Our Lady of Guadalupe: An Ambiguous Symbol

OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE: AN AMBIGUOUS SYMBOL REVIEW ARTICLE BY Stafford Poole, CM. Documentos guadalupanos: Un estudio sobre las fuentes de información tempranas en torno a las mariofantas en el Tepeyac. By Xavier Noguez. (Mexico City: El Colegio Mexiquense, A.C., Fondo de Cultura Económica. 1993. Pp. 280; appendixes 11; illustrations 27.) The Image of Guadalupe. By Jody Brant Smith. Second and revised edition. (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press in association with Gracewing/ Fowler Wright Books Ltd. 1994. Pp. xvii, 132; appendices 8; illustrations 15. Paperback.) OurLady ofGuadalupe:Faith andEmpowermentamongMexican-American Women. By Jeanette Rodriguez. (Austin: University of Texas Press. 1994. Pp. xxxvi, 227; appendices 8; illustrations 4; tables 9· $35.00 clothbound; JSl 3.95 paperback.) The devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe of Mexico, based on the story of the Virgin's appearance to a native neophyte named Juan Diego at the hill of Tepeyac in December 1 531, has an enduring fascination. The Virgin Mary was said to have directed Juan Diego to go to the bishop of Mexico, Juan de Zumárraga, with a request to have him build a church on the place where she appeared. There, she promised, she would be the natives' mother, comfort them in their sorrows, and hear their prayers, tears, and entreaties. As proof of this, she had Juan Diego collect flowers from the hill at a time when they were not in season and take them in his cloak (tilma) to Zumárraga. When Juan Diego unfolded his tilma, the Virgin's image was imprinted on it. In the past two centuries Guadalupe has become central to Mexican religion and nationality and today is one of the most powerful religious/national symbols in the world. Though the traditional date of the apparitions is 1531, there is no incontrovertible evidence for them before 1648. In that year the Oratorian priest Miguel Sánchez first made the story known in his book Imagen de la Virgen María. Sanchez's thesis was that the mariophany was an affirmation of the special position and divine election of the criollos of New Spain. Six months 588 BY STAFFORD POOLE, CM.589 after Sanchez's work appeared, Luis Lasso de la Vega, the vicar of Guadalupe, published theHuei tlamahuiçoltica ( 1649), an extended treatment in Náhuatl (Aztec) of the apparitions, the shrine, and the miracles worked there. The description of the apparitions, known by its opening words as the Nican mopohua, has come to be regarded in many quarters as the authentic version, perhaps dating back to the very time of the apparitions. Its authorship is often attributed to the famed Nahua scholar and governor, Antonio Valeriano. The story and meaning of Guadalupe has fascinated and continues to fascinate scholars in a variety of disciplines. Historians, ethnologists, anthropologists , linguists, and theologians have mined it for a variety ofcultural, political, and religious interpretations. The result has been strong, sometimes acrimonious debate. As Xavier Noguez remarks, "el tema parece inacabable" (the subject seems endless). The three books reviewed here reflect this ongoing fascination, and each approaches the controversial devotion from a different point of view. Noguez's Documentos guadalupanos, an outgrowth of his doctoral dissertation at Tulane University, is a study of the earliest sources of the Guadalupan account. The author has set certain limits to this study, "the more basic and useful objectives" (p. 13), that is, a detailed examination of the written documentation principally during the first two centuries of Spanish rule. The documents include both originals and those that have survived only in copies. In the latter case Noguez has chosen only those of some certainty and has excluded such hearsay evidence as the account that, according to some testimonies, Zumárraga supposedly wrote. He also excludes Zumárraga's letter to Fernando Cortés, published by Mariano Cuevas and dated by him December 24, 1531, which has no real connection with the Guadalupe phenomenon . Noguez shows how the various documents add to our knowledge of this phenomenon in an incremental way. He divides them into those of native (Náhuatl) origin and those of Spanish origin. In the first part of the book he describes each document in detail...