The Context of Our Lady of Guadalupe
Repression and integration, all in one package
Today is the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, an important feast day particularly to Latino Catholics and Catholic Native Americans.
What is not often told in the accounts of the apparitions of the Virgin Mary that appeared to St. Juan Diego in 1543 was that she spoke to him in his native indigenous language, Nahuatl. Nahuatl is the language of the Nahua peoples, the largest indigenous group in Mexico. The Aztecs and the Toltecs are part of the Nahua peoples, the language itself is an important branch in the Uro-Aztecan language family.
In the United States, the Shoshone and Paiute of the mountain west as far north as Idaho are part of the Uro-Aztecan language family as well as the Hopi and the Tohono O'odham (formerly known as the Pima) of Arizona and the Comanche of the American Southwest.
Nahuatl scholars believe that "Guadalupe" was what the Spanish heard when Juan Diego described his visions but that was not what he intended. The Nahuatl language does not have "d" or "g" as consonants.
There are three possible Nahuatl words that would have been heard by the Spanish as "Guadalupe":
"Coatlalopeuh" (she who has dominion over serpents"
"Tequantlanopeuh" (she who originated from the summit of rocks)
"Tlecuauhtlapeupeuh" (she who emerges from a region of light like an Eagle from fire).
The third possibility is intriguing because in Aztec mythology, the gods live in a region of fire and an eagle was an important symbol of a message from the Aztec gods.
Keep in mind that this all took place just ten years after the Conquistador Hernán Cortés overthrew the Aztec empire.
For the Spanish, it was a sign that the indigenous of the New World were destined for conversion. But the significance of indigenous imagery in Juan Diego's visions cannot be overstated. The relationship and history between Catholicism and the indigenous of the New World is complicated and is one side brutally repressive but on another side, a fascinating integration of belief systems.
There's no question that evangelization and conversion were an important part of the colonization philosophy of the Spanish. In fact, for forty years after Juan Diego's visions, the Spanish and Juan Diego's people fought a brutal war called the Chichimeca War.
The discovery of silver in the area led to boom in Spanish settlement of the area and Chichimecan warriors began attacking Spanish supply lines to the silver mines to slow the colonization of the area. It was the first time the Spanish faced indigenous warriors using horses in combat. Pursuing a policy of what the Viceroy in Mexico City called "fire and blood", Spanish forts were established to enslave the Chichimecans and kill those who resisted.
In 1574, the Dominican order declared the war effort unjust which put the Spanish government in a tough position with increasing numbers of religious orders becoming critical of the policy of fire and blood. The bishop of Guadalajara proposed a more peaceful approach to engage not just the Chichimecans but all indigenous under Spanish rule. It was the first time that conversion by the sword was questioned.
For the indigenous of Mexico, the Aztec belief system created a spiritual and moral structure for their lives. When that was lost in 1521 when the Aztecs were overthrown by Hernán Cortés, the imagery of Our Lady of Guadalupe filled that cultural void and helped make sense of a changed world for Juan Diego's people who had just lost their way of life.
Juan Diego was canonized in 2002 as the first indigenous Catholic saint from the New World.
In 1974, the Mexican poet and Nobel Laureate Octavio Paz wrote "The Mexican people, after more than two centuries of experiments and defeats, have faith only in the Virgin of Guadalupe and the National Lottery."