shaped image, symbolizing the cosmos and called nahui-ollin, is inscribed beneath the image's sash.[33] She was called "mother of maguey,"[34] the source of the sacred beverage pulque.[35] Pulque was also known as "the milk of the Virgin."[36] The rays of light surrounding her are seen to also represent maguey spines.[34]

Cultural significance
Symbol of Mexico


Flag carried by Miguel Hidalgo and his insurgent army
Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe is recognized as a symbol of Catholic Mexicans. Miguel Sánchez, the author of the first Spanish language account of the vision, identified Guadalupe as Revelation's Woman of the Apocalypse, and said:

"...this New World has been won and conquered by the hand of the Virgin Mary ... [who had] prepared, disposed, and contrived her exquisite likeness in this her Mexican land, which was conquered for such a glorious purpose, won that there should appear so Mexican an image."[21]
Throughout the Mexican national history of the 19th and 20th centuries, the Guadalupan name and image have been unifying national symbols; the first President of Mexico (1824–29) changed his name from José Miguel Ramón Adaucto Fernández y Félix to Guadalupe Victoria in honor of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Father Miguel Hidalgo, in the Mexican War of Independence (1810), and Emiliano Zapata, in the Mexican Revolution (1910), led their respective armed forces with Guadalupan flags emblazoned with an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. In 1999, the Church officially proclaimed her the Patroness of the Americas, the Empress of Latin America, and the Protectress of Unborn Children.[5]

In 1810 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla initiated the bid for Mexican independence with his Grito de Dolores, with the cry "Death to the Spaniards and long live the Virgin of Guadalupe!" When Hidalgo's mestizo-indigenous army attacked Guanajuato and Valladolid, they placed "the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, which was the insignia of their enterprise, on sticks or on reeds painted different colors" and "they all wore a print of the Virgin on their hats."[37] After Hidalgo's death leadership of the revolution fell to a zambo/mestizo priest named José María Morelos, who led insurgent troops in the Mexican south. Morelos adopted the Virgin as the seal of his Congress of Chilpancingo, inscribing her feast day into the Chilpancingo constitution and declaring that Guadalupe was the power behind his victories:

New Spain puts less faith in its own efforts than in the power of God and the intercession of its Blessed Mother, who appeared within the precincts of Tepeyac as the miraculous image of Guadalupe that had come to comfort us, defend us, visibly be our protection.[37]

Simón Bolívar noticed the Guadalupan theme in these uprisings, and shortly before Morelos' execution in 1815 wrote: "the leaders of the independence struggle have put fanaticism to use by proclaiming the famous Virgin of Guadalupe as the queen of the patriots, praying to her in times of hardship and displaying her on their flags ... the veneration for this image in Mexico far exceeds the greatest reverence that the shrewdest prophet might inspire."[21] One of Morelos' officers, Félix Fernández, would later become the first president of Mexico, even changing his name to Guadalupe Victoria.[37]

In 1914, Emiliano Zapata's peasant army rose out of the south against the government of Porfirio Díaz. Though Zapata's rebel forces were primarily interested in land reform – "tierra y libertad" (land and liberty) was the slogan of the uprising – when his peasant troops penetrated Mexico City they carried Guadalupan banners.[38] More recently, the contemporary Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) named their "mobile city" in honor of the Virgin: it is called Guadalupe Tepeyac. EZLN spokesperson Subcomandante Marcos wrote a humorous letter in 1995 describing the EZLN bickering over what to do with a Guadalupe statue they had received as a gift.[39]

Mexican culture


The original relic piece taken from the Tilma of Guadalupe. Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels
"The Aztecs ... had an elaborate, coherent symbolic system for making sense of their lives. When this was destroyed by the Spaniards, something new was needed to fill the void and make sense of New Spain ... the image of Guadalupe served that purpose."[40]

Hernán Cortés, the Conquistador who overthrew the Aztec empire in 1521, was a native of Extremadura, home to Our Lady of Guadalupe. By the 16th century the Extremadura Guadalupe, a statue of the Virgin said to be carved by Saint Luke the Evangelist, was already a national icon. It was found at the beginning of the 14th century when the Virgin appeared to a humble shepherd and ordered him to dig at the site of the apparition. The recovered Virgin then miraculously helped to expel the Moors from Spain, and her small shrine evolved into the great Guadalupe monastery. One of the more remarkable attributes of the Guadalupe of Extremadura is that she is dark, like the Americans, and thus she became the perfect icon for the missionaries who followed Cortés to convert the natives to Christianity.[15]

According to the traditional account, the name of Guadalupe was chosen by the Virgin herself when she appeared on the hill outside Mexico City in 1531, ten years after the Conquest.[41] According to secular history, in 1555 Bishop Alonso de Montúfar commissioned a Virgin of Guadalupe from a native artist, who gave her the dark skin which his own people shared with the famous Extremadura Virgin.[15] Whatever the connection between the Mexican and her older Spanish namesake, the fused iconography of the Virgin and the indigenous Nahua goddess Tonantzin provided a way for 16th-century Spaniards to gain converts among the indigenous population, while simultaneously allowing 16th-century Mexicans to continue the practice of their native religion.[42]

Guadalupe continues to be a mixture of the cultures which blended to form Mexico, both racially and religiously,[43] "the first mestiza",[44] or "the first Mexican".[45] "bringing together people of distinct cultural heritages, while at the same time affirming their distinctness."[46] As Jacques Lafaye wrote in Quetzalcoatl and Guadalupe, "as the Christians built their first churches with the rubble and the columns of the ancient pagan temples, so they often borrowed pagan customs for their own cult purposes."[47] The author Judy King asserts that Guadalupe is a "common denominator" uniting Mexicans. Writing that Mexico is composed of a vast patchwork of differences – linguistic, ethnic, and class-based – King says "The Virgin of Guadalupe is the rubber band that binds this disparate nation into a whole."[45] The Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes once said that "you cannot truly be considered a Mexican unless you believe in the Virgin of Guadalupe."[48] Nobel Literature laureate Octavio Paz wrote in 1974 that "the Mexican people, after more than two centuries of experiments, have faith only in the Virgin of Guadalupe and the National Lottery".[49]

Roman Catholic Church
Beliefs and Miracles
Roman Catholic sources claim many miraculous and supernatural properties for the image such as that the tilma has maintained its structural integrity over nearly 500 years, while replicas normally last only about 15 years before suffering degradation;[50] that it repaired itself with no external help after a 1791 ammonia spill that did considerable damage, and that on 14 November 1921 a bomb damaged the altar, but left the icon unharmed.[51]

Then in 1929 and 1951 photographers found a figure reflected in the Virgin's eyes; upon inspection they said that the reflection was tripled in what is called the Purkinje effect, commonly found in human eyes.[52] An ophthalmologist, Dr. Jose Aste Tonsmann, later enlarged an image of the Virgin's eyes by 2500x and claimed to have found not only the aforementioned single figure, but images of all the witnesses present when the tilma was first revealed before Zumárraga in 1531, plus a small family group of mother, father, and a group of children, in the center of the Virgin's eyes, fourteen people in all.[53]

Numerous Catholic websites repeat an unsourced claim[54] that in 1936 biochemist Richard Kuhn analyzed a sample of the fabric and announced that the pigments used were from no known source, whether animal, mineral or vegetable.[53] Dr. Philip Serna Callahan, who photographed the icon under infrared light, declared from his photographs that portions of the face, hands, robe, and mantle had been painted in one step, with no sketches or corrections and no visible brush strokes.[55]

Pontifical Pronouncements


Inside the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, in Mexico City
With the Papal Brief Non Est Equidem of May 25, 1754, Pope Benedict XIV declared Our Lady of Guadalupe patron of what was then called New Spain, corresponding to Spanish Central and Northern America, and approved liturgical texts for the Holy Mass and the Breviary in her honor. Pope Leo XIII granted new texts in 1891 and authorized coronation of the image in 1895. Pope Pius X proclaimed her patron of Latin America in 1910. Pope Pius XII declared the Virgin of Guadalupe "Queen of Mexico and Empress of the Americas" in 1945, and "Patroness of the Americas" in 1946. Pope John XXIII invoked her as "Mother of the Americas" in 1961, referring to her as Mother and Teacher of the Faith of All American populations, and in 1966 Pope Paul VI sent a Golden Rose to the shrine.[56]

In July 16, 1935, Pope Pius XI declared Our Lady of Guadalupe to be the Heavenly Patroness of the Philippines and was signed and attested by Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII).[5][57][58] This was revised in September 12, 1942, when Guadalupe became the secondary "Patroness of the Philippines" when Pope Pius XII installed the Immaculate Conception as the Principal Patroness of the Filipino people through the Papal Bull Impositi Nobis, though her feast day is still widely celebrated in the archipelago. Today, the Blessed Virgin Mary under this title of Our Lady of Guadalupe is especially invoked by the Catholic bishops and laypeople who oppose the legalization of abortion and the passage of the Philippine Reproductive Health Bill. Pope John Paul II visited the shrine in the course of his first journey outside Italy as Pope from January 26–31, 1979, and again when he beatified Juan Diego there on May 6, 1990. In 1992 he dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe a chapel within St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican. At the request of the Special Assembly for the Americas of the Synod of Bishops, he named Our Lady of Guadalupe patron of the Americas on January 22, 1999 (with the result that her liturgical celebration had, throughout the Americas, the rank of solemnity), and visited the shrine again on the following day. On July 31, 2002, the Pope canonized Juan Diego before a crowd of 12 million, and later that year included in the General Calendar of the Roman Rite, as optional memorials, the liturgical celebrations of Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin (December 9) and Our Lady of Guadalupe (December 12).[56]

Devotions and Veneration
The shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe is the most visited Catholic pilgrimage destination in the world. Over the Friday and Saturday of December 11 to 12, 2009, a record number of 6.1 million pilgrims visited the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City to commemorate the anniversary of the apparition.[59]

The Virgin of Guadalupe is considered the Patroness of Mexico and the Continental Americas; she is also venerated by Native Americans, on the account of the devotion calling for the conversion of the Americas. Replicas of the tilma can be found in thousands of churches throughout the world, and numerous parishes bear her name.