MDDM related: the Indio saint

[Doug Millison]

http://news.pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=756
Mexico's New Saint - A Twisted Road to Tepeyac
Pacific News Service, Alberto Huerta, Jul 25, 2002

On Wednesday, July 31, the Pope is scheduled to canonize Mexico's most
controversial saint, illuminating that country's discomfort with its
indigenous identity. The future saint may look conquistador-like "guero" --
blond and Spanish -- on the official holy card, but Juan Diego was a
dark-skinned Indian, writes Father Alberto Huerta.

MEXICO CITY--It has been a long and twisted road to Tepeyac, the hill near
this city where the Pope is scheduled to canonize Mexico's most
controversial saint on July 31. While millions are expected to witness the
ceremony at the shrine dedicated to the patroness of the Americas, Our Lady
of Guadalupe, the event illuminates Mexico's discomfort with its indigenous
identity: the new saint is Juan Diego, a dark-skinned Indian who reported
seeing the Virgin repeatedly in 1531.

The official Mexican holy card makes him look "guero" -- blond and Spanish,
more like the conquistador Hernan Cortes than a humble "Indio." Mexico's
indigenous population remains poorer and more marginalized than its
non-Indian majority. Among the worst epithets one Mexican can hurl at
another is "Indio."

When the Virgin Mary "appeared" to Juan Diego on the Tepeyac Knoll, and
ordered him to inform Bishop Juan Zumarraga of Mexico City to build a
basilica in her honor, the bishop doubted the Indio. Juan Diego returned
with roses from the spot - miraculous in December - emptied from his cloak.
The bishop, his secretary and Juan Diego himself were reportedly amazed to
see the perfect image of the Virgin -- with dark skin - imprinted on the
cloak, today the object of pilgrimage at the cathedral at Tepeyac.

Zumarraga, who had leveled native Aztec temples to build Christian
churches, employed Indian slave laborers. He was not keen to attribute any
spiritual power or privilege to an Indio. Least of all would he admit to
mounting miracles attributed to an Indian-looking virgin. He never
mentioned these apparitions in his "Regla Christiana" of 1547. He wrote
that miracles were not needed in the Americas. Even the scholarly
Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagun, responsible for recovering the ancient
Aztec codices, was reluctant to encourage devotion to Guadalupe. He feared
idolatry: Tepeyac was the site where the earth goddess Tonantzin, mother of
the Aztec deities, once had her temple.

In spite of these obstacles, devotion to "La Morena," the dark lady, spread
and thousands of Indios converted to Christianity.

In 1666, Rome interviewed survivors of the period. It seemed the issue of
the Indio's existence and connection to the image of Guadalupe was
resolved. That is, until May 1996, when Abbot Schulenburg of the Basilica
of Guadalupe in Mexico City stated that there were no historical
indications of Juan Diego's existence, that he was merely a symbol.
Cardinal Rivera, the primate of Mexico, disagreed, removing the abbot.
Nevertheless, for those whose colonial past inhibited their acceptance of
this spiritual "mestizaje" - the blending of the European and the Indio -
this revelation of a dark Indian-looking woman and "un Indio" as God's
messenger became an issue of race and class. Arguments exploded on both
sides.

Was Juan Diego perhaps from Aztec nobility, and not an ordinary Indian?
Could he have been light-skinned? Or was he indeed what history and deeply
held belief say he was -- an ordinary Indian, like millions of others?

It has not been easy for "La Morena" and "El Indio." Five hundred years
later, controversy still stalks the powerful spiritual message that she had
come to bless this new people of the Americas that sword and cross had
conquered, slaughtered, enslaved, colonized and baptized.

Here in the United States, Hispanic Americans seem to be ahead of some
Mexicans, coming to terms with their indigenous roots as something good and
positive, which sets them apart from other Americans.

Curiously, the new Indian saint and La Morena may even touch Americans with
neither indigenous nor Mexican roots. One morning at the ocean, I noticed a
Nordic-looking young man sunning himself with a tattoo of Our Lady of
Guadalupe on his arm. Curious, I asked if he was Catholic. He said he had
no religious affiliation, but had visited Guadalupe. When I asked why, he
pointed to a name tattooed under the image of Juan Diego. He said that his
life-long friend had contracted a fatal disease. He had tattooed his
friend's name under Juan Diego in the hope of a miracle.

Huerta is an associate professor of Spanish at the University of San
Francisco.




see also:


http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1570751102/qid=1027715985/sr=1-12/ref=sr_
1_12/102-3746473-9348150

Guadalupe: Mother of the New Creation
by Virgilio P. Elizondo

[page 7 of the sample pages describes how "the earth glowed with the
splendors of the rainbow" during the apparition ]



picture at:
http://aztlan.net/juandiego.htm


http://www.cjd.org/paper/juanday.html