Mary's Mantle
Mary's Mantle
The growing attention on the Virgin of Guadalupe in the United States and decolonizing circles in recent years has made me ponder the meaning of that attention. Many churches now strive to have her image and hold special masses or services on her feast day, December 12. Near my home, an unsightly Guadalupe plaza was created to draw the faithful. The aim seems to open up the U.S. Church to Mexican, Mexican American, and Latino expressions of faith. On the decolonizing side, the goal seems to be a return to worship of Mexica earth goddesses, Coatlicue, and Tonantzin, among other figures, in a revival of that spirituality. Mexica, pronounced Mesh-e kah, is what the Aztecs called themselves. However, these changes in devotion and practice often feel devoid of history and a deeper understanding of the context of her appearance and what that means to most Mexican people across the continent.
In Mexico, where many of the faithful believe that Mary the Mother of Jesus appeared in 1531, just ten years after the fall of Tenochtitlan, the Mexica capital, devotion to her has been steadfast for the better part of the last 500 years. The fall of that city was a brutal part of history but often poorly understood. It did mark a turning point, but it was not so much a triumph as the end of a ruthless siege. More than 200,000 Native soldiers with their Spanish leaders, about 500 to 1,000 men, surrounded the capital of the hated Mexica and slowly took it over. It was not glorious or romantic.
It was revenge for the taking of bodies to be used in sacrifice to Mexica gods and for the tributes imposed by that empire on conquered lands. Records detailing vassal state tributes and findings from Mexico City archaeological digs have corroborated those accounts. The skull rack or tzompantli dug up recently indicates the Mexica's thirst for power and control. They, too, were colonizers and bloody ones. They were as flawed as people in any other society. So, too, the Spanish and their allies.
The conquering Native and Spanish army cut off food and drinking water and choked off any support from the island capital. Starved, thirsty, and sick (decimated by smallpox), Tenochtitlan fell on August 13, 1521, after nearly two years of war. The piles of bodies, countless homes, and artifacts were burned, stolen, or destroyed in a fever of greed, conquest, and religious fervor. The temples were toppled, and many of their stones were used to erect the capital of a new empire.
The surrounding lake was slowly filled in, and the conquerors buried monuments and stunning stone sculptures of gods and other mythological figures. Some of the Native supporters of the Spanish would go on to fight with them in other parts of the region and the continent and would even fight for the conquest of the Philippines. Perhaps they thought they had secured a place of privilege and honor for their people. History says otherwise.
Were the Spanish any better than the Mexica, especially in light of the enslavement of Native peoples? The Spanish would not directly sacrifice people on a temple or to some god. However, they set up a system that would exploit people in service of the Spanish crown. It remained in place for about 300 years. We’ll never know the exact number of men, women, and children who died extracting gold and silver or other wealth and raw materials from the land in a system that created a perpetual pool of Native and mestizo slave labor. Human sacrifice didn’t end — it just transformed in practice and aim. The history of colonialism corroborates this.
Many detractors point to these facts as proof that the Virgin's appearance was an invention of the Spanish, concocted to pacify Native peoples to keep them in place, albeit with sleight of hand like placing Native gods’ statues inside the statues of Catholic saints or the story of Juan Diego and the Virgin. Other interpretations say that the Native people fooled the Spaniards into thinking they were honoring the Mother of Jesus when they were really worshipping Tonantzin and Coatlicue or another goddess.
Some may have done that. It’s hard to account for how many. However, an increasing number of people are doing that in hopes of deconstructing and replacing Christianity while reviving or connecting to ancestral practices, medicine, and magic as a way of decolonizing. They seem to be saying:
“We worship the gods and goddesses of our ancestors. We can all worship our gods or form a new pantheon together unless you are part of a settler’s religion.”
The other side posits the subjugation of Native peoples as a maximum good to end human sacrifice, the practice most highlighted by contemporary colonial apologists to justify war.
“We can’t change that. Besides, they were converted to the truth, and the bloodletting ended. That was 500 years ago,” they seem to say.
The above two are common contemporary responses to a painful part of history.
That is why we have to see the appearance of our Blessed Mother in a light that fully recognizes the time and place of her appearance. Again, it was just ten years after the fall of the Mexica capital, though the conquest of Native lands and people would be an ongoing conflict for the Spanish. It was a time of European domination that would reshape the world in ways that we still see today.
We must also view this in light of our flawed nature and a larger sense of history. All people are partly a result of conflict, competition, and colonization. This is not to diminish the systems of oppression and white supremacy that Europeans instituted. Indeed, many contemporary Mexican people wrestle with this reality and have been affected by blatant and systemic racism and feckless institutions that barely recognize it, much less address it.
These facts should force us to recognize our shared human nature and failures. All people are capable of great virtue and outstanding achievement but also great sin and atrocity. We must acknowledge that past, seek healing from it, and bring a new reality into our lives as Mary, the mother of Jesus, called our ancestors, both Spanish and Native, to do during that December nearly 500 years ago. There is no stepping back. We cannot return to an idyllic, perfect, decolonized world because it never existed. Also, we cannot whitewash the effects of colonization, lest we diminish one of the essential lessons of Mary’s appearance: ALL human beings have value. That is why she came as a dark-skinned Native woman and spoke in Náhuatl. It affirmed the value of all Native and mestizo people and all Mexican people, our customs and traditions, and our value as children of God.
One of the essential questions of the human heart is the search for the truth. It challenges all people, and that makes Christianity different. It claims to have been formed by the truth incarnate, God himself. If truth is relative and we worship our gods, we are all gods unto ourselves; essentially, there is no truth or God. Only Jesus’ truth in human history points us in a direction that delineates our origin, morality, meaning, and destiny. And it corresponds to the reality of our world and our everyday lives. It is summed up in the Great Commandment: Love God with your whole heart, mind, strength, and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself. Mary did, and her mantle, symbolized by the design of the turquoise roof of the Basilica in Mexico City, invites us to do the same.
The Spanish may have brought Christianity to Mexico, but its truth and importance are not tied to race, color, culture, or period. It is universal. Jesus came for ALL people across time, and his truth does not depend on our virtue or lack thereof. The Creator of the universe took human form and chose to dwell among us, and took upon himself all our failings, sin, pain, and death in a sacrifice to end all sacrifices of human life. In doing so, he gave us eternal life. It is true because he rose from the dead. We celebrate that on December 12 and December 25. Actually, we celebrate this every Sunday.
Just last week, many of us donned Native clothes and sang in Náhuatl and other Native languages, Spanish and English. We beat drums, sounded flutes and conch shells, and played guitars, trumpets, and violins. We danced in honor of our Mother Mary and, at the same time, affirmed the value of who we are and where we come from. We honored our ancestors and traditions. But we also danced to worship Jesus, who gave us life itself.