Basilica of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mexico, D.F., 16th Century

 

Archive by John Reed 

Performing Colonialism, Fall 2000


The Virgin of Guadalupe
A Visual Exploration
 

"The story of the apparitions in 1531, just ten years after the Aztec capital at Tenochtitlan fell to Cortes, is rich in providential possibilities--a dark-complected Virgin Mary appears to a lowly Indian at Tepeyac, the sacred place of a pre-Columbian mother goddess, leaving her beautiful image on the Indian's cloak<...>She combines the Indian past with the Spanish present to make something new, a proto-Mexican Indian madonna who will gradually be accepted as well by American Spaniards and mestizos as their own, thus forming the spiritual basis of a national independence movement in the early 19th century." -Taylor, William. “The Virgin of Guadalupe in New Spain" p 9.
 

This site is a compilation of representations of the Virgin of Guadalupe, a symbol that may represent the divine, national or racial independence, oppression, or syncretism . 
 

 Background

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