Envisioning Mexico's Catholic Resurgence: The Virgin of Solitude and the Talking Christ of Tlacoxcalco 1908-1924

On the eve of the Mexican Revolution of 1910 Archbishop Eulogio Gillow, an activist modernizing prelate, planned an event he envisioned as a plebiscite affirming his vision of a revitalized Christian polis. He proclaimed that this new civic order would reinforce the Church's pillars of hierarchy and fervent devotion, and thus cure a society afflicted by disorder and religious indifference.¹ The 'vote' took place on 18 January 1909, when the Vatican's apostolic delegate in Mexico elevated the archdiocese of Oaxaca's Marian patroness, la Virgen de la Soledad (the Virgin of Solitude), to Rome's highest category for devotional images by placing a bejewelled crown upon her head at the height of a sumptuous festival. Afterwards, Gillow deployed the newly accessorized devotion as the focal point of a programme to reform popular religious practice. He decreed a monthly rotating pilgrimage designed to bring representatives from the province's predominantly indigenous rural parishes to the archdiocesan seat once a year. In part, these amounted to scaled-down repeat performances of the crowning celebrations of January 1909, but they were also sacramental clinics/teach-ins designed with the indigenous laity in mind. Each monthly gathering stressed homage to the archdiocesan patroness, deference to the Church hierarchy, orderly pious display, and the performance of confession, penance and communion. In addition, these events culminated in masses featuring the latest liturgical styling in the Virgin's recently refurbished basilica. In short, Gillow's plebiscite and the scripted pilgrimages patterned on it served as didactic demonstrations of the official sights, sounds and orthodoxies of modern Catholicism.

Oaxaca's clergymen, however, were not the only social actors employing miraculous images to move the laity. A remarkable, but hitherto unstudied, indigenous visionary movement emerged from the rural fringes of the archdiocese in April 1911. Beyond exposing the limitations of the clergy's efforts to shape popular piety during this period, the movement demonstrated the crucial roles played by female indigenous religious leaders and locally inspired pilgrimage devotions. This emergent popular devotion attracted hundreds of believers. Within a handful of months its followers commissioned a new image, broke ground on a private shrine, structured their own rotating pilgrimage, and sponsored several elaborate masses. In addition, the seer at the centre of these developments, a woman named Bartola Bolaños, achieved popular acclaim as a skilled faith healer/herbalist curer.

These happenings may seem relatively innocent at a remove of nearly a hundred years, but they troubled the clergy at the time. First, an illiterate indigenous woman argued that she repeatedly spoke in Nahuatl (her native language) to an image of Christ that miraculously came to life and cured the sick through his divine power. Oracular apparitions often represent a problem for the Church. Dogma states that Christ's revelations, as expressed in the New Testament, are complete and unalterable, and thus visionary occurrences that appear to add to the 'deposit of the faith' are heretical. In addition, Bolaños's growing reputation as a healer with supernatural connections could potentially transform her into a living popular saint. Perhaps more worrisome for the Church, however, was Bolaños's successful organizing of a growing number of followers and hosting of home-grown apparitionist rituals. An individual who claimed to contact sacred beings and wield preternatural abilities could be ignored, but Bolaños, with help from her husband and other supporters, established innovative local institutions to support their upstart cult and to

1.

Oaxaca's Archbishop Eulogio Gillow (1841-1922). This picture of the prelate appeared in a picture book commemorating the coronation. The photograph was taken decades earlier, perhaps closer to his episcopal consecration in 1887. In 1910 Gillow was nearly 70 years old. From Álbum de la coronación de la Santísima Virgen de la Soledad que se venera en Oaxaca (Oaxaca, 1910). By permission of the Archivo Histórico de la Arquidiócesis de Oaxaca.

gain adherents from beyond their village. According to critics of the movement, even...