Reflections on Profound Meaning of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico and Beyond

Virgin of Guadalupe

Surrounded by Sun's Rays, symbols of the Holy Spirit, the

Virgin stands on the Half-Moon, which represents the female 

principle not just in Mesoamerica, but in many of the world

cosmologies; Cherub below the moon is widely believed to

be Saint Michael, patron saint of Mexico.

It is almost impossible to let the Day of the Virgin of Guadalupe go by without notice. Should one, perhaps, lose track of the day, the cohetes (rocket firecrackers) would bring the needed reminder. Other posts have described how the Faithful mark the day.

The article translated below appeared yesterday in La Jornada. Its author, José Cueli, is a psychoanalyst who contributes regularly to the paper. Far from traditional journalistic prose, today's piece is a prose poem rich in cultural references.

When I first read it, two experiences immediately came to mind. The first took place at a bookstore in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. The clerk was showing me a book whose theme seemed, to my Anglo nature, both fantastic and improbable. Reacting to my skepticism, she replied rather sharply,

"You simply won't understand Mexican culture until you understand magic and the supernatural."

Setting aside the magical realism of Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez ("I don't invent anything; everything I write down is already there"), it's still taken some time for me to open up to the place where this aspect of human imagination and expression dwells. Cueli's piece is at home there.

The second experience took place in Chicago while I was getting a haircut. I mentioned to the Guatemalan-born hairstylist that we live in Mexico. Her reaction was remarkable: eyes widening in surprise and awe, she whispered reverentially,

"Oh, México ... México is very special."

Mexico is special in Central and South America precisely for being the place where the Virgin of Guadalupe—morena (brown-skinned), speaking Náhuatl—appeared to the newly baptized Nahua peasant Juan Diego. More precisely, La Virgen Morena appeared on the Hill of Tepeyac, site of the Nahua temple to Tonantzin, believed to be a manifestation of the Earth Mother, known as Coatlicue, the mother of all living things, conceived by immaculate and miraculous means, decider of the length of life itself. Hence, to the Mexica, the Earth was both Mother and Tomb—Giver of Life and Receiver of Human Remains decomposing to rejoin the Life-Force (Ollín).

The syncretism is striking. Many scholars have pointed out the similarities in sound and attributes between Guadalupe and Coatlicue. According to Friar Bernardo de Sahagún, Spanish missionary and primary historian of the period, the indigenous people continued to call the Lady Tonantzín until around 1560, when the Spaniards baptized her with the sole name of Guadalupe.

Over time, the Virgin of Guadalupe was also embraced by the criollos (Spanish born not in Spain, but in Nueva España—Mexico). The Virgin´s personal appearance on Mexican soil was seen as establishing a direct relationship between the land, the criollos and the Mother of God. Even as the Virgin adopted the Mexican people (el pueblo) as her own; el pueblo, in turn, adopted her as the Mother of Mexico. All of Mexico, el pueblo mexicano, could—and still does—adore her.

The Guatemalan hairstylist would add that the appearance of the Náhuatl-speaking, brown-skinned Virgin in Mexico, established a direct relationship not just with los mexicanos, but with all those who live in the Western Hemisphere. The plaza in front of the Basílica Antigua de Guadalupe, Ancient Basilica of Guadalupe, is appropriately named Atrio de las Americas, Atrium of the Americas.

Cueli's reflection incorporates all these cultural nuances. Respectfully, I present my translation to you as an unusual cultural expression of the profoundly rich inner life of many Mexicans.

_______________________

The Collective Miracle of the Union, José Cueli*

The collective miracle of the union in physical pain symbolizes the Mexican Spanish-Indigenous merger in the Virgin of Guadalupe. The encounter marks the fulfillment of an experience of exceptional intensity in keeping with the inner vitality it brings about. Rather than differences, there is identity—the identification of one with the other. Even more, confusion between the two. The fulfillment of an impossible presence of complete impossibility.

Inner purity turns into ecstasy in moments when I feel transported beyond outside appearances. An open emptiness in which I lose the difference between your [Virgin's] image and objects, imitator and imitated. In an extraordinary manner, a wonderment wells up in a feeling of uncommon fullness that ... in seconds ... gives way to brutal emptiness.

In which you disappear, and the perception no longer exists. Only the dream remains with its omens, alerts, memories ... an illumination that comes to me in an exceptional way ... and grows and pays the debt, my beloved, of pain in the realm of shadows, state of internal exhaustion, difficult to define. A transfiguration that discovers the profound experience of solitude. An intense confusion that imagines the summons to return to the routine ... heartbroken and melancholy.

Depression over the loss of self-exaltation. Clothed in the colors of a narcissism that becomes almost unbearable in that I seek, imagine and plan the return to those extraordinary moments of union, without which the future seems to stop making sense ... upon feeling myself abandoned, rejected by you, and threatened by a spiritual desolation, an incision that inserts confusion between opposites.

"In the current plaza of the Basilica of Guadalupe, called monumental, they have built two pyramid bases for the dancers on December 12. Four centuries later, representatives of the new cult see themselves as needed to erect what they destroyed four centuries ago. Undoubtedly, the XVI Century Convent and indigenous activity was the same as for the 'Calmecac', its students and priests." (Santiago Ramírez Ruiz).

Note: The Calmecac—"House of the Lineage"—was an academy for sons of Aztec nobility, where they received rigorous religious and military training.

"The slash of the Spanish la tizona [legendary sword] has not separated us from the ancient world, from the primal and original poetry of our explosive and magical responsibility. The myth became flesh. At the tip of la tizona, the feathered serpent, the pieces gathered up new and old life. They went into the woods and hid everywhere. Today they abduct and soar in words, blood and dreams, as vivid as in the codices—legends, fresh and monolithic." (Luis Cardoza y Aragón).

Note: In Spanish literature, 'la tizona' is the name given to one of the legendary swords used by El Cid to fight the Moors, who occupied Spain for 800 years, 711-1492 CE. 'The Plumed Serpent' is Quetzalcóatl, related to gods of the wind, of Venus, of the dawn, of merchants and of arts, crafts and knowledge. But, significant here, Quetzalcóatl was also the patron god of the Aztec priesthood, of learning and knowledge. The codices are the Aztec writings.

"The Virgin of Guadalupe is the surrogate mother who calms and satisfies. She stands as the symbolic banner of two cultures: one looks inward, where it has encountered philosophical truth 'under lock and key'; the other looks outward. For one ... restraint in man; for the other ... the legend." (Miguel León-Portilla) 

Spanish original

*José Cueli García, born in Mexico City in 1934, completed studies in medicine, psychology and psychoanalysis; holds the doctorate in psychology from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Since 1965, Dr. Cueli has been a professor in UNAM's School of Psychology.

Quotations are all taken from the same source: Selected Works (transl.), Obras escogidas, Ed. Línea, 1983. Writers cited are:

• Santiago Ramírez Ruiz Sandoval (Mexico City, 1921-1989), physician (UNAM) and psychoanalist.
• Luis Cardoza y Aragón (1901-1992), Guatemalan writer, essayist, poet, art critic and diplomat, spent much of his life in exile in Mexico.
• Miguel León-Portilla (Mexico City, 1926- ), Mexican anthropologist and historian (UNAM), is a prime authority on Náhuatl thought and literature.