A Decolonization of Faith

My family has owed a debt to the Virgin Mary for as long as I’ve been alive. And I was reminded of this every Christmas as the women in my family pitched in to make tamales for the holidays. Over pots of stewed pork in chile, sticky masa and wet corn husks, one by one they would share old stories and new, and like clockwork, my mom would weave the story of how I was born.

Our First Hail Mary 

It was a habit for my family to visit the swap meet aka los perros most Sundays after church to check out new deals, to stretch the legs, to get a couple of chelas, and chucherias. On one trip when my mom was 8 months pregnant with me she took a stroll down the many aisles glancing at nicknacks and used clothes when a woman appeared before her. The woman indicated to my mom that I wasn’t sitting well in her belly. That I needed to be corrected. And that of course she could take care of it for her. Apprehensively, my mom said no thanks and moved along. 

I’m sure my mother thought of this woman as she laid on the delivery table, in the early morning hours of July 11th as the doctors began to try to extract me from her womb. Large clamps were put inside of her, cold surgical steel wrapping around my neck to pull me from her in order to avoid my suffocation. This violent birth was culminating in a violent death as my mom hemorrhaged on the table after they pulled me out. My dad sat beside her, not knowing what to do. As my mom faded, the nurses and doctors told my dad to speak to her, to keep her from crossing the threshold into Mictlān. So, my emotionally distant father held her hand and called her name over and over again, all the while my mother prayed to the Virgin Mary for our salvation. She prayed that we be saved, and promised if we were that we would make the pilgrimage to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. 

Our Second Hail Mary

In the spring of 2015, 27 years after our first Hail Mary, we had to commit to our second. My mother was diagnosed with stage 2 metastatic breast cancer, and as I packed my bags and committed to being her caretaker, she re-committed to the Virgin Mary. Between chemo rounds and protein shakes, my mother promised once again, “si me sacas de esta/if you get me out of this…” 

Pilgrimage 

When people ask for something from the Virgin Mary, it is with the knowledge that one has to make the pilgrimage to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, but this pilgrimage is not one that is simply completed by hopping onto a bus and praying at her altar. This pilgrimage includes walking on one's knees from outside the Basilica (or inside the temple depending on the promises made) on cobblestones, to stone steps, to the hard ceramic tile that leads to the base of her altar. Inch by inch knees are bruised, and tears are shed not just for the promises made but for the promises kept, miracles granted, and lives extended. This is a pilgrimage weighted down by prayers from immigrants for safe returns, of mothers desperate for the safety of their children, and of desperately ill people wishing for health. 

La Virgen

The story goes that the Virgin Mary appeared before an indigenous peasant newly converted to Catholicism, Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, from the town of Tepeyac near modern day Mexico City, asking him in his native tongue Nahuatl to build a church in her honor. Juan Diego was turned down 3 times by the local church leaders when he made this request explaining her apparition. After the third time the Virgin Mary requested he come back the following day to take proof with him of her apparition to the archbishop. The next day, Juan Diego’s uncle fell ill and instead of meeting with the apparition of the Virgin, he tried to sneak around the hill to go to his uncle and nurse him back to health. The Virgin Mary found Diego and chided him, promising that she would look after his uncle if he could only collect flowers from the top of her hill in his cloak and bring them before the archbishop to ask him once again that they build a temple in her name. The flowers he collected were Castilian roses - roses not native to Mexico which happened to be blooming unseasonably on December 12th atop the hill on Tepeyac. When Juan Diego opened his cloak to reveal the flowers to the archbishop, an image of the Virgin Mary herself was left imprinted on his cloak. The Virgin Mary had also appeared before Juan Diego’s uncle who had fallen ill. She cured him, and asked him to let the people know that she wanted to be known as Guadalupe to them. A church for the Virgin Mary was later constructed atop the hill of Tepeyac where the cloak is now shown as proof of her love for Mexico’s people. The Virgin Mary has since been known as the patron saint of not only Mexico, but of the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

The Family Pilgrimage

Four years after my mom finished cancer treatment successfully, we were invited to a cousin’s graduation in Mexico City. This was the perfect moment to make good on our promise, so we packed our bags and flew down for the festivities. 

After so many years of fantasizing about what a potentially – potentially – beautiful moment this could be, we were finally there. Me and my sister wore a custom made white head covering/cloak with baby blue sashes, my dad wore a sombrero. As it was my mom making good on her promise, she was the one to walk on her knees but only from within the temple as she was much older and the cancer treatments had taken its toll on her body. My sister and I supported her by holding her hands, inching along with her on either side. 

As we walked, I knew I was meant to feel the awesome power of religious faith. However, much like most of my life, I continued to feel nothing. No awe, no wonder, no magic; I only felt confusion, and frustration. As I contemplated my defiance against the story of the supposed miracle of the Virgin Mary, my sister, whose eyes were glistening with tears, sent my attention to my father who was behind us; he too had decided to make good on silent promises he never shared with us and walk on his knees from outside the temple all the way up to the altar. 

Seeing this did not bring me to tears, it did not make me think about the awesome power of prayer, but it did make me appreciate the awesome power of people and the strength and resilience that carries us day to day. But even so, I felt an overwhelming pressure to believe, to accept this Juan Diego story as a truth, as a betterment of our people, as proof that god loves us. But my stubbornness wouldn’t allow it. I continued to feel like a fraud, a wolf in sheep's clothing.

Growing up, I was expected to carry on the traditions of Mexican Catholicism. I was expected to worship without question, without doubt, and without reason. Much like the rest of the expectations set out before me, I failed miserably on this account. I don’t remember exactly when, or how, but at some point I learned what I now perceive to be the truth about the patron saint of Mexico, la virgen de Gudalupe.

It took me a long time to stifle the inescapable inherited Catholic guilt, and make peace with myself, and I only did so by learning about Tonantzin Coatlaxopeuh/Coatlicue. 

Tonantzin

To me, the story of Juan Diego had always been a story of conquest, assimilation, and colonization rather than a story about a righteous miracle presented to the people of Mexico. It was a story created out of the necessity to convert my pagan ancestors. So when my family finally made good on our promise, this was all I could think of until it hit me; the story of the virgin Mary is not only a story of colonization, it is also a story of resistance and resilience. 

Long before the Virgin Mary appeared before Juan Diego atop the hill in Tepeyac, the Mexica people were making pilgrimage to the original temple at this site to worship a goddess: Tonantzin Coatlaxopeuh/Coatlicue. The Spaniards upon arriving destroyed this temple of Tonatzin in their efforts of conquest to stifle indigenous faith and culture. To further the demoralization of the Mexica people and force assimilation, the Spanish took stones from the original temple of Tonantzin Coatlaxopeuh/Coatlicue and used them to build the original Basilica for the Virgin Mary once the Catholic church decided to weaponize the story of Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin. 

What the colonizers didn’t foresee in their plans was that indigenous folks would adapt Christian imagery and inject indigenous iconography and symbolism in order to keep their own faith alive within the facade of worshiping a colonizer religious figure. So while most look at the Virgin Mary and see the mother of Jesus Christ, others see the mother of the moon and stars, the goddess of fertility, patroness of life and death, and our guide of rebirth. This is evident when one looks at Juan Diego’s cloak that is now on display at the altar of the Basilica: the Virgin Mary wears a cloak of stars, sitting atop a crescent moon, and all around her are rays of light. These symbols serve as a reminder that as we worship the Virgin Mary, we also worship Tonantzin Coatlaxopeuh/Coatlicue.

It took me a long time after visiting the Basilica to articulate these intense feelings of existential contradiction. For in my veins flows the blood of both my colonizer inheritance and my indigenous ancestry. I am made of both sides of this story, and I live each day questioning what I’ve been expected to take as fact, so that I may honor that which I have never known. These are the musings of an attempt at decolonization centuries in the making.