ABSTRACT
THE AMBIVALENT SYMBOLISM OF THE VIRGIN OF GUADALUPE
Reproduced in a multiplicity of visual representations, celebrated in song and verse, for people of Mexican descent, the Virgin of Guadalupe functions as a highly ambivalent image of a collective consciousness resonating with indigenous, colonial, and postcolonial history, as well as with the religious and political past and present.1 Since the 16th century, people of the Americas have worshipped her as “a symbol of hope and unity” (Anderson/Chávez xvi):2 “the power of the Guadalupana as a social symbol is unparalleled in Mexican culture because her presence transcends belief and ideology.” (de Valdés 729-30)
The signifi cance of this unstable cultural icon is rooted in its syncretic character; still, understanding its growth from a myth born in prehistoric Aztec time and reinterpreted with the help of Spanish Catholic symbolism into a transcultural cult-a global player even-demands a highly complex investigation that goes beyond any attempt at a linear, straightforward discussion. Standing on a half moon, the dark-complexioned female fi gure reminded Mexico’s indigenous population of the pre-Columbian Tonantzín, who, as the Earth Goddess of fertility, was traditionally associated with the moon. For the Spanish conquerors, the moon symbolized the immaculate conception (Wolf 35) of the Catholic Blessed Virgin, and since the majority of them came from the Spanish Extremadura, they identifi ed the Virgin due to her dark countenance as la Virgen de Guadalupe, the patron saint of their place of birth.3 The syncretization of the Catholic Virgin Mother and the Aztec Tonantzín in la Virgen de Guadalupe did not reduce the tensions between the Mexicans of indigenous and those of Spanish descent. Still, as a fi gure of mediation (Rebolledo 50), Guadalupe negotiates pre-Columbian, Hispanic, and Mexican cultural traditions.
As Richard Nebel has argued, for the indigenous population the Virgin represents a sign of the survival of their race and culture, thus becoming an integral part of the autochthonous religious concepts that constitute their collective cultural identity (264-65). From a Western perspective, the indigenous people’s appropriation of the image demonstrates their potential to adapt to changing conditions. This “openness” to “development” or “improvement” was traditionally interpreted as a characteristic of civilized (Western) life. However, the perspective of Occidental cultural supremacy implies a rather problematic re-evaluation of the Spanish conquest and the history of colonization as forms for paving Mexico’s way to industrialization and modernization, to Western culture. Finally, Guadalupe supports the formation of a Mexican mestizo identity rooted in the power of cultural negotiation. The Mexican Virgin transcends traditionally exclusive binary oppositions and creates the inclusive realities that shape our postmodern experiences of simultaneously being the one and the other, and neither the one nor the other (Nebel 264-65).4
