BOOOM!! December 13 cannon fire woke me from a sound sleep at 4am. Assuming hell had broken loose I cautiously went to the window to find it was quite the contrary, the feast of Guadalupe had begun. December 12, 1531 marked the date of her second appearance to a humble indian farmer Juan Diego in Tepeyac where as the story goes he gathered roses where they had never grown and upon delivering them to the Bishop he empties his tilma to reveal the image of the Virgin Mary. Many believe the authenticity of this image and this story established the turning point of what had been a violent, stalemated power struggle between the Spanish and Aztec cultures contributing to an amalgamation of beliefs, tolerance and an acceptance of the Spanish culture, eventually propelling the shrine of Guadalupe to what it is today.
Ronald Barnet suggested there is another side to the story. He pointed out that before the fall of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan in 1521, the hill where Juan Diego had his vision had also been the site of an ancient temple to the Aztec goddess Tonantzin (Our Revered Mother, Goddess of the Earth), later leveled to the ground by the Spaniards. It seems curious that Mary would choose to appear at the former temple of Tonantzin, I mean... of all the places? Was she using political strategy to further Christianity? Do gods do that? Barnet also pointed out that depending on the source, Juan Diego was either a humble farmer of Tepeyac or one of the most influential and powerful men in the Aztec Empire at the time of the Conquest. When the Vatican decided to canonize him, their investigation reportedly revealed that the humble Indian had actually been a prince, the son of a king of Texcoco, who helped Cortes defeat the Aztecs with his command of 8000 warriors. Could he have accounted for the large numbers of Indians who were baptized after the apparition of the Virgin in 1531?
Remarkably, the ancient Aztec belief in Tonantzin and the Christian faith in the Virgin Mary do not seem to be at odds. In the case of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Indians in Mexico simply transferred their beliefs and practices from Tonantzin, the Goddess of the Earth, to Mary, the Mother of God. Further more from what I have seen Christianity in Mexico is a unique tolerant blend of Mesoamerican Catholicism. There are symbols and held over customs of Pre-Hispanic religion that continue to be celebrated within the church.
In the interest of discovery I visited Basilica of Our Lady Guadalupe. As the moving sidewalk slowly ushered me past the image I gazed into its eyes in hopes of finding some truth or perhaps some faith that had been previously leveled. What I found was that the truth is not in images, temples, or basilicas, it cannot be invented, replaced, leveled or destroyed. It is within
