Virgin of Guadalupe

	©1999 Lloyd Kahn

The Virgin of Guadalupe is a wonderful Mexican icon, appearing everywhere: in churches, on rocks in the desert, in innumerable roadside shrines such as this one at the turnoff just out of La Purisima on the road to San Juanico.

As to the origin of Guadalupe, it’s said that a brown-skinned woman appeared to the Indian convert Juan Diego in 1541 on the hill of Tepeyac, a shrine sacred to the mother goddess Tonantzin, and demanded in her native tongue (Nahhuatl) that a shrine be built there. In the book, The Goddess, author Shahrukh Husain writes, “There was only ever lip service paid to the pretence that this church was for the worship of Mary . . . There are many other examples of American goddesses being worshipped as saints or virgins . . . ”

Maybe that’s why Guadalupe has such good vibes. She comes from the Indians, from the land.