Performing Piety: Making Sacred Space with the Virgin of Guadalupe by Elaine A. Peña (review)

This riveting binational study by cultural anthropologist Elaine A. Peña explores devotion to the Virgin of Guadalupe in three settings. Following Dwight Conquergood, Peña describes her book as “co-performance witnessing” (p. 3), and she approaches her topic through the lens of performance studies, paying special attention to physical space. What makes Peña’s study fascinating is how an overarching symbol—the Virgin of Guadalupe—becomes localized in very particular instances.

Peña first directs our gaze to the Second Tepeyac in Des Plaines, Illinois. Much like the original Tepeyac, this shrine had humble beginnings, in a lay volunteer circulating a travelling image of the Virgin. Peña charts the evolution of the itinerant mission into an institutionally sanctioned shrine replicating the Basilica of Saint Mary of Guadalupe in Mexico City. But as Peña emphasizes, “the act of reproducing a place… is only the first step” (p. 43). Devotional capital, she insists, is built up by investments of time and energy. The space becomes sacred “only when devotees’ embodied performances—their voices raised in ecstasy, their praying and dancing bodies in motion, the labor and care they offer—inscribe their histories, beliefs and aspirations on the environment.” (p. 43)

Differences between the Basilica and the Des Plaines replica tell of a recasting of the Virgin’s identity. Flags from around the world are prominently displayed, and immigration advocacy is carried out discreetly behind the scenes. The Virgin of Guadalupe may be Empress of the Americas and Patroness of Mexico, but at the Second Tepeyac, she is La Virgen de los Migrantes.

Peña’s binational scope next takes us across the border for a gritty portrayal of women’s walking pilgrimages. Joining the “feminine” delegation to the Basilica from Querétaro, founded to parallel the one historically undertaken by men, Peña witnesses the pilgrims’ testimonies and motivations. She gives a sense of the emotional impact of arrival at their final destination: the feet of the Virgin herself. The delegation, sponsored by the archdiocese and aided by the state government, ties the women to the official Church. While unifying, it also reinforces stratifications. Pilgrims were organized, Peña found, into walking groups based on social class. A peregrina’s status is communicated by “how she consumes the experience—her place in line, whether she wears shoes, whether she sleeps on a bed or a sidewalk.” (p. 79) In a stroke of genius, Peña supplemented her experience of the prestigious Querétaro pilgrimage by joining a smaller one with little institutional support. Here, she met women who persevere against social and even ecclesiastical disapproval to put their faith into practice.

The third exploration—and the most gripping—invites readers to glimpse the brief lifespan of a sidewalk shrine. On Chicago’s far north side, believers set up a shrine for the Virgin’s image in a tree: a tarp hung over 40 square feet of concrete. This raw, visceral expression of faith allows Peña to delve further into issues of devotional capital. Although she focuses on selected specifics of location and interpersonal relations, her insights illumine scenarios across the United States. I myself have come across three such shrines, in California, Florida, and New York. Peña notes that Robert Orsi has warned against facile definitions of pluralism. In its multiethnic neighborhood, the shrine exposed hidden conflicts of race, class and nationality. Devotees forged strong bonds of solidarity as guadalupanos but were ultimately unsuccessful at enlisting significant Church or municipal allies. Their aspirations, and their failures, reveal poignantly the hopes of immigrants everywhere struggling to establish ownership of sacred space. The tragic tone of this chapter is mitigated by the resilience that Peña confidently ascribes to the devotees, who will simply take their fervor elsewhere.

Peña’s writing style is engaging and her prose transparent. As co-performer, she...