CHAPTER 14 THE RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS OF MESOAMERICA 517Religious Syncretism and Local Realities
In 1531 (according to a legend that became “canonized” in subsequent centuries; see
Chapter 5), just ten years after the Spaniards destroyed the Aztec capital of Tenochti-
tlan, an Indian named Juan Diego declared that the Mother of Jesus had revealed her-
self to him. At first, Church authorities were incredulous and scoffed at the very idea
that the Virgin might appear to an Indian. Juan Diego returned to the site of the
initial apparition of the Virgin to ask her assistance. She told him (in Nahuatl) to take
roses from a nearby bush that was in bloom out of season and roll them up in his
cloak. Davíd Carrasco narrates this miracle and its consequences in the following
passage:
He did as he was told, and when he unrolled the cloak a magnificent color image of the
Virgin was imprinted upon it. When Juan Diego took the cloak to the Archbishop of Mex-
ico, according to popular legend, the astonishing miracle was accepted and the site of the
revelation was chosen for the future cathedral. Today, Mexico’s greatest basilica stands at
the bottom of the hill [Tepeyac] and is visited every day by thousands of the faithful, who
gaze upward at the glass-encased cloak with its miraculously painted image. (Carrasco
1990:136)That the site of the apparition of the Virgin was a sacred site that was of signifi-
cance to the Aztecs and that she chose to reveal herself to an Indian are parts of the
story that deserve further discussion, for they have to do with the pragmatics of
Spain’s colonial agenda. Whether or not the miraculous apparition occurred as leg-
end and Church doctrine narrate the event, it nevertheless illustrates a typical phe-
nomenon of situations of cultural encounter. Both the dominant culture and the
vanquished seek—no doubt for different reasons—the means, often articulated
through religion, to make sense of the inevitable present by mingling parts of prior
cultural forms with new forms, thus creating new syntheses that address new politi-
cal realities (see Chapter 5). Christianity itself was born this way out of the turmoil
of the encounter of Judaism with the expanding Roman Empire, and “Mesoameri-
can Christianity,” in its myriad variants, was born this way.
The original founding of a different cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe, a small
dark-skinned image of a Madonna and Child, long antedated the events at Tepeyac
Hill, having miraculously appeared, according to legend, to the Spanish faithful sev-
eral centuries before. Her image is today enshrined in western Spain (in the town of
Guadalupe) and was deeply revered long before the conquest. However, her mani-
festation as a Nahuatl-speaking Mother of Jesus, with Indian features, was something
new. Indeed, some scholars note that there is no historical link whatsoever between
the two images. Whatever the ironies and accidental convergences in the history of
this image, Mexico’s Virgin of Guadalupe became nothing less than the patron of
Mexico and “Queen of America,” and she is revered by tens of millions today. Her
story bears significant elements of both the conqueror and the vanquished. In some
ways, she can be said to integrate the tensions of Indian and Spaniard, mestizo and
Indian, Spaniard and mestizo, into one community of faith and devotion (for more
on the Virgin cult, see Box 5.1).