ROME, 19 (ZENIT).- The canonization of Juan Diego, the Indian to whom the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared, would be an absurdity, since his existence has not been proven. This assertion, made on several occasions by the former abbot of the Basilica of Guadalupe, Guillermo Schulenburg, has been voiced for decades by other figures. As early as April 18, 1794, the Spanish academician Juan Bautista Muñoz maintained for the first time that the Guadalupan event lacked historical foundation. If these theses are to be believed, John Paul II beatified, on May 6, 1990, a kind of phantom created by Mexican religious creativity. It goes without saying that the apparitions of Guadalupe would, along with Juan Diego, lose all credibility.
In the face of these assertions, and within the framework of the canonization process of the Blessed Indian, the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints decided in 1998 to create a Historical Commission to examine their foundation. It appointed as president of the Historical Commission Fidel González Fernández, professor of Ecclesiastical History at the Pontifical Urbaniana and Gregorian Universities, recognized as one of the foremost experts in the field. The Commission requested the cooperation of some 30 researchers of various nationalities, who made a decisive contribution not only toward substantiating the historicity of Juan Diego, but even toward shedding new light on the history of Mexico. Father González presented the results of this work at an extraordinary Congress held at the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints on October 28, 1998, achieving a positive outcome in the resolution of the doubts raised concerning the historical problems.
Perhaps one of the most original contributions of Father González, who has been assisted in this labor by other members of the commission, Eduardo Chávez Sánchez and José Luis Guerrero Rosado (cf. “El encuentro de la Virgen de Guadalupe y Juan Diego,” Editorial Porrúa, Mexico 1999, 564 pp.), is the presentation of 27 Guadalupan indigenous documents or testimonies and 8 of mixed Indo-Spanish provenance. Among them all, the “Nican Mopohua” and the so-called Codex “Escalada” stand out.
The “Nican Mopohua,” by the Indian writer Antonio Valeriano, constitutes a privileged testimony to the process of the transculturation of Christianity in New Spain. Nevertheless, the question of the historicity of its content, and of how much in it is literary embellishment or part of a cultural setting, continues to be vehemently debated. Each word of the 218 verses of the “Nican Mopohua” has its meanings within Nahua philosophy and mythology as well as within their Christian counterparts. Being a literary text, it does not as such carry the value of a historical record; it does, however, offer the testimony of the Indian worldview of the moment, something far more important for that culture than a dated chronicle could ever have been.
Moreover, its author, an Indian of pure Tecpanec stock, was a witness, for he lived between 1520 and 1606. Historians affirm that he was a nephew of the emperor Moctezuma. At the age of thirteen —in 1533, a testimony to the impressive work carried out by the missionaries— he entered the college of Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco, founded by Bishop Juan de Zumárraga. He was, therefore, one of the first Indians to speak Latin, and he was governor of Azcapotzalco for 35 years. He was 11 years old in 1531, the year of the apparitions, and 28 in 1548, when Juan Diego died.
Furthermore, the Codex “Escalada,” signed by the Indian Antonio Valeriano and the Spaniard Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, and only recently discovered, constitutes a direct testimony to the historicity of Juan Diego, for it contains a kind of “death certificate” of the Indian.
Since historical documents relating to the twenty years that followed the apparitions of Guadalupe have not yet been found, those who oppose them claim that this documentary “silence” is proof that they never took place. It is forgotten, however, that many indigenous sources were destroyed, as two unquestionable authorities of the first hour, Fray Bernardino de Sahagún and Gerónimo de Mendieta, declare. Nor should other historical factors be forgotten, such as fires (that of the Archive of the Cabildo of Mexico City in 1692) or the so-called “paper crisis” that afflicted New Spain for a long time and made it a normal practice to reuse paper that had already been used —even archival documents— for new purposes, whether in commerce or in writing.
Unanswered questions
The anti-apparitionists, however, cannot explain by historical means certain decisive aspects of the history of Mexico without taking into account the miracle of Guadalupe. For example, the fact that, after a dramatic conquest and after painful divisions and confrontations within the Nahuatl political world, in a place of deep significance for the indigenous world, on the hill of Tepeyac, a hermitage dedicated to the Virgin Mary was at once erected under the name of Guadalupe—a Guadalupe which coincides with the Guadalupe of Spain only in name.
Nor do they explain how Guadalupe became the sign of a new religious history and of an encounter between two worlds until then locked in dramatic opposition.
The historicity of the Blessed has been so firmly established that the president of the Commission created by the Roman Congregation for the Causes of Saints, Fidel González, is now studying the social origins of Juan Diego. It is not known whether he was a noble Indian or a “poor” Indian. This is a confusion caused by the translations of the “Nican Mopohua” into Spanish.
There are many other historical proofs of the existence of Juan Diego, such as, for example, oral tradition, a decisive source when studying the Mexican peoples, whose culture was primarily oral. This tradition, in such cases, usually obeys very precise canons and, in the case of Guadalupe, invariably confirms the historical and spiritual figure of Juan Diego.
Whoever wishes to go deeper into the historical aspect of the seer of Guadalupe may read below the unpublished article written by one of the most competent authorities in the field, Fidel González, president of the Historical Commission on Juan Diego established by the Holy See.
ZS99121909
THE HISTORICAL DOCUMENTATION ON THE VIRGIN OF GUADALUPE AND JUAN DIEGO
An unpublished study by one of the foremost experts in the field (1)
By Fidel González, mccj
President of the Historical Commission on Juan Diego appointed by the Roman Congregation
for the Causes of Saints.
Professor of Ecclesiastical History at the Pontifical Urbaniana and Gregorian Universities.
ROME, 19 (ZENIT).- At the beginnings of the Christian missionary presence in Mexico and in other parts of the New World, a clash can be observed between the pre-Cortesian religious and cultural world and the Christian world arrived from Europe. Yet we see that an encounter, not without pain, was to come about. Now, Guadalupe is the most accomplished expression of this encounter, and the neo-Christian Indian Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin a link that embodies it—or, as he is called by the “Nican Mopohua,” the most important indigenous document on the Guadalupan event, its “messenger” (2). So it has been perceived by the Indian “traditio” as well as by the Spanish, the Creole, and the Mestizo. In this sense the Guadalupan event and the mission of the Indian Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin have a marked ecclesial and missionary significance.
The Guadalupan Event displays the dramatic beginnings of the history of the American continent. The recent publication in Mexico, by the prestigious Editorial Porrúa, of the book jointly authored by F. González Fernández, E. Chávez Sánchez, and J. L. Guerrero Rosado highlights these problems by investigating the Guadalupan question through its documents. The Guadalupan question has been the object of impassioned historical debate ever since, at the end of the 18th century, a Spanish academician, Juan Bautista Muñoz (3), followed later by two Mexicans—the eccentric Dominican friar Fray Servando Teresa de Mier and, at the end of the 19th century, the scholar Joaquín García Icazbalceta—called into question, from very different positions and for very different motives, the historicity of the Guadalupan event. From then on, polemic would prevail over documentary research in Guadalupan historiography.
I. OPPOSING THESES
In the history of the Guadalupan controversy, opposing theses are found. Some seek to empty the Guadalupan Event of its historicity, reducing it to a mere symbol of variable value. We summarize some of these theses.
a) For some, “Guadalupe” is a religious myth representing the ancient Mexican religious traditions syncretistically absorbed by Catholicism. The Virgin of Guadalupe would be the Catholic transposition of a pagan “divinity,” and Juan Diego one of the characters of the myth.
b) Other anti-apparitionists believe that “Guadalupe” is a catechetical instrument used by the missionaries in the evangelization of the natives; they would have applied to the Mexican case the Spanish tradition that used theater, dramatizations, and processional floats for that purpose, giving rise to a rich sculptural and iconographic tradition.
c) Others see “Guadalupe” as a creation of the nascent “Criollismo” from the 17th century onward, an assertion of power over against the peninsular Spaniards. Mexican nationalism, with Creole roots, would thus have been born, with the Virgin of Guadalupe as its symbol. Only at a later stage would room be made for the “Indian Juan Diego” and for the Indians, who would not have been remembered as protagonists of the event until well into the 18th century. Mexican Independence itself would have been proclaimed under this symbol (4).
d) For other anti-apparitionists, the doubt arises from the lack of exhaustive sources in the first twenty years; great weight is given to the so-called “Franciscan documentary silence,” especially that of Fray Juan de Zumárraga, first bishop of the diocese of Mexico, and that of other chroniclers of the period, who were exceedingly faithful in transmitting the most important events of the conquest and of the evangelization (5).
e) Some do not deny the historicity of “Guadalupe.” For them, however, what is fundamental is the Guadalupan symbolism (6).
f) For some, what is interesting in the Guadalupan event is the drama of the conquest and the various attitudes of the missionaries and of the indigenous world in the first moments of the evangelization. Likewise, and for opposite motives, some followers of philosophical idealism read the Guadalupan event through this prism, interpreting it dialectically and as a creation of the subject.
g) There are numerous publications of a popular character in which the devotional aspect prevails without any concern of a historical nature.
h) Some of these views, applied to the Guadalupan event, can lead to fideism and, in some cases, even to evading the problem of the rationality of faith and of its link with history, and in others to the reduction of “Guadalupe” to a pure symbol or a mere sentiment without any relation to historical facts.
II. THE PROBLEM OF THE HISTORICITY OF JUAN DIEGO
The Cause of beatification of Juan Diego: an occasion for new studies and debates
Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, the Indian “seer” of Holy Mary of Guadalupe, was born, it appears, around 1474 and died in 1548. Some early Guadalupan indigenous sources, and later the “Spanish” ones, explicitly call him the “ambassador-messenger” of Holy Mary of Guadalupe. He was beatified in the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City on May 6, 1990, by John Paul II during his second apostolic journey to Mexico.
The history of his Cause is closely bound up with that of the Guadalupan event. From a juridical point of view, a process was opened in 1666 to give recognition to the event. The petition was signed by the Bishop of Puebla, Governor of the Archdiocese of Mexico, the see being vacant, and by the viceroy of New Spain (7). The “Informaciones” were merely read in 1667 by the Sacred Congregation of Rites without giving, as far as we know, any reply (8).
In the 18th century, in 1739, the scholar Lorenzo Boturini Benaduci gathered many documents on the Guadalupan event during his journey through New Spain with the aim of publishing its history; many of these documents were lost when Boturini was expelled from New Spain. Some of these documents of Boturini would appear later in archives and private collections.
Benedict XIV received the petitions of the ecclesiastical and civil authorities of New Spain and in 1754 declared the Virgin of Guadalupe principal patroness of New Spain and of the Dominions of the Crown of Spain (9). For its part, the Sacred Congregation of Rites granted a special Mass and Office for December 12, the solemnity of Our Lady of Guadalupe (10). In 1894 the Mexican bishops obtained from the Sacred Congregation of Rites the concession of the canonical coronation of the Virgin of Guadalupe (11); on that occasion the “Informaciones Jurídicas de 1666” were presented once again, together with other new data, as replies to the “animadversiones” (12). In the first decades of the 20th century the bishops of Mexico and of many other parts of the world petitioned Pius X and then Pius XI for the declaration of the Virgin of Guadalupe as Patroness of the American Continent and of the Philippines (13). From 1974 onward, the fifth centenary of the hypothetical date of Juan Diego’s birth, the Mexican bishops, and later the Latin American ones, requested his canonization (14). During his first pastoral Visit to Mexico in 1979, John Paul II likewise presented Juan Diego as a historical figure, important in the history of the evangelization of Mexico. Thus his beatification was reached, in the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City, by John Paul II on May 6, 1990.
Nevertheless the beatification, carried out by the method of the so-called “equivalent” beatifications (“equipolenti”), stirred up a controversy over the historicity of the Guadalupan event and over the very figure of Juan Diego. Since many bishops were requesting his canonization, at the beginning of 1998 the Congregation for the Causes of Saints appointed a historical commission charged with investigating the historical problems more deeply (15).
Part of the results of that study have been gathered in the volume by F. González Fernández, E. Chávez Sánchez, and J. L. Guerrero Rosado. The doubts and objections have constituted a positive stimulus for this research. The work presents a series of documents of diverse provenance which, in our judgment, affirm the Guadalupan event in a convergent manner. It has been the authors’ concern to examine this documentation critically. They also offer some reasonable hypotheses to explain certain gaps, such as the so-called “Guadalupan silence” of some ecclesiastical and civil figures of the 16th century.
III. METHODOLOGY EMPLOYED
The immediate objective of the investigation was to arrive at a historical judgment on the historicity of Juan Diego in view of his canonization process. Given the peculiar characteristics of the period, of the milieu, and of the nature of the documentation, the various historical problems had to be studied with due respect for the character of that documentation. To achieve this purpose, the criteria of the method used in the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints were followed: to investigate the matter “plene ac rite,” that is, according to the criteria of critical-historical methodology, in archives and libraries; to ascertain whether the sources were worthy of belief, totally or partially, and to what degree; and to see whether in such sources those elements could be found which might offer a historical foundation for reaching a judgment on the historicity of the Guadalupan event of Mexico and of its link with the Indian Juan Diego. In this connection it was necessary to bear in mind the nature and the diverse typology of the historical and literary sources and, therefore, the appropriate methodology to be applied in each case.
The historical and literary sources proceed fundamentally from three distinct cultural matrices: the “strictly Indian and indigenous”; the “Spanish and European”; and the “Mestizo,” in which the two preceding elements come together in various ways. The treatment of each source is dictated by the source itself and by its nature; that is, the object must prevail over the researcher’s “a prioris”; the data must also be viewed according to the totality of their factors, without eliminating or neglecting any of them; and, finally, account must also be taken of the influence of morality on the dynamics of the knowledge of facts. For all these reasons, one must keep in mind pre-Hispanic Mexican history and culture, that of the Spanish conquistadors and missionaries, and the historical evolutionary process that unfolds in New Spain, or Mexico, from the 16th century onward. Furthermore, in order to give their just value to the historical sources, the facts of the interculturation of the two worlds must be borne in mind: their cultural language, the value of their traditions, and the method of their transmission (16).
The indigenous sources
The historical moment in which the Mexican Guadalupan events unfold explains the relative scarcity of direct Guadalupan documents of the first hour. Nevertheless, we have the resource of early trustworthy reports and accounts, both indigenous and Spanish, belonging to the first twenty years after the events, or of others which, from the mid-16th century onward, approached the subject by drawing on ancient documents or witnesses, as is the case of Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxóchitl and, above all, the “Informaciones Jurídicas de 1666,” which gathered many of these testimonies, among them those of contemporaries who had known witnesses of the events and their protagonists.
In the history of the documentation the indigenous codices take on special importance, which makes their proper interpretation necessary. In a recently discovered letter of the 18th-century Italian scholar Lorenzo Boturini, the author lists the documents he intends to recover and seeks the intervention of competent persons so that they may be handed over to him (17). Many indigenous sources were destroyed, as two unquestionable authorities of the first hour, Fray Bernardino de Sahagún and Gerónimo de Mendieta, declare (18).
There is one documentary source, not always duly appreciated, which in the Mexican Guadalupan case is of capital importance: oral transmission, or tradition. As early as the 16th century an attentive observer such as the Jesuit Fr. José de Acosta, well acquainted with the realities of Mexico and Peru, reflected on the value of traditions and of oral transmission in his correspondence with the Mexican Jesuit Fr. Juan de Tovar (19). A century later the Mexican linguist and professor Luis Becerra Tanco returned to the same argument (20). Both testimonies underline the positive value of such a tradition and method. In 1578, the Dominican missionary Fray Diego Durán acknowledged the error of having destroyed the indigenous codices (21). The validity and reliability of this type of transmission have been confirmed by modern Nahuatl scholars such as Miguel León Portilla (22). It is therefore necessary to keep in mind the importance of oral tradition as a historical source among peoples of a primarily oral culture, as the Mexican peoples were. Oral tradition in such cases usually obeys very precise canons.
Observations on the indigenous sources and on the “Mestizo” or mixed sources
In the work of F. González Fernández, E. Chávez Sánchez, and J. L. Guerrero Rosado (23), 27 Guadalupan indigenous documents or testimonies of diverse provenance, value, and interpretation are presented, among which the “Nican Mopohua” stands out; and 8 of mixed Indo-Spanish or Mestizo provenance, notable among them being those belonging to Don Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxóchitl and the so-called Codex “Escalada,” recently discovered. First of all, their provenance, their chronology, and their purpose must be established. Among the indigenous sources the principal one is undoubtedly the “Nican Mopohua,” attributed to the Indian writer Antonio Valeriano, whose authorship of it the best researchers today no longer doubt (24). The document has a poetic structure and is “a privileged testimony to the process of the transculturation of Christianity in New Spain, one which retains an exemplary value and relevance for the introduction to Mexican philosophies and theologies, as well as for theological and social praxis and for ecclesiastical pastoral work in present-day Mexico and in other countries of America” (25). Nevertheless, the question of the historicity of its content, and of how much in it is literary embellishment or part of a cultural setting, continues to be vehemently debated.
Antonio Valeriano’s document was made known in its Nahuatl text by Lasso de la Vega in 1649. “It is a text at once complex and simple, which became the paradigm for other later accounts and which exerts a decisive influence on the religious process of Mexico. What stands out most in this Nahuatl text, as the historian and Nahuatl scholar A. María Garibay had already expressed, is the extraordinary message of the spiritual motherhood of Mary, principally toward the poor and the forsaken” (26).
For all these reasons, the document is to be studied in its cultural context, in “the literary configuration of the Guadalupan event” (27), “keeping in mind the philosophical reflections and theological readings of the Guadalupan event” (28), and the “Nahuatl (Toltec-Aztec) and Christian worldview. Each word of the 218 verses of the ‘Nican Mopohua’ has its meanings within Nahua philosophy and mythology as well as within their Christian counterparts” (29). The complexity and breadth of the Nahuatl worldview, and of the profound endeavor of Christian inculturation carried out by the missionaries, are subjects that require careful knowledge and study. To understand it, one must keep in mind all the data offered to us by the historical and literary sources of the 16th and 17th centuries in New Spain (30).
In interpreting the Guadalupan indigenous sources, it must also be borne in mind that these are not “pure” in the cultural and linguistic sense, but proceed from natives who were already Christian or who had come into contact with the Spanish and missionary cultural world. These contacts are reflected in the sources, both in content and in language. Therefore, to understand these sources one must keep in view the rich Nahuatl literary world of religious, philosophical, and natural-science subjects produced by natives and by Spaniards after 1521. The humanist background of many missionary friars and of many conquistadors should not be forgotten. This Christian humanism encountered traditional Indian wisdom. Antonio Valeriano is an example (31). Missionary friars, conquistadors, and Indian sages have bequeathed to us numerous linguistic and philological investigations: “artes or grammars, vocabularies, Christian doctrines, catechisms, sermon collections, devotionals, confession manuals, translations of the Bible, annals and oral accounts, compilations of letters, sacred poems and hymns, texts on agriculture, medicine, spells and enchantments, feasts and dances, education and society and economy, and other works down through the centuries of the Colony and of Independence to the present day, in which new texts in Nahuatl include words and ideas specially designed to signify Hebraic-Christian concepts. This rich literature, long disdained by researchers, is prodigal in implications in the context of the history of ideas and of processes of acculturation at the level of religious beliefs and practices as well as in modern and philosophical ideas” (32). These principles and experiences must be kept in mind not only in the specific case of the “Nican Mopohua,” but also with regard to the rich literature written in the Nahuatl language concerning the Guadalupan event (33).
It should also be noted that the Nahuatl language is rich in literary expressions for speaking poetically of the Mesoamerican worldview and narrating the events of its history. This language, moreover, was the “lingua franca” of Mesoamerica, used by numerous poets, chroniclers, and men of letters in ancient times and in the times immediately following the Guadalupan event. The facts and the message of Christian doctrine were also expressed in it with the same methodology, the same accents, and the same development of philosophical thought as those of the ancient “tlamatinime,” the Mexican sages who were creators of songs, chronicles, and poetry. This aspect of Christian Nahuatl inculturation explains the style and the content of these indigenous documents.
We call “mixed Indo-Spanish or Mestizo” sources those sources in which we find the presence of a determining Mestizo element or a cultural blend by reason of their author, as in the case of Don Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxóchitl (descendant of a Spaniard and of an Indian woman); or because the authors signing the same document are an Indian and a Spaniard, as in the Codex “Escalada” (signatures of the Indian Antonio Valeriano and of the Spaniard Fray Bernardino de Sahagún); or by reason of the language used (Nahuatl, as in the Codex “Escalada”), or of other elements such as author, composition, or language that indicate the presence of a cultural Mestizaje which is no longer either the purely pre-Hispanic indigenous element or the imported Spanish one. Among these sources we have catalogued some of capital importance, in which, however, we already find present a new type of approach and of cultural judgment, fruit of the new situation. Among them we recall the “Nican Motecpana” of Don Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxóchitl, the “Inin Huey Tlamahuizoltica,” the map of Alva Ixtlilxóchitl, the “Inin Huey Tlamahuizoltzin” [attributed to Juan González], the testament of Francisco Verdugo Quetzalmamalitzin, the so-called Codex “Florentino” [of Fray Bernardino de Sahagún], the testimony of Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxóchitl regarding favors granted to the inhabitants of Teotihuacán, and the important Codex “Escalada,” with a direct Guadalupan testimony and a kind of “death certificate” of Juan Diego, the Guadalupan seer (34).
Concerning the Spanish and European sources in general
The 16th-century documents of “Spanish provenance” in favor of Guadalupe are numerous; but here too we meet the same problems of reading as with the documents of Indian or Mestizo provenance written in Nahuatl or in Spanish.
Most of the documents presented in support of the Guadalupan event belong to the second half of the 16th century, and they grow ever more numerous down to our own day. Frequently these documents refer directly or indirectly to the cult rendered to the Virgin of Guadalupe in the chapel dedicated to her on the slopes of the hill of Tepeyac on the outskirts of Mexico City. Such sources do not always refer to the direct fact of the apparitions; sometimes they are circumstantial documents in which “Guadalupe” is recalled in passing; at other times these documents have as their object donations or acts of Guadalupan devotion; at still others they refer to juridical questions relating to the shrine of Guadalupe or to controversies connected with the apparitions and with the cult. In some of them a reference to the apparitions or to the seer Juan Diego does not always appear clearly. Here too the origin, the addressee, the context, and the purpose of the document must be studied in order to understand its intent and scope. In fact, some of these documents do not have the Guadalupan theme as their direct purpose but rather other questions; yet the fact of a “Guadalupan” affirmation in a document whose direct object is not “Guadalupe,” “Juan Diego,” or the apparitions gives them all the greater value. In the aforementioned work “El encuentro de la Virgen de Guadalupe y Juan Diego,” “Guadalupan” documents have been presented and analyzed, all belonging to the period running from the middle of the 16th century (from about 1555 onward) up to 1630: 9 testaments; 2 documents relating to donations; 2 of a juridical character (controversies); 11 Guadalupan references in chronicles of the period, some of special value (35); the Actas de Cabildo between 1568 and 1569; the so-called Uppsala map; some early iconographic testimonies (36); petitions for indulgences and privileges; concessions of graces on the part of the Holy See from Gregory XIII onward; documents showing the importance of the shrine of Guadalupe in the viceroyalty of New Spain; and the testimonies of the Jesuits concerning Holy Mary of Guadalupe. New documents, the fruit of archival research, are enriching the studies on the historicity of Guadalupe and of Juan Diego. Among them should be highlighted the documents found in the archive of the former “Convento del Corpus Christi” of Mexico City, which refer to certain legal proofs of “purity of blood” and descent from caciques of two candidates for the monastic life. These documents, still unpublished in their entirety, have been the point of departure for the investigation of Juan Diego’s genealogy (37). Research in another archive until recently unknown to investigators, that of the former Dominican convent of Chimalhuacán (founded in 1529), has resulted in the discovery of important material relating to the first years of the conquest and to some of its protagonists, both Indian and Spanish. In this material there appears the cultural and family setting of Juan Diego, with close ties to the site of the convent and to the foundation of the convent itself (38). The “Spanish” documentation grows from the end of the 16th century onward in documents of very diverse kinds.
This wealth of sources does not prevent us from raising certain problems, such as the lack of known documents earlier than 1548, that is, belonging to the first two decades immediately following 1531, the date which tradition and the rest of the documents assign to the Guadalupan event: do documents from these first 20 years exist, still lost in archives or libraries? The anti-apparitionists wield this documentary “silence” as their strongest argument, while the apparitionists offer various hypotheses to explain it. In any case, the juridical principle that “silence” neither affirms nor denies anything ought to be applied here. The question remains open (39).
The “Spanish or European” sources grow from the time of the second archbishop of Mexico, the Dominican Alonso de Montúfar (from 1554 to 1573). The Guadalupanism of the Mexican archbishops from Montúfar onward is beyond dispute. Throughout the 17th century, “Guadalupe” becomes ever more closely bound up with the Mexican Catholic conscience. The Catholic religious experience undoubtedly constitutes the strongest basis of Mexican national Catholic identity. In this judgment most Guadalupan authors, apparitionist and anti-apparitionist alike, concur. As one author writes: “In sociocultural terms, the veneration of the Virgin of Guadalupe allowed the natives, thanks to the particular circumstances of her apparition to a poor Indian, the vindication of their claims to respect and recognition within colonial society and of their share in the hope of salvation […] The Virgin of Guadalupe was the property neither of the conquistadors nor of the Indians; she became a decisive element in the long process of formation of a Mestizo Mexican culture, markedly distanced from the Hispanic world from which she came. Her double Hispano-Indian origin reflected the sociocultural disposition of the Mestizos, and even of the Creoles, in New Spain…” (40).
In the second half of the 16th century, and with greater force throughout the 17th, the Mexican Guadalupe was carried by the missionary friars and by the Spanish settlers across the geography of present-day Latin America: from the north of Mexico to Santa Fe in Argentina (of which she is patroness), passing through Guatemala, Peru, etc.
Some conclusions and a reflection based on the data of this history
The results of the examination of the sources show a convergence on the essentials:
1. That at the beginnings of the Spanish presence in Mexico, and precisely in the valley of Anáhuac, after a dramatic conquest and after painful divisions and confrontations within the “Nahuatl” political world, in a place of deep significance for the indigenous world, on the hill of Tepeyac, a hermitage dedicated to the Virgin Mary was at once erected under the name of Guadalupe, which coincides with the Guadalupe of Spain only in name (41).
2. That with incredible force the hermitage of Guadalupe became a focal point of devotional attraction, the sign of a new religious history and of an encounter between two worlds until then locked in dramatic opposition (42).
3. Around the primitive hermitage there developed a growing “devotio,” on the part of Indians as well as of Spaniards, Creoles, and Mestizos, which no one—not even the influential mendicant missionary friars—was able to restrain. This “devotio” became the point of convergence of the different groups, “the common home of all,” who recognized in Mary, the “Mother of Him through whom one lives” (as the “Nican Mopohua” calls her), the Mother of all.
4. This is progressively indicated by the sources: with greater force by the indigenous ones and progressively by the Spanish ones. The indigenous sources speak very early of the apparitions and point clearly to the Indian Juan Diego; the Spanish ones are slower at first in their references to Juan Diego and place greater emphasis on the center of the event, which is the mediation of the Virgin Mary.
5. Among the sources, oral tradition among the natives occupies a privileged place (43).
6. The sources—oral, written, representational (paintings, sculptures…), and archaeological—show how a growing attention and “devotio” developed around the Guadalupan event, to which is intimately linked the popular veneration of the seer Blessed Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, regarded as the “ambassador of the Virgin Mary.” The iconographic representations of the apparitions and of Juan Diego follow precise canons which we find in the first indigenous codices of the second half of the 1500s and in some prints of the early 1600s. We often see Juan Diego depicted with the halo of a saint; in the indigenous codices he is presented with the signs reserved for the sacred; among these paintings the fresco of the Franciscan convent of “Ozumba” (State of Mexico), from the first years of the 17th century, stands out; in it the history of the first evangelization of Mexico is represented, and in it can be seen the apparition of the Virgin to Juan Diego at Tepeyac. The doubt remains whether the part referring to Guadalupe may be an addition later than the rest. This, however, does not detract from the value of the testimony. It should also be emphasized that the mural is found in the outer portico of one of the oldest Franciscan convents and that in its conventual church one of the altars was dedicated in the 17th century to the Virgin of Guadalupe.
7. In the places linked to the life of Juan Diego a living memory has been preserved among the natives, from as early as the 16th century, with growing signs of veneration. On the spot where tradition said his birthplace stood, a church was erected in honor of the Virgin. Archaeological excavations have confirmed the existence of an Indian house of the late 15th or early 16th century beneath the church and in its immediate surroundings. Another significant fact, already attested in the 17th century by a document of the period, is that it was very common among the Indians of the area to baptize their children with that compound name (not very common elsewhere). The fact that his tomb has not yet been found should cause no astonishment, inasmuch as many burial places, including those of important figures, both Indian and Spanish (conquistadors, bishops, and missionaries), frequently remain anonymous (44). Archaeological excavations are currently being carried out next to the old Indian “chapel” at Guadalupe; this chapel was built in the first years of the 1600s and is distinct from the “hermitage” or church of the Virgin of Guadalupe; in that place some burials were found. It appears also that a “chapel” was erected on the spot where the little house of Juan Diego stood at Tepeyac, not far from the hermitage of the Virgin. Tradition, which was already being set down in writing by the mid-17th century, relates that Juan Diego withdrew to the “hermitage.” Such a thing is normal in the Christian tradition, but it was also normal in the Mexican indigenous one. Many Mexican princes and common people, when they grew old and no longer had the strength to fight in the wars, considered it a great honor to withdraw to serve in the temples of their religion, performing even the humblest services. Some continued this tradition after baptism, withdrawing to serve churches and convents. They often call themselves “poor ones,” “mazehualtzin”; Juan Diego calls himself by this name in some indigenous documents. A well-known typical case is that of Don Fernando Cortés Ixtlilxóchitl, cacique of Texcoco, who helped Cortés in the conquest and who withdrew to live in service at the church of a convent. He later withdrew to Toluca. It also appears well founded that Juan Diego stayed at the convent of San Vicente Ferrer of Chimalhuacán, as is recorded in some archival documents. In an inventory of the last decade of the 18th century or the first of the 19th, preserved in that archive, it is stated that until shortly before, a fresco or mural had been preserved, painted on the Gospel side of the presbytery of the conventual church, narrating his Christian conversion; that mural was effaced in a regrettable restructuring of the church carried out under one of the parish priests of the late 18th and early 19th century. According to some experts of the INAH, the fresco may still lie beneath the white plaster.
8. The question of the social origins of Juan Diego is still open. He was indeed a poor Indian in the sociological sense. The confusion stems from the interpretation of the translation of the “Nican Mopohua” by Becerra Tanco (17th century). In it Juan Diego is presented as “macehualtzintli icnotlapatzintli,” which Becerra Tanco translates as “a plebeian and poor Indian, humble and guileless.” On the other hand, the expression reflects a courteous, almost “protocolary” language in the linguistic usage of Indian notables, as can be seen in other indigenous documents. The expression could therefore be translated: “a little Indian, a poor man of the people,” or “an Indian, a poor little noble” (45).
9. The Franciscans at first remained rather hostile to the acceptance of the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe; the motives for this hostility must be read in the light of their well-known missionary methodology with regard to the indigenous cultural and religious world and of their fear of an understandable syncretism (46).
10. The “Informaciones de 1666” is one of the most reliable documents—by reason of its juridical nature, its objective, its addressee, and the quality of its witnesses, above all Indians—giving us abundant information, transmitted by their oral tradition, concerning the Guadalupan event and their countryman Juan Diego (47).
The profound Marian sense of the Spanish spirituality that reached Mexico through the Spanish conquistadors and missionaries is undeniable. Undeniable, too, is the devotion of many of them to the Virgin of Guadalupe of Extremadura, in Spain. Many of the conquistadors and missionaries of the first hour came from that Spanish region. That devotion accompanied them. The Virgin “belongs” to the epic history of the Spanish reconquest; frequently, in the military conquest of the New World and in its “spiritual conquest”—to use the title of Robert Ricard’s well-known book (48)—this mentality accompanies them, showing itself in devotions and iconographies. In this sense Richard Nebel’s judgment holds good, that the Virgin “was the guarantor of their victories, just as she had been in Spain” (49). The same author asks: “why then does the Virgin also become a central figure of the religious cosmos of the conquered?” Was it only a “compensatory” or “substitutive” function, as the author cited suggests? Nebel affirms that “in sociocultural terms, the veneration of the Virgin of Guadalupe allowed the natives, thanks to the particular circumstances of her apparition to a poor Indian, the vindication of their claims to respect and recognition within colonial society and of their share in the hope of salvation” (50). In our judgment, and in the light of the historical documentation and of religious anthropology, the newly baptized Indians venerated, under the advocation of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the historical person of Mary of Nazareth, Mother of Jesus, the Word Incarnate in her womb (as the iconography of the Guadalupan “ayate” and the precise indications of the indigenous documents clearly show), and not simply the transposition of a symbol that could have carried an ambiguous meaning from its very beginnings (51).
For the oldest Guadalupan documents at our disposal, Guadalupe is not a simple substitution; it was a historical event, and perceived as such. That historicity fills with content a symbol which makes reasonable a Marian practice and devotion of the magnitude of Guadalupe. The Guadalupan event, therefore, undoubtedly affirms the catholicity of the Christian proclamation and its capacity for inculturation as carried out by the missionaries.
The culture of a people—that is, the balance-sheet of its history—is the lived expression of what that people has built. Many ecclesiastical documents of the popes, from Leo XIII onward, and of the Latin American bishops (from the Latin American Plenary Council of 1899 and throughout the 20th century) speak of “Catholicism” as a characteristic trait of the Latin American people: “In our peoples, the Gospel has been proclaimed, presenting the Virgin Mary as its highest realization [of the Church as an instrument of communion, Puebla nn. 280-281]. From the beginnings—in her apparition and advocation of Guadalupe—Mary constituted the great sign, with a maternal and merciful countenance, of the closeness of the Father and of Christ, with whom she invites us to enter into communion. Mary was also the voice that urged union among men and among peoples. Like that of Guadalupe, the other Marian shrines of the continent are signs of the encounter between the faith of the Church and Latin American history” (52). “Mother and educator of the nascent Latin American people, in Holy Mary of Guadalupe, through Blessed Juan Diego, a great example of perfectly inculturated Evangelization is offered” (John Paul II, Inaugural Address, 24) (53).
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NOTES
(1) Cf. the results of the recent historical research on the subject in: Fidel González Fernández, Eduardo Chávez Sánchez, José Luis Guerrero Rosado, “El encuentro de la Virgen de Guadalupe y Juan Diego,” Editorial Porrúa, Mexico 1999, 564 pp. ISBN 970-07-1886-7.
(2) III GENERAL CONFERENCE OF THE LATIN AMERICAN EPISCOPATE, “Documentos de Puebla,” n. 282; n. 446; “it luminously symbolizes the Gospel incarnated in our peoples”: IV GENERAL CONFERENCE OF THE LATIN AMERICAN EPISCOPATE, “Documentos de Santo Domingo,” n. 15.
(3) JUAN BAUTISTA MUÑOZ, “Memoria sobre las Apariciones y el Culto de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de México,” in ERNESTO DE LA TORRE VILLAR and RAMIRO NAVARRO DE ANDA, “Testimonios Históricos Guadalupanos,” Ed. FCE, Mexico 1982, p. 692: a dissertation delivered before the Academy of History, which received him as a member on April 18, 1794; in it, it was maintained for the first time that the Guadalupan Event lacked historical foundation, on the strength of the argument that has been repeated ever since: the silence of those who ought to have spoken. Muñoz was unaware of the greater part of the Guadalupan documents. Fray Servando Teresa de Mier was at that time confined in a convent in Burgos. This eccentric Dominican friar had preached in Mexico a Guadalupan sermon full of absurdities, such as the identification, on the part of ancient Mexica mythology, of mythical figures or gods—such as the divinized Quetzalcóatl with Saint Thomas, or Jesus Christ with Huitzilopochtli—or the claim that the image of the Virgin Mary had been painted on the cloak of Saint Thomas, and other gems of the same sort. All this had earned him a trial by the Inquisition and his banishment to Spain. The friar would come into contact with Muñoz and would show himself anti-Guadalupan, involving himself in the political life of the Mexican insurgency and changing his opinion according to how the winds blew. On the complex, confused, and tangled personality of the friar, with frequent lies in his writings (he went so far as to write that he had been made Nuncio of the Pope in the new States of Mexico and America, and Archbishop): cf. ALFONSO JUNCO, “El increíble fray Servando. Psicología y Epistolario,” Ed. Jus (=Col. Figuras y episodios de la historia de México, N. 66), Mexico 1959. Joaquín García Icazbalceta was a great scholar, but he also professed a great antipathy toward the Indians: in 1883 the archbishop of Mexico, Pelagio Labastida, asked him for his opinion on Guadalupe, and he thus wrote a famous letter in which he shows himself doubtful about Guadalupe: JOAQUIN GARCIA ICAZBALCETA, “Carta acerca del origen de la imagen de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de México,” published by order of the archbishop of Mexico, Pelagio Antonio de Labastida y Dávalos, Mexico 1896. On the history of anti-apparitionist historiography cf. F. GONZALEZ FERNANDEZ, E. CHAVEZ SANCHEZ, J. L. GUERRERO ROSADO, “El encuentro de la Virgen de Guadalupe y Juan Diego,” pp. 3-25. Hereafter cited as: “El encuentro…”.
(4) In 1995 there appeared the work of STAFFORD POOLE, “Our Lady of Guadalupe. The Origins and Sources of a Mexican National Symbol, 1531-1797,” The University of Arizona Press, Tucson & London 1995. The author maintains, as the title already indicates, the symbolic, religious, and national origin of Guadalupe as an instrument of “Criollismo,” from the mid-17th century onward, for imposing its own assertion of power over against the peninsular Spaniards and for giving a religious foundation, in the Catholic context of the time, to a “Mexicanness” which in time would issue in Independence. Hence, for him, neither the apparitions nor Juan Diego would have any historical basis; they would be mere fabricated symbols which, with the passing of time, would impose themselves upon Mexican devotion and public opinion as historical fact. The work undoubtedly contains many valid elements. Nevertheless, the author’s thesis starts from a series of theses stated a priori, which he attempts to demonstrate in a forced manner, excluding every contrary document or interpreting it in a partial way.
(5) Among these authors is Joaquín García Icazbalceta, the well-known 19th-century Mexican scholar, who did not close himself off to the fact itself: “Carta acerca del origen de la imagen de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de México, publicada por orden del arzobispo de México, Pelagio Antonio de Labastida y Dávalos,” Mexico 1896. His unfavorable sentiments toward the indigenous world are well known, as are the polemics stirred up by his letter and the doubts and contradictions concerning certain aspects of its publication. Cf. in “El encuentro,” pp. 10-12.
(6) Cf. RICHARD NEBEL, “Santa María Tonantzin Virgen de Guadalupe. Continuidad y transformación religiosa en México,” translated from the German by Fr. Dr. Carlos Warnholtz Bustillos, archpriest of the Insigne y Nacional Basílica de Guadalupe, with the collaboration of Mrs. Irma Ochoa de Nebel, Fondo de Cultura Económica, first Spanish edition 1995; first reprint 1996; original title: “Santa María Tonantzin de Guadalupe – Religiöse Kontinuität und Transformation in Mexiko,” Neue Zeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft, 1992. The work appeared in German in 1992; cf. also: RICHARD NEBEL, “Nican Mopohua. Cosmovisión Indígena e Inculturación cristiana,” in HANS-JÜRGEN PRIEN (ed.), “Religiosidad e Historiografía. La irrupción del pluralismo religioso en América y su elaboración metódica en la historiografía,” Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert, – Madrid: Iberoamericana, 1998.
(7) But the matter had been years in preparation, with certain investigations of the Mexican ecclesiastical authority sent to the Holy See, as is shown by a document dated 1658 and preserved in the Vatican Apostolic Library, Chigi collection: F IV 96 ff 16, entitled: “Historica narratio… imaginis SS Virginis Mariae vulgo de Guadalupe in Indiis nuncupatae quae Mexici, mirabili modo… anno 1531 apparuit DD fr Joanni de Zumarraga.” On the course of those Informaciones cf. CONGREGATIO PRO CAUSIS SANCTORUM, 184, “Mexicana Canonizationis Servi Dei Ioannis Didaci Cuauhtlatoatzin Viri Laici (1474-1548), Positio super fama sanctitatis, virtutibus, et cultu ab immemorabili praestito ex officio concinnata,” Romae 1989, Doc. IX.
(8) “Positio,” Doc. X, 1.
(9) “Positio,” Doc. XI, 5.
(10) “Positio,” Doc. XII, 9.
(11) “Positio,” Doc. XII, 8.
(12) This documentation presented by the Mexican bishops remains entirely unpublished, deposited in the archive of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints (Vatican).
(13) John Paul II would grant this patronage, already conceded in part, and would declare December 12 a liturgical “feast,” in the Basilica of Guadalupe on the occasion of the presentation of the Final Document of the Special Synod of Bishops for America, in January 1999.
(14) Cf. “Positio,” Doc. XIII, 119. The Congregation for the Causes of Saints informed the then archbishop of Mexico, Cardinal Ernesto Corripio Ahumada, of the steps necessary to that end on June 8, 1982: Letter of the S. Congregation for the Causes of Saints to Cardinal Ernesto Corripio Ahumada, June 8, 1982, prot. N. 1408-3/1982. A historical commission was then appointed, which prepared the material required in such cases. On January 19, 1984, a postulator was named in Rome, and the ordinary canonical process required in such cases was carried forward from January 7, 1984, to March 23, 1986. The Roman Congregation for the Causes of Saints approved the steps taken on April 7, 1986. The first postulator of the Cause was Fr. Antonio Cairoli O.F.M., who after his death would be replaced by Fr. Paolo Molinari S.J. in 1989. As this was an eminently historical cause, the work was carried out in that field: cf. Letter of the S. Congregation for the Causes of Saints to Cardinal Ernesto Corripio Ahumada, June 8, 1982, prot. N. 1408-3/1982, pp. XVI-XXIV; XIX. Thus was reached the preparation of a “Positio” with the elements necessary to demonstrate the historicity of the Servant of God Juan Diego, his “reputation for holiness,” and his ecclesial fruitfulness. This “Positio” undoubtedly has the merit of having offered important documents to that end; nevertheless, it left certain problems of a historical character unresolved and presented numerous doubts from the standpoint of methodology and of historical criticism, as some historian consultors pointed out (cf. “Relatio et Vota” of the historian consultors of January 30, 1990, and of the theologian consultors of March 30, 1990).
(15) It appointed as president of the Historical Commission Fr. Fidel González Fernández mccj, professor of Ecclesiastical History at the Pontifical Urbaniana and Gregorian Universities, consultor of the same Vatican Congregation and one of the most critical consultors of the old “Positio.” This Commission, whose members included, among others, the Mexican historian Dr. Eduardo Chávez Sánchez and the well-known Guadalupan scholar Lic. José Luis Guerrero Rosado, requested the cooperation of some 30 researchers of various nationalities, who contributed notably with their data to the study of the problems. Fr. F. González presented the results at an Extraordinary Congress held at the Vatican Dicastery for the Saints on October 28, 1998, achieving a positive outcome in the resolution of the doubts raised concerning the historical problems.
(16) Cf. “El encuentro,” pp. 283-297.
(17) We have seen the original letter in the Archive of Chimalhuacán Chalco, State of Mexico, within a body of documentation known as the Codex Teresa Franco, in honor of the researcher of the INAH (Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico) responsible for the reorganization and restoration of that archive, entirely unknown to the community of researchers until a few years ago. Among the restorers, the work of Lic. Augusto Vallejo de Villar stands out; it was he who introduced us to the Archive and its documentation. We have transcribed that letter in the work “El encuentro,” pp. 283-284. As far as we know, this is the first time it has been made public.
(18) Cf. FRAY BERNARDINO DE SAHAGUN, “Historia general de las Cosas de la Nueva España,” Ed. Porrúa (=Col. “Sepan Cuántos…” N. 300), Mexico 1982, pp. 18-19; FRAY GERONIMO DE MENDIETA, “Historia Eclesiástica Indiana,” Ed. Porrúa (=Col. Biblioteca Porrúa N. 46), Mexico 1980, p. 630; it is reproduced literally also by FRAY JUAN DE TORQUEMADA, “Monarquía Indiana,” Ed. Porrúa (=Col. Biblioteca Porrúa N. 41, 42 and 43), introduction by León Portilla, Mexico 1986, 3 vols., T. III, p. 449; other causes of the scarcity of archival sources will be indicated in the course of this essay: cf. some data in “El encuentro,” pp. 284-285: such as thefts, fires (we recall that of the Archive of the Cabildo of Mexico City in 1692), the legislation on paper, its recycling for commercial uses, etc.
(19) Cf. in ANGEL MARIA GARIBAY K., “Fray Juan de Zumárraga y Juan Diego – Elogio Fúnebre,” Ed. Bajo el signo de “ábside,” Mexico 1949, pp. 11-14.
(20) LUIS BECERRA TANCO, “Origen milagroso del Santuario de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe,” in ERNESTO DE LA TORRE VILLAR and RAMIRO NAVARRO DE ANDA, “Testimonios históricos guadalupanos,” Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico 1982, pp. 323-326.
(21) FRAY DIEGO DURAN, “Historia de las Indias de la Nueva España e Islas de Tierra Firme,” Ed. Porrúa (=Colección Biblioteca Porrúa N. 36 and 37), Mexico 1967, 2 vols.: T. I, p. 6. Testimonies abound concerning the destruction of many indigenous antiquities and codices. A list of some of these testimonies may be seen in ROBERT RICARD, “La conquista espiritual de México,” Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico, ed. of 1986, pp. 106-108; the testimonies of Sahagún, Durán, Mendieta, Dávila Padilla, and Burgoa, among others, are cited.
(22) MIGUEL LEON PORTILLA, “El destino de la palabra. De la oralidad y los glifos mesoamericanos a la escritura alfabética,” Ed. Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico 1996, pp. 19-71.
(23) “El encuentro,” pp. 143-189.
(24) Cf. “El encuentro,” pp. 143-189. Cf. the critical bibliography on this source in the work cited. In addition, J. L. GUERRERO, “El Nican Mopohua. Un intento de exégesis,” Universidad Pontificia de México, 2 vols., 1998: Editorial Realidad, Teoría y Práctica, Cuautitlán, State of Mexico 1998.
(25) Richard Karl NEBEL, “Nican Mopohua. Cosmovisión indígena e inculturación cristiana,” 238.
(26) NEBEL, Ibidem, 236.
(27) NEBEL, Ibidem, 238.
(28) NEBEL, Ibidem, 239.
(29) NEBEL, Ibidem, 240.
(30) In this regard, the work we consider most important on the subject is the one already cited by the well-known Guadalupan scholar J. L. GUERRERO, “El Nican Mopohua. Un intento de exégesis,” Universidad Pontificia de México, 2 vols., 1998.
(31) Antonio Valeriano (1520-1606), author of the “Nican Mopohua,” was an Indian of pure Tecpanec stock. The Mexican ecclesiastical historian, the Jesuit Fr. Cuevas, says that he was a nephew of the emperor Moctezuma and that he was born in 1520 in Azcapotzalco, a town very close to Tepeyac, though he lived in Mexico City from 1526. At the age of 13 he entered the college of Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco, founded by Zumárraga, first bishop of Mexico, and inaugurated in 1533, Valeriano thus being one of its founding students. Among his Latinist companions, as Sahagún calls them, and “founders,” the following stand out: Martín Jacobita, of Cuauhtitlán [the probable birthplace of Juan Diego] and a friend of Valeriano; Pedro de San Buenaventura, of Tlatilulco; Andrés Leonardo. From them came, among other works: the Codex Chimalpopoca; the Anales de Cuauhtitlán; the Anales, the Hymns of the gods, the Account of the Apparitions of the Virgin of Guadalupe… Antonio Valeriano was governor of Azcapotzalco for 35 years. A highly gifted person, he was the first graduate in Latin and Greek. His father was a contemporary of Juan Diego, and he himself was one as well [so that he could hear the Guadalupan story from his lips: he was 11 years old in 1531, the year of the apparitions, and 28 in 1548, the year of Juan Diego’s death]. He acquired great authority among Indians and Spaniards as an honest and learned man, and Bishop Fuenleal said of him that “he was so able and capable that he far surpassed the Spaniards.” Sahagún describes him as “the principal and wisest one” (among the students of that school). He was also honored with honors and offices by the King of Spain, Philip II. He wrote his account of Guadalupe while many of the witnesses of the event were still living; his signature appears in the Guadalupan Codex “Escalada.” Cf. “Enciclopedia Guadalupana,” directed by Xavier Escalada, Mexico 1995: entry “Antonio Valeriano,” pp. 49-50.
(32) NEBEL, Ibidem, 244.
(33) NEBEL, Ibidem, 245.
(34) “El encuentro,” pp. 329-352.
(35) Notable is a kind of diary from 1619 of the nun Ana de Cristo, companion of the first nun to found a convent in the Philippine Islands, Jerónima de la Asunción: cf. in “El encuentro,” p. 399.
(36) Such as the Virgin of Echave of 1606, the mural of the convent of Ozumba from the beginning of the 17th century, and the engraving of Stradanus of 1622: cf. “El encuentro,” pp. 395-400.
(37) The studies on the genealogy of the Indian seer had not yet been published at the time these notes were written.
(38) The archive, today the property of the parish of San Vicente Ferrer of Chimalhuacán, was reorganized and restored by members of the INAH [Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia of Mexico]. Among the Guadalupan documents the following stand out: an unpublished Latin poem on Mary of Guadalupe [Ramo Album Códice], some Guadalupan sermons, correspondence of the 18th-century Guadalupan researcher and scholar Boturini, and other indirect Guadalupan documents from the earliest period of the convent, which confirm various reports and give us a basis for the reconstruction of the genealogy and for studies on the origins of Juan Diego.
(39) We have addressed the problem in “El encuentro,” pp. 235-277, offering various hypotheses. One aspect that could also help to explain the lack of many archival documents, or the archival gaps of this period, is the so-called “paper crisis” that afflicted New Spain for a long time, owing to the prohibitionist policy of the Crown, and which made it a normal practice to reuse paper already used—even archival documents—for new purposes, whether in commerce or in writing.
(40) NEBEL, Ibidem, 237-238: “What had formerly been the banner of the Spanish conquistadors was turned against them in the wars of independence. ‘Long live the Virgin of Guadalupe and death to the gachupines!’ was one of the battle cries of the rebel hosts. Thus the Virgin became a symbol of the continuity of life and of the cultures in Mexico. She represents a culminating point of the religious and creative forces of the Mexican nation. It is therefore not surprising that she should have been a rallying point for social, cultural, religious, and political movements which, from as early as the 17th century, favored to a considerable degree both her evolution toward independence from Spain, the mother country, and the emergence of a ‘Mexican’ national consciousness.”
(41) On the Mexican origins of this Extremaduran-Spanish name given to the Mexican Virgin there are divergent theories: from those who maintain that it was the Castilian corruption of an indigenous name, to the more common theory that the name was explicitly chosen (as appears already in the “Nican Mopohua”) in order to make clear that this was the Virgin Mary, venerated by the newly arrived Spaniards (a good part of them Extremadurans) under that advocation so dear to them, and not the representation of a pre-Hispanic cult: cf. J. L. GUERRERO, “El Nican Mopohua. Un intento de exégesis,” vol. II, pp. 585-589.
(42) Such an opposition, humanly irreconcilable, was acknowledged by: FRAY TORIBIO DE BENAVENTE MOTOLINIA, “Memoriales…,” p. 31.
(43) Cf. the example of the Totonac tradition (Mexico), gathered by the scholar Fr. Ismael Olmedo, in “El encuentro,” pp. 289-291.
(44) VICENTE DE PAULA ANDRADE, “Estudio Histórico sobre la Leyenda Guadalupana,” 1908, in “Positio,” I, pp. 173-177.
(45) J. L. GUERRERO, “El Nican Mopohua. Un intento de exégesis,” Mexico 1996, 101405, 117.
(46) Among the many examples that could be given, it suffices to recall the iconoclastic attitude of Fray Diego de Landa, Franciscan provincial, missionary, and bishop of Yucatán (d. 1579), a great defender of the Indians and at the same time a highly controversial figure. He was one of the promoters in Yucatán of the proceedings against idolatrous natives, ordering also the destruction of Mayan codices, books, and sculptures in order to blot out all idolatry: cf. LOPETEGUI, s.j. – ZUBILLAGA, s.j., “Historia de la Iglesia en la América española. Desde el descubrimiento hasta comienzos del siglo XIX,” BAC, Madrid 1965, pp. 498-499.
(47) The intention of initiating a true canonical process of beatification in the present-day sense begins to make headway at the end of the 17th century. The efforts of the Guadalupanist Boturini in that direction in the mid-18th century rest on the basis of a popular “fama sanctitatis” of Juan Diego, especially among the Indian population but also among the Spanish-Creole one. This reputation appears to antedate the well-known decrees of Urban VIII on the cult of the saints (1634). Nevertheless, those provisions helped cautiously to suspend explicit forms of cult, though without ever succeeding in eradicating it from the popular mind, as the numerous documents from the second half of the 17th century onward demonstrate.
(48) ROBERT RICARD, “La conquista espiritual de México,” Spanish trans. FCE, Mexico 1986.
(49) NEBEL, Ibidem, 237.
(50) NEBEL, Ibidem, 237.
(51) The title of Richard NEBEL’s work, “Santa María Tonantzin. Virgen de Guadalupe. Transformación y continuidad religiosa en México,” Mexico 1995, maintains this ambiguous position.
(52) III GENERAL CONFERENCE OF THE LATIN AMERICAN EPISCOPATE, “Documentos de Puebla,” n. 282; n. 446; “it luminously symbolizes the Gospel incarnated in our peoples.”
(53) GENERAL CONFERENCE OF THE LATIN AMERICAN EPISCOPATE, “Documentos de Santo Domingo,” n. 15.
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