What is the tradition of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico?
The Virgin of Guadalupe tradition
Las apariciones de la Virgen de Guadalupe
December 1531. According to the Nican Mopohua, a Nahuatl text attributed to Antonio Valeriano and printed in 1649, the Virgin Mary appeared to an Indigenous man, Juan Diego,…
Draft: not yet checked against its sources.
Where: Mexico, Mexico City
What happened
According to the Nican Mopohua, a Nahuatl text attributed to Antonio Valeriano and printed in 1649, the Virgin Mary appeared to an Indigenous man, Juan Diego, on the hill of Tepeyac outside Mexico City between 9 and 12 December 1531 and asked for a church. When Bishop Zumárraga doubted him, flowers fell from his cloak (tilma) and her image appeared on it. The tilma is venerated in the Basilica of Guadalupe, one of the most visited shrines in the world. Historians note that the earliest documents of the cult date from 1556 and that no account of the apparitions survives from before the seventeenth century; the Church canonised Juan Diego in 2002. Tepeyac had been a shrine to the goddess Tonantzin, 'our mother'.
Say it
Millones de mexicanos visitan la Basílica de Guadalupe cada 12 de diciembre.
Millions of Mexicans visit the Basilica of Guadalupe every 12 December.
Why it matters
The dark-skinned Virgin became the emblem of Mexican identity: criollos adopted her as patroness, Hidalgo's rebels marched under her image in 1810, and 12 December is Mexico's great feast.
There today
- See
- At Tepeyac, in Mexico City, the Basilica of Guadalupe holds the venerated tilma, and 12 December is Mexico's great feast of the Virgin.
Read about it
Connected
- Mestizaje and the castas (c. 1519–1821)
- The fall of Tenochtitlan (13 August 1521)
Sources
- La Virgen de Guadalupe (Foto del día) — Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (México)
- Our Lady of Guadalupe — World History Encyclopedia