December 12th was yet another festive occasion in Mexico celebrating the Day of the Virgin of Guadalupe.
As the story goes, a peasant named Juan Diego saw a vision of Mary on top of a hill in 1531. She told him, in his indigenous language, to build a church there. The bishop, not believing his story, asked him for a sign. The Virgin again told Juan Diego to gather some roses (in the winter time) and carry them to the bishop. He placed them in a tilma, a piece of cloth he was wearing. When he let the flowers fall to the ground before the bishop, the image of the virgin appeared on the tilma.
Of course, there is much controversy surrounding the image, but there is no doubt that the Virgen de Guadalupe is THE most prolific image in Mexico. She can be founding most homes, stores, restaurants, busses, and taxis.)
Around the end of November, dozens of booths sprouted overnight near the Church of San Diego in Morelia, and eventually spilled into the streets by December. You could buy bootleg CDs, books, artificial Christmas trees and ornaments, jewelry, T-shirts, hats, play arcade video games, eat at make-shift restaurants, and take your chances on the amusement rides stabilized by planks of cracked wood. Near the church, parents could dress their kids up like Juan Diego and take them to be digitally photographed in one of dozens of ornately decorated scenes with the Virgin of Guadalupe, perhaps Jesus, and their favorite cartoon character for about US$5. (It’s the equivalent of a photo op on Santa’s lap. The child in the above photo is riding Eore.)
Most prominent was the numerous ladies that sold caña de azucar, chunks of sugar cane, in plastic bags. For a US dollar, they would fill your bag of sugar cane with powdered chili, salt, some freshly squeezed lime juice, and a splash of orange soda. Along with a straw, they gave you an extra bag to put the chewed cane chunks. Needless to say, the first sip I took of the concoction overloaded my taste buds.
A couple of days before the feast, people started to traverse the length of the Calzada de Fray Antonio, a one kilometer granite-paved pedestrian street, to the Church of San Diego at the end of the Calzada…on their knees. I was told that people pray to the Virgin of Guadalupe for everything from a miracle cure to winning the lottery, but they promise to make the journey if their prayers are answered.
Some were accompanied by an entourage lining their path with padded blankets. Others made the trek solo on bare knees. Some carried babies in their arms a few months old, presumably to give thanks for the birth of a healthy child. People respectfully allowed the pilgrims to slice a path through the crowd, perhaps glancing down to take notice of their degree of suffering; they then continued doing whatever they were doing: taking a family stroll, chatting with friends, making out with boy/girlfriends.
The balanced presence of extremes was almost thematic: the sweet sugarcane, the sour limes; the burning chili powder, the cool chunks of caña; fresh, natural lemons, artificial orange soda. Suffering offset the joy of prayers answered, the commercialization of a religious feast, massive crowds of families and individuals, young and old, drawn magnetically toward the entrance of the church, bumped, jostled, and funneled through the pewless chapel, then spit out the sides, dispersed into the huge street party after paying homage to Virgin of Guadalupe, an image partially responsible for converting the “pagans” to Catholicism centuries ago. It is the bonding of indigenous and European cultures exactly 475 years ago that continues to bless and plague the Mexico of today. The good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful – all of it was represented.
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