Mary, Mother and Warrior: The Virgin in Spain and the Americas

chapter one

introduction 


Introduction chapter one


I have wanted to write this book for years. During the seven years that I spent in Colombia, –, I was fascinated with the enormous reverence for theVirgin Mary that pervaded that country. I was particularly intrigued that this reverence crossed gender lines, with men as fervent as women if not more so. In a country troubled terribly by violence, this feminine vision of unconditional love, peace, and forgiveness held a power like no other. In the years since my return, I have observed the same fervor in many other parts of Latin America and among Latino populations in the United States. My years of residence in San Antonio, Albuquerque, and Los Angeles have confirmed that reverence for María is strong on this side of the border as well. Sometimes this fervor is visible; sometimes it is interior, known to me only through conversations with the reverent and from the ubiquitous home altars to her throughout the southwestern United States, Central America, the Caribbean, and South America. What has become clear to me is that what I thought of as an image or symbol is, for many Latin Americans and Latinos, a palpable presence, an understanding and giving being to whom access is proximate and immediate. Where did that reverence come from, and why is it so powerful? My interest has been further and most importantly stimulated by my students. In the past eighteen years of teaching about women in Latin America, I have used the Virgin as a theme of study and have received dozens of thoughtful and often emotional communications about her from my students at Trinity University, the University of New Mexico, and University of California at Los Angeles. I want to share several of those stories here.
,   


The first was told to me by a Peruvian woman, about her grandmother. Her abuela, she said, in her eighties and after bearing six children, had begun to insist that she herself was virgin. At first the family worried that she was becoming senile and somehow simply didn’t remember. After our discussions in class, the young woman said she believed that what her grandmother was saying was that as she approached death, she was both whole and clean. She also indicated that perhaps her abuela was dealing with the impossible task of living up to the example of Mary as both Virgin and Mother. Another student, a native New Mexican, told me that her mother, fleeing an abusive marriage, took with her only her two daughters and her image of the Virgin.This story resonates with a woodcut from El Salvador in the s of villagers fleeing in terror from the army carrying with them a statue of Mary. In disastrous circumstances, the precious images of Mary are saved. My New Mexican student went on to tell me on a later occasion that her weeping mother had told her not long before that she had decided to leave the statue not to her but to her sister.This decision had been made, she said, because it would mean more to the sister, a practicing Catholic. My student agreed that this choice was reasonable, but the mother was not consoled, still suffering from her judgment between her two children. Clearly, she believed that the Virgin’s power inherent in the image would accrue to one child, relatively imperiling the other. On two other occasions, after an introductory lecture on the subject of Mary, I have had students come to my office visibly shaken. On both occasions the students said their mothers had told them that they were products of virgin births. One woman was Hispanic Catholic; the other was Irish Catholic. Both of their mothers had been very young when they conceived— and both were unmarried. Quick marriages to boyfriends followed, and in neither case had the marriage worked well. The stories are suggestive. First of all, they make clear that the Virgin Mary presents an impossible ideal for living women, a mother without sexuality , and that this ideal in turn fosters in some a sense of inadequacy and insecurity, sometimes even denial. At the same time, Mary presents a picture of wholeness and integrity, of nurturing and healing and power, which is comforting and validating. In fact, it is to this impossible model that women turn for comfort in their failings and sorrows and for help in their necessities . And this figure is always with them, a constant and familiar presence. Given...