Our Lady of Guadalupe:

Crushing the Snake

The Catholic Church asserts, in no uncertain terms, that in 1531 the Virgin Mary appeared and spoke to a poor native in present-day Mexico City named Juan Diego (now a Saint). As proof, it is claimed that her image suddenly and inexplicably appeared on his burlap cloak (tilma). She is now known as Our Lady of Guadalupe.

To understand the significance of Our Lady of Guadalupe we need to travel to Mexico in the early 1500’s.

The Aztecs and the culture of death

When Hernán Cortés and his band landed in Central America in 1519, they encountered a culture which was truly demonic.

The stone serpent was the center of the primary Aztec temple where massive human sacrifices were carried out. The temple was enclosed by a serpentine wall. The victims would be sacrificed by laying them on their back on the altar at the top of the temple. The Aztec priest would push his dagger into the chest of the conscious victim and extract the beating heart. The body would then be discarded by throwing it down the side of the temple where it would slither down the length of the steps in a grotesque display of evil. The flesh of the victims would be consumed. These activities occurred on such a massive scale that when the conquistadores journeyed inland they came across one wall built of human skulls and stone. The skulls were thought to harbor the soul and by so constructing the wall the residual power within the skulls would strengthen it. In one wall there were over 100,000 skulls.

The temples were covered with representations of snakes and as the beating hearts were lifted up and carried away drummers would beat on snakeskin drums. A principle god was the feathered serpent, along with the sun god and the moon god. Every day was a struggle between the two. The moon god was trying to keep the sun god from dispelling the night as it rose from the east every morning because it was trying to bathe the earth in eternal blackness. The jaguar was the symbol of the night predator and because of its powers was worshipped. The sun god was aided by the eagle and together they were in constant battle against the moon god and its allies. As the moon god was defeated it would enter phases such as the crescent moon, thereby showing that the sun god was once again dismembering it. But the sun god and the eagle needed help. That assistance would come from the hearts and souls of the sacrificial victims which would be released to and strengthen the eagle as he vied against the jaguar, and thus help to ensure the dawning of a new day. This meant they needed a lot of sacrifices. In one festival alone in 1487 more than 80,000 were sacrificed. Over 1,000 would fall each day to the sacrificial priest. Twenty percent of the Aztec children would be sacrificed.

This was how they ensured the continuation of the earth and life; their function was to postpone the final day of reckoning when the sun god, if defeated, would remain in the earth and darkness would reign. The Aztecs believed the earth was flat and that the sun would emerge from mother earth every morning. Mother earth was made of snakes and she gave birth to the sun. The one that assisted the sun as it rose each morning was Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent. He was the one who gave them life.

The Mayans had their own system of sacrifices. While less extensive than the Aztec, their sacrifices were also centered on their version of the feathered serpent, who they called Kukulkan.

In 1521, with this panorama of human misery and evil gods confronting them, Cortes made his way into Mexico City and confronted Montezuma, the Aztec leader. Montezuma had long expected the arrival of a white king from the east because, according to Central American legend, he had visited them centuries before, taught arts and crafts and had actively introduced the concept that God didn’t require human sacrifices. He sailed off to the east and said he would return some day. Well, here he was, some 500 years later.

Montezuma sacrificed five people and offered their flesh to Cortes.

Cortes spent the next two years rounding up help from other Indian tribes. He finally laid a siege against Mexico City and Montezuma and the Aztecs were defeated.

The Spaniards abuse

The Spanish put a halt to the sacrifices, but then comes evidence of what happens when too much unchecked power falls into the hands of the wrong people. They started abusing the locals, even pressing them into slavery. The efforts of the padres to convert were meeting a solid wall of resistance. The Christian god was perceived as heartless and unjust as theirs.

The tyranny of the Spanish rulers became so bad that Bishop Zumárraga put Mexico City under interdict. This meant that the sacraments could no longer be administered except on the death bed. The situation was tense and an uprising seemed imminent.

We cannot emphasize enough the horror that the Spanish found in 1521. Cortés came and liberated the natives from their slavery to Satan, but very few converted to Catholicism in the first decade of Spanish rule because of the corruption of the Spanish rulers and the Aztec’s attachment to polygamy and other pagan practices. Moreover, there was a real concern that the conversions were shallow and, given the right circumstances, the natives could easily revert to their former ways, and reinstate worship of their gods.

The Blessed Virgin appears

The above discussion is well settled and free of controversy. Now we enter the arena of dispute. What follows is a condensation of the traditional narrative surrounding the claimed appearance by Mary, the mother of Jesus. I think it can be safely said that those who believe the image to be a regular painting would reject this narrative as being a fictitious account fabricated long after the claimed event – perhaps more than a hundred years later – to give the image divine credibility.

Juan de Zumárraga, Mexico’s first bishop, could do little to convert the Aztecs and he prayed to the Blessed Virgin for help on tending to the spiritual needs of his flock and the conversion of the natives. Then he asked her to acknowledge his prayers by sending him some Castilian roses.

The earliest and most widely published written account of the Guadalupe events is the Nican Mopohua, written in Nahuatl, the native language. It is believed to date from around 1550 (give or take ten years) and can easily be accessed on the internet.

All quotes are from the linked website.

On December 9, 1531, a simple 57-year-old convert with the Christian name of Juan Diego was on his six mile walk to Mass when he approached the hill known as Tepeyac. This was the hill of an Aztec goddess by the name of Tonantzin. He first heard beautiful music and when it stopped a woman’s voice was heard from the top of the hill saying, “Juan, Dearest Juan Diego!” When he arrived at the summit a young maiden was standing there.

“Her clothing was shining like the sun, as if it were sending out waves of light, and the stone, the crag on which she stood, seemed to be giving out rays; her radiance was like precious stones, it seemed like an exquisite bracelet (it seemed beautiful beyond anything else); the earth seemed to shine with the brilliance of a rainbow in the mist. And the mesquites and nopals and the other little plants that are generally up there seemed like emeralds. Their leaves seemed like turquoise. And their trunks, their thorns, their prickles, were shining like gold.”

 Then she spoke to him, identifying herself as the Ever-Virgin Holy Mary and asked that a church be built at that site so that she could bring the Lord to her children. She directed Diego to go to the bishop and tell him all that he had seen and heard.

He did so, and Bishop Juan de Zumárraga received him, heard him and didn’t believe him. Juan Diego returned to the hill where the Lady had appeared early in the morning. Mary appeared again, and Juan Diego told her that the Bishop did not believe him and for her to entrust this mission to someone of more importance. She replied that she had many messengers and servants, but she had chosen him to deliver this message and that through his intercession her message would be complied with. She told him to speak to the bishop again, “and carefully tell him again how I, personally, the Ever-Virgin Holy Mary, I, who am the Mother of God, am sending you.”

The next day he was able to see the Bishop again, who still did not believe him, told Juan Diego that a sign was necessary to show that Diego had truly seen the Blessed Virgin. Juan Diego returned to Mary and relayed what the Bishop had told him. She told him to return the next day and she would provide a sign so that the Bishop would believe.

On December 11th when Juan Diego was to carry a sign to the Bishop, he failed to return to the hill as instructed by Mary because when he had reached his home the night before, his uncle had become gravely ill. By nightfall, his uncle requested that early the next morning (December 12th) Diego summon a priest, to prepare him and hear his confession, because he was certain it was time for him to die, and that he would not arise or get well.

On December 12, 1531, before dawn, Juan Diego went to summon a priest; and as he approached the road which joins the slope to Tepeyac hilltop, he deliberately avoided his normal route so that he would not see the Lady. He did want to be delayed because his uncle was near death and needed a priest. When Diego rounded the hill he saw her descend from the top of the hill and that she was looking toward where they previously met. She approached him at the side and asked where he was going.

Diego was extremely contrite and told her of his uncle and how he was going to summon a priest to hear his uncle’s confession and prepare him for death. The Most Holy Virgin assured him that neither this illness nor any other harmful thing was cause for fear. She was his heavenly mother and would protect him. She told Juan Diego that his uncle would not die, and that he was already well.

And at that very moment his uncle became well, as he later found out.

The creation of the Tilma image

She then directed him to climb to the top of the hill and gather the diverse flowers that would be growing there.

“And when he reached the top, he was astonished by all of them, blooming, open, flowers of every kind, lovely and beautiful, when it still was not their season, because really that was the season in which the frost was very harsh. They were giving off an extremely soft fragrance; like precious pearls, as if filled with the dew of the night. Then he began to cut them, he gathered them all, he put them in the hollow of his tilma. The top of the little hill was certainly not a place in which any flowers grew; there are only plenty of rocks, thorns, spines, prickly pears and mesquite trees. And even though some little herbs or grasses might grow, it was then the month of December, in which the frost eats everything up and destroys it.”

 He brought the flowers to Our Lady, who then took them in her hands and returned them into the hollow of his tilma. She told him to open the tilma only in the presence of the bishop, telling him everything that happened. These flowers would be his requested sign “so that he will then do what lies within his responsibility so that my temple which I have asked him for will be made, will be raised.”

Juan Diego immediately went to see the Bishop. Again, after long delays and much skepticism he was finally admitted. Diego told the Bishop what had just happened and stood in front of him and opened the tilma. The flowers scattered on the floor and the imprinted image of the ever-virgin Holy Mary was revealed on the tilma. The Bishop believed and very soon thereafter a church was built as directed by the Lady.

Juan Diego’s uncle was instantly cured and in fact said that the Lady had appeared to him and told him that she should be known as the ever-virgin Holy Mary of Guadalupe.

Does the tilma and early history support this story?       

I know that here in the 21st century all this sounds pretty far-fetched and much like a successful Mexican/Catholic legend created to bring the natives under control. But, then, we have the tilma. If it can be shown to have characteristics which could not be the result of standard human artistry in the context of the time and age, we would have powerful evidence and reason to believe the hand of God as the artist. If on the other hand the tilma is nothing more than a very clever and beautifully composed portrait, then for hundreds of years the Mexican people and in fact all of Catholicism and much of Christianity may have been barking up the wrong tree.

The problem is that the evidence doesn’t appear to be conclusive one way or the other. Moreover, the issue is compounded by unfounded (or at least non-verifiable) claims by proponents of certain qualities of the tilma which, if true, would conclusively prove its divine origin. On the other hand, those that hold steadfastly to the notion that miracles are fictitious events have promulgated their share of misrepresentations. Our Lady of Guadalupe: Gilding the Lily provides clarification.

Some websites and references

• Nican Mopohua. Earliest written account of the appearances by Our Blessed Mother to Juan Diego.
• There are countless references to Guadalupe that can be accessed on the internet and through traditional print media. An excellent detailed, scholarly, and very readable history of Guadalupe is the beautifully written Historiography of the Apparition of Guadalupe, by Daniel J. Castellano.
• Appearances by Mary

Last modified September 9, 2019