The Black Madonna
Phenomenon by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
In
addition to reviewing restaurants for the Monterey
County Weekly (Circulation: 200,000 – California’s Central Coast), I also
wrote several art reviews and covered the 9th annual Virgen of
Guadalupe Conference organized by Dr. Jennifer Colby of California State
University – Monterey Bay.
The
conference was held in San Juan Bautista, California and began with an
extensive discussion of the Virgen of Guadalupe and led to the topic of Black
Madonnas worldwide.
The
article I wrote follows with a few edits:
Mary, Mary, Quite
Contrary
The
Virgen of Guadalupe’s mythic story has roots that reach back centuries and
still moves believers. It begins when
the Indian Juan Diego first sees the Virgen on Tepeyac Hill outside Mexico
City, a site sacred to the Aztec goddess Tonantzin.
The
Virgen asks Juan Diego to have the Catholic bishop build her a shrine. When the bishop refuses, the Virgen makes
Castille roses bloom in December. Juan
Diego takes these to the bishop.
When
Juan Diego removes the cloth holding the roses, an image of a finely featured
woman with brown skin appears. She wears
a blue mantle decorated with stars. A
golden aureole radiates behind her.
The
Virgen of Guadalupe’s influence continues to this day, and her presence
radiated throughout the 9th Annual Virgen conference that Dr.
Jennifer Colby organized last weekend in San Juan Bautista, California.
Working
in the fields as an activist, Colby witnessed firsthand how the Virgen
galvanizes and sustains farmworkers.
Conference
attendee Shirley Flores pointed out that it took the Catholic Church hundreds
of years to accept the Virgen of Guadalupe as she is. Even now, the Virgen of Guadalupe occupies
back chapels and is considered as “the other” Madonna.
CSU-Monterey
professor Amalia Mesa-Baines summed up why we become attached to images like
the Virgen of Guadalupe’s:
The
spiritual belongs to us at all moments.
She is everywhere. But, when we
are weak, we need an icon. The icon is
not the spirit, but it calls it up.
Mesa-Baines
added that the Virgen functions through geography. Virgin sightings happen near trees, rivers,
and circles of stones. We make
pilgrimages to these sites. Local
shrines are erected where an accident or death occurred. A picture of the Virgen always decorates
these spots.
End
of Part 1.
By
Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
