Our Lady of Guadalupe

This article is about the Mexican icon. For the Spanish icon, see Our Lady of Guadalupe (Extremadura).

An image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, also called the Virgin of Guadalupe (Spanish: Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe or Virgen de Guadalupe) is a 16th century Roman Catholic icon depicting an apparition of the Virgin Mary. It is Mexico's most beloved religious and cultural image. Our Lady of Guadalupe is known in Mexico as "La Virgen Morena", which means "The brown-skinned Virgin". Our Lady of Guadalupe's feast day is celebrated on December 12, commemorating the account of her appearances to Juan Diego on the hill of Tepeyac near Mexico City from December 9 through December 12, 1531.

The Virgin of Guadalupe is a cultural symbol of significant importance to the Mexican identity.

Some historians consider that the icon was meant to syncretically represent both the Virgin Mary and the indigenous Mexican goddess Tonantzin, providing a way for 16th century Spaniards to gain converts among the indigenous population of early Mexico. It may have provided a method for 16th century indigenous Mexicans to covertly practice their native religion, although the contrary was asserted in the canonization process of Juan Diego.

History

Traditional account of the apparition

Etching by Jose Guadalupe Posada, depicting St. Juan Diego and image of the Virgin imprinted on the cloth.

Juan de Zumárraga.

According to traditional catholic accounts of the Guadalupan apparition, during a walk from his village to the city on December 9, 1531, Juan Diego saw a vision of a Virgin at the Hill of Tepeyac. Speaking in Nahuatl, Our Lady of Guadalupe asked him to build an abbey at that site. When Juan Diego spoke to the Spanish bishop, Fray Juan de Zumárraga, he asked him for a miraculous sign to prove his claim. The Virgin asked Juan Diego to gather flowers, even though it was winter when no flower bloomed. He found Castillian roses, gathered them on his tilma, and presented these to bishop Zumárraga. When presented the roses to Zumárraga the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe miraculously appeared imprinted on the cloth.

Documentation

A number of documents are used to support the apparition account. The most important may be the Nahuatl-language Huei tlamahuiçoltica ("The Great Event") which contains Nican mopohua ("Here it is recounted"), a tract about the Virgin which contains the aforementioned story. Huei tlamahuiçoltica is said to have been written by Antonio Valeriano in 1556; it was printed in Nahuatl by Luis Lasso de la Vega in 1649.

First page of the Nican Mopohua.

The Codex Escalada, a painting on deerskin which illustrates the apparition and discusses Juan Diego's death, was used to shore up Juan Diego's 1990s canonization process. Critics, including Stafford Poole and David A. Brading, find the document suspicious—partly because of when it was discovered, and partly because it contains the handiwork of both Antonio Valeriano (a man many apparition partisans believe to be the true author of the Nican mopohua) and the signature of Bernardino de Sahagún, the Franciscan missionary and anthropologist. Brading said that:

Codex Escalada.

"Within the context of the Christian tradition, it was rather like finding a picture of St. Paul's vision of Christ on the road to Damascus, drawn by St. Luke and signed by St. Peter".

The apparition account is also supported by a document called the Informaciones Jurídicas of 1666, a collection of oral interviews gathered near Juan Diego's hometown of Cuautitlan. In this document various witnesses affirm, in interview format, details about Juan Diego and the Guadalupan apparition story.

Some historians and clerics, including the U.S. priest-historian Fr. Stafford Poole, the famous Mexican historian Joaquín García Icazbalceta, and former abbot of the Basilica of Guadalupe, Guillermo Schulenburg, have expressed doubts about the accuracy of the apparition accounts. Schulenburg in particular caused a stir with his 1996 interview with the Catholic magazine Ixthus, when he said that Juan Diego was "a symbol, not a reality."

Controversies

Eighteenth-century painting of God illustrating the Guadalupe

At the time of the apparitions in 1531, Zumárraga was not yet bishop of New Spain, he wouldn't be formally consecrated until 1533 and became an Archbishop in 1547. There is no explicit mention of Juan Diego nor the Virgin in any of Zumárraga's writings. Furthermore, in a catechism published in New Spain before his death, it was stated: “The Redeemer of the world doesn’t want any more miracles, because they are no longer necessary.".

As early as 1556 Francisco de Bustamante, head of the Colony's Franciscans, delivered a sermon before the Viceroy and members of the Royal Audience. In that sermon, disparaging the holy origins of the picture and contradicting Archbishop Montúfar's sermon of two days before, Bustamante stated:

"The devotion that has been growing in a chapel dedicated to Our Lady, called of Guadalupe, in this city is greatly harmful for the natives, because it makes them believe that the image painted by Marcos the Indian is in any way miraculous."

In 1611 the Dominican Martin de Leon, fourth viceroy of Mexico, denounced the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe as a disguised worship of the Aztec goddess Tonantzin. The missionary and anthropologist Bernardino de Sahagún held the same opinion: he wrote that the shrine at Tepeyac was extremely popular but worrisome because people called the Virgin of Guadalupe Tonantzin. Sahagún said that the worshipers claimed that Tonantzin was the proper Nahuatl for "Mother of God"—but he disagreed, saying that "Mother of God" in Nahuatl would be "Dios y Nantzin." This type of worries relative to confussion in Indian minds were due to missionaries feeling responsible for the souls of their flock.

In 2002, art restoration expert José Sol Rosales said he examined the icon with a stereomicroscope and that he identified calcium sulfate, pine soot, white, blue, and green "tierras" (soil), reds made from carmine and other pigments, as well as gold. Rosales said he found the work consistent with 16th century materials and methods.

Guadalupe of Extremadura

Norberto Rivera Carrera, Archbishop of Mexico, commissioned a 1999 study to test the tilma's age. The researcher, Leoncio Garza-Valdés, had previously worked with the Shroud of Turin. Upon inspection, Garza-Valdés found three distinct layers in the painting, at least one of which was signed and dated. He also stated that the original painting showed striking similarities to the original Lady of Guadalupe found in Extremadura Spain, with the second painting showing another Virgin with indigenous features. Finally, Garza-Valdés indicated that the fabric on which the icon is painted is made of conventional hemp and linen, not agave fibers as is popularly believed.. Gilberto Aguirre, a colleague of Garza-Valdés who took part in the 1999 study, examined the same photographs and stated that, while agreeing the painting had been tampered with, he disagreed with Garza-Valdes' conclusions and claims the conditions for conducting the study were inadequate.

Several similar icons have appeared through Mexican history. In the town of Tlaltenango, in the state of Morelos, a painting of Our Lady of Guadalupe is claimed to have miraculously appeared in the inside of a box that two unknown travelers left in a hostel. The owners of the hostel called the local priest after noticing enticing aromas of flowers and sandalwood coming out of the box. The image has been venerated on September 8 since its finding in 1720, and is accepted as a valid apparition of an image by the local Catholic authorities.

Symbol of Mexico

The Virgin of Guadalupe has symbolized the Mexican nation since Mexico's War of Independence. Both Miguel Hidalgo and Emiliano Zapata's rebel armies waged war underneath Guadalupan flags, and Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe is generally recognized as a symbol of all Mexicans. The Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes once said that "...one may no longer consider himself a Christian, but you cannot truly be considered a Mexican unless you believe in the Virgin of Guadalupe."

Octavio Paz wrote in 1974 that "the Mexican people, after more than two centuries of experiments, have faith only in the Virgin of Guadalupe and the National Lottery"

Guadalupe's first major use as a nationalistic symbol was in the writing of Miguel Sánchez, the author of the first Spanish language apparition account. Sanchez identified Guadalupe as Revelation's Woman of the Apocalypse, and said that

"this New World has been won and conquered by the hand of the Virgin Mary...[who had] prepared, disposed, and contrived her exquisite likeness in this her Mexican land, which was conquered for such a glorious purpose, won that there should appear so Mexican an image."

In 1810 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla initiated the bid for Mexican independence with his Grito de Dolores, yelling words to the effect of "Death to the Spaniards and long live the Virgin of Guadalupe!" When Hidalgo's mestizo-indigenous army attacked Guanajuato and Valladolid, they placed "the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, which was the insignia of their enterprise, on sticks or on reeds painted different colors" and "they all wore a print of the Virgin on their hats."

Flag carried by Hidalgo and his insurgent army.

When Hidalgo died, leadership of the revolution fell to a mestizo priest named Jose Maria Morelos who led insurgent troops in the Mexican south. Morelos was also a Guadalupan partisan: he made the Virgin the seal of his Congress of Chilpancingo, stating

"New Spain puts less faith in its own efforts than in the power of God and the intercession of its Blessed Mother, who appeared within the precincts of Tepeyac as the miraculous image of Guadalupe that had come to comfort us, defend us, visibly be our protection."

He inscribed the Virgin's feast day, December 12, into the Chilpancingo constitution, and declared that Guadalupe was the power behind his military victories. One of Morelos' officers, a man named Felix Fernandez who would later become the first Mexican president, even changed his name to Guadalupe Victoria. Simón Bolívar, noticed the Guadalupan theme in these uprisings, and shortly before Morelos' death in 1815 wrote:

"...the leaders of the independence struggle have put fanaticism to use by proclaiming the famous Virgin of Guadalupe as the queen of the patriots, praying to her in times of hardship and displaying her on their flags...the veneration for this image in Mexico far exceeds the greatest reverence that the shrewdest prophet might inspire."

In 1914, Emiliano Zapata's peasant army rose out of the south against the government of Porfirio Diaz. Though Zapata's rebel forces were primarily interested in land reform—"tierra y libertad" (land and liberty) was the slogan of the uprising—when Zapata's peasant troops penetrated Mexico City, they carried Guadalupan banners.

The Virgin of Guadalupe has also symbolized the Mexican nation since Mexico's War of Independence. Both Miguel Hidalgo and Emiliano Zapata's armies traveled underneath Guadalupan flags.

More recently, the contemporary Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) named their "mobile city" in honor of the Virgin: it is called Guadalupe Tepeyac. EZLN spokesperson Subcomandante Marcos wrote a humorous letter in 1995 describing the EZLN bickering over what to do with a Guadalupe statue they had received as a gift.

Mestizo culture and Mexican identity

Guadalupe is often considered a mixture of the cultures which blend to form Mexico, both racially and religiously Guadalupe is sometimes called the "first mestiza" or "the first Mexican". In the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Mary O'Connor writes that Guadalupe "bring[s] together people of distinct cultural heritages, while at the same time affirming their distinctness."

File:Our Lady of Guadalupe--graffiti in East Los Angeles.JPG

Graffiti mural in Los Angeles showing Our Lady of Guadalupe in a nopal cactus.

One theory is that the Virgin of Guadalupe was presented to the Aztecs as a sort of "Christianized" Tonantzin, necessary for the clergymen to convert the Indians to their Faith. As Jacques Lafaye wrote in Quetzalcoatl and Guadalupe, "...as the Christians built their first churches with the rubble and the columns of the ancient pagan temples, so they often borrowed pagan customs for their own cult purposes." An alternate view is that Guadalupe-Tonantzin gave the native Americans a hidden method to continue worshipping their own goddess in a Christianized form; similar patterns of syncretic worship can be seen throughout the Catholic Americas (e.g. Vodou, Santería). Guadalupan religious syncretism is both lauded and disparaged as demonic.

Some theologians also associate the Virgin of Guadalupe with a special relationship between the indigenous peoples of the American continents and the Catholic Church. This perspective developed as the scriptural terms of truths "hid ... from the wise and prudent" but "revealed...unto babes" (Matthew 11:25), but later developed into the "spiritual mestizaje of the Americas", and the "option for the poor" provided by Liberation theology.

The author Judy King asserts that Guadalupe is a "common denominator" uniting Mexicans. Writing that Mexico is composed of a vast patchwork of differences—linguistic, ethnic, and class-based—King says "The Virgin of Guadalupe is the rubber band that binds this disparate nation into a whole."

This sentiment was echoed by two celebrants interviewed in the New York Times at the Virgin's feast day in 1998: "We say that we are more Guadalupanos than Mexicans," said the Jesuit Brother Joel Magallan. "We say that because our Lady Guadalupe is our symbol, our identity." David Solanas, another feast-goer, agreed, saying "We have faith in her. She's like the mama of all the Mexicans."

The origin of the name "Guadalupe" is controversial. According to a sixteenth-century report the Virgin identified herself as Guadalupe when she appeared to Juan Diego's uncle, Juan Bernardino. It has also been suggested that "Guadalupe" is a corruption of a Nahuatl name "Coatlaxopeuh", which has been translated as "Who Crushes the Serpent. In this interpretation, the serpent referred to is Quetzalcoatl, one of the chief Aztec gods, whom the Virgin Mary "crushed" by inspiring the conversion of indigenous people to Catholicism. However, many historians believe that the 1533 Guadalupan shrine was dedicated to the Spanish Lady of Guadalupe in Extremadura—not to the Mexican Virgin venerated today. Thus, while the name "Guadalupe" would have had certain connotations to Nahuatl speakers, as noted above, its ultimate origins would be the Arabic-Latin term "Wadī Lupum", meaning "Valley of the Wolf".

Guadalupe, or its short version Lupe is a common name among Mexican people or those with Mexican heritage, it is used both for men and women.

The image

The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe is often read as a coded image. Miguel Sanchez, the author of the 1648 tract Imagen de la Virgen María, described the Virgin's image as the Woman of the Apocalypse from the New Testament's Revelation 12:1: "arrayed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars." Mateo de la Cruz, writing twelve years after Sánchez, "argued that the Guadalupe possessed all the iconographical attributes of Mary in her Immaculate Conception". Likewise, a 1738 sermon preached by Miguel Picazo argued that the Guadalupe was the "best representation" of the Immaculate Conception.

Virgin in a maguey.

Many writers, including Patricia Harrington and Virgil Elizondo, describe the image as containing coded messages for the indigenous people of Mexico.

"The Aztecs...had an elaborate, coherent symbolic system for making sense of their lives. When this was destroyed by the Spaniards, something new was needed to fill the void and make sense of New Spain...the image of Guadalupe served that purpose."

Her blue-green mantle was described as the color once reserved for the divine couple Ometecuhtli and Omecihuatl; her belt is read as a sign of pregnancy; and a cross-shaped image symbolizing the cosmos and called nahui-ollin is said to be inscribed beneath the image's sash.

Yet another interpretation of the image is offered by the historian William B. Taylor, who recounted that Guadalupe has also been "acclaimed goddess of the maguey [agave]" and pulque was drunk on her feast day. A 1772 report described the rays of light around Guadalupe as maguey spines.

Popular beliefs

Silhouettes bearing any similarity to the outline of the Virgin are lovingly detected by the devout and reported in many cities and towns throughout Mexico, at least 300 figures bearing a resemblance to the Virgin are found and reported in Mexico every year according to the press, many on burned toast and tortillas. In one of the most recent cases, believers reported a semblance of the Virgin of Guadalupe in a humidity stain in the Mexico City metro. This apparition of an image (different from the personal apparitions of December 9 to 12 of 1531) was called the "Virgin of the Subway."

Some consider it miraculous that the tilma maintains its structural integrity after nearly 500 years, since replicas made with the same type of materials lasted only about 15 years before disintegrating. In addition to withstanding the elements, the tilma resisted a 1791 ammonia spill that made a considerable hole, which was reportedly repaired in two weeks with no external help. In 1921, an anarchist placed an offering of flowers next to the image. A bomb hidden within the flowers exploded and destroyed the shrine. However, the image suffered no damage.

File:Eyedetl.jpg

Image somewhat resembling a bearded man found in the Virgin's eye.

Photographers and ophthalmologists have reported images reflected in the eyes of the Virgin. In 1929 and 1951 photographers found a figure reflected in the Virgin's eyes; upon inspection they said that the reflection was tripled in what is called the Purkinje effect. This effect is commonly found in human eyes. The ophthalmologist Dr. Jose Aste Tonsmann later enlarged the image of the Virgin's eyes by 2500x magnification and said he saw not only the aforementioned single figure, but rather images of all the witnesses present when the tilma was shown to the Bishop in 1531. Tonsmann also reported seeing a small family—mother, father, and a group of children—in the center of the Virgin's eyes.

In response to the eye miracles, Joe Nickell and John F. Fischer wrote in Skeptical Inquirer that images seen in the Virgin's eyes could be the result of the human tendency to form familiar shapes from random patterns, much like a psychologist's inkblots—a phenomenon known as religious pareidolia.

Richard Kuhn, who received the 1938 Nobel Chemistry prize, is said to have analyzed a sample of the fabric in 1936 and said the tint on the fabric was not from a known mineral, vegetable, or animal source.

In 1979 Philip Serna Callahan studied the icon with infrared light and stated that portions of the face, hands, robe, and mantle had been painted in one step, with no sketches or corrections and no paintbrush strokes.

Guadalupe in the Catholic Church

Pontifical Pronouncements on the Virgin of Guadalupe

A mosaic of Our Lady of Guadalupe at the Mary, Queen of the Universe Shrine in Florida.

With the Brief Non est equidem of May 25 1754, Pope Benedict XIV declared Our Lady of Guadalupe patron of what was then called New Spain, corresponding to Spanish Central and Northern America, and approved liturgical texts for the Mass and Liturgy of the Hours in her honour. Pope Leo XIII granted new texts in 1891 and authorized coronation of the image in 1895. Pope Saint Pius X proclaimed her patron of Latin America in 1910. In 1935 Pope Pius XI proclaimed her patron of the Philippines and had a monument in her honor erected in the Vatican Gardens. Pope Pius XII declared the Virgin of Guadalupe “Queen of Mexico and Empress of the Americas” in 1945, and "Patroness of the Americas" in 1946. Pope John XXIII invoked her as "Mother of the Americas" in 1961, referring to her as Mother and Teacher of the Faith of All American populations, and in 1966 Pope Paul VI sent a Golden Rose to the shrine.

Pope John Paul II visited the shrine in the course of his first journey outside Italy as Pope from 26 to January 31 1979, and again when he beatified Juan Diego there on 6 May 1990. In 1992 he dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe a chapel within St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican. At the request of the Special Assembly for the Americas of the Synod of Bishops, he named Our Lady of Guadalupe patron of the Americas on January 22 1999 (with the result that her liturgical celebration had, throughout the Americas, the rank of solemnity), and visited the shrine again on the following day. On July 31 2002, he canonized Juan Diego before a crowd of 12 million, and later that year included in the General Calendar of the Roman Rite, as optional memorials, the liturgical celebrations of Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin (December 9) and Our Lady of Guadalupe (12 December).

Catholic devotions

Replicas of the tilma can be found in thousands of churches throughout the world, including Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris and the Basilica of Saint Peter in Rome, and numerous parishes bear her name.

Buildings for Guadalupan devotion

Inside the Basilica of Guadalupe in Monterrey, Mexico.

• The Basilica of Guadalupe, a church in Mexico City
• The Basílica of Guadalupe in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico
• The Cathedral Santuario de Guadalupe in Dallas, Texas.
• The Our Lady of Guadalupe Unfinished Cathedral in Zamora, Michoacán

See also

• Maravilla Americana

References

Books

• Brading, D.A. Mexican Phoenix. Our Lady of Guadalupe: Image and Tradition Across Five Centuries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
• Elizondo, Virgil. Guadalupe. Mother of a New Creation. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1997.
• Krauze, Enrique. Mexico, Biography of Power. A History of Modern Mexico 1810-1996. New York:HarperCollins, 1997.
• Lafaye, Jacques. Quetzalcoatl and Guadalupe. The Formation of Mexican National Consciousness 1531-1813. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976.
• Poole, Stafford. Our Lady of Guadalupe. The Origins and Sources of a Mexican National Symbol, 1531-1797. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997.
• Sousa, Lisa, et al, eds. The Story of Guadalupe. Luis Laso de la Vega's Huei tlamahuicoltica of 1649. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998.
• Taylor, William B. Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion in Colonial Mexican Villages. Stanford University Press: Stanford, 1979.
• Ernesto de la Torre Villar, y Ramiro Navarro de Anda. "Testimonios Históricos Guadalupanos." Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1982
• Xavier Escalada. "Enciclopedia Guadalupana", México D.F.
• Mariano Cuevas, S.J. "Album Histórico Guadalupano del IV Centenario", 1930. México D.F.
• Guerrero Rosado, José L.: "El Nican Mopohua"; "Los dos mundos de un indio santo"; "El Manto de Juan Diego".
• León-Portilla, Miguel. "Tonanzin Guadalupe", Fondo de Cultura Económica 2000, México D.F.

Websites

• Ashburne, Elyse. "Catholic relic's authenticity questioned by researcher." Daily Texan. June 4, 2002. [24], accessed 5 December 2006
• Goeringer, Conrad. "Virgin of Guadalupe a Fraud, Says Abbot." [25], accessed 9 July 2007
• Beckwith, Barbara. "A View From the North." St. Anthony Messenger Magazine Online. December 1999. [26], accessed 3 December 2006
• Conchiglia. "Movimento d'Amore San Juan Diego dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe", October 24, 2001. [27] accessed 6 March 2007
• Daily Catholic. December 7, 1999. [28]
• Elizondo, Virgil. "Our Lady of Guadalupe. A Guide for the New Millennium." St. Anthony Messenger Magazine Online. December 1999. [29], accessed 3 December 2006
• Fray Bernaerdino de Sagahun y el culto de Guadalupe." Proyecto Guadalupano [30], accessed 1 December 2006
• Garduño, Thalia Ehrlich. "Virgen de Tlaltenango." mariologia.org[31], accessed 29 November 200
• Guerra, Giulio Dante. "La Madonna di Guadalupe. 'Inculturazione' Miracolosa." Cristianità. n. 205-206, 1992. [32], accessed 1 December 2006
• King, Judy. "La Virgen de Guadalupe—Mother of All Mexico." [33], accessed 29 November 2006
• La Virgen de Guadalupe," panam.edu [34], accessed 30 November 2006
• "Los Ojos de Guadalupe: Un misterio para la ciencia." fluvium.org [35], accessed 30 November 2006
• Mendoza, Rubi. "Coatlaxopeuh or Guadalupe?" xispas.com [36], accessed 3 December 2006
• Nickell, Joe. "'Miraculous' Image of Guadalupe." Skeptical Briefs, June 2002. [37] accessed 29 November 2006.
• Our Lady of Guadalupe." catholic.org [38], accessed 30 November 2006
• Our Lady of Guadalupe." [39]
• "Our Lady of Guadalupe." livingmiracles.net [40], accessed 30 November 2006
• "Our Lady of Guadalupe. Historical sources." L'Osservatore Romano. 23 January 2002, page 8.[41]
• Scheifler, Michael. "The Aztec Goddess Tonantzin and the Feast of Guadalupe." Bible Light Homepage. [42], accessed 3 December 2006
• Subcomandante Marcos, "Zapatistas Guadalupanos and the Virgin of Guadalupe." 24 March 1995 [43], accessed 11 December 2006
• "The Eyes." Interlupe. [44], accessed 3 December
• The Image." Interlupe. [45], accessed 3 December 2006
• "The Lady of Guadalupe. An Invented Myth or a Strange Reality?" laermita.org [46], accessed 30 November 2006
• "Why the name 'of Guadalupe'?" sancta.org [47], accessed 30 November 2006
• Sennott, Br. Thomas Mary. "The Tilma of Guadalupe: A Scientific Analysis." [48], accessed 3 December 2006 (.pdf)
• Vera, Rodrigo. "La Guadalupana, tres imagenes en uno." Proceso, May 25, 2002. [49], accessed 29 November 2006
• Zwick, Mark and Louise. "Why San Juan Diego, a Saint for Nobodies, Means So Much to the Houston Catholic Worker." Houston Catholic Worker newspaper, September-October 2002[50]

Periodicals

• Bushnell, John. "La Virgen de Guadalupe as Surrogate Mother in San Juan Aztingo." American Anthropologist: Vol 60, Number 2, p. 261. 1958
• "Divided By an Apparition." New York Times. September 5, 1896; p. 3
• Herszenhorn, David M. "Mexicans Unite to Honor Their Spiritual Mother." December 13, 1998, New York Times, Section 1, Page 51.
• Lopez, Lydia. "'Undocumented Virgin.' Guadalupe Narrative Crosses Borders for New Understanding." Episcopal News Service. December 10, 2004.
• Notitiae, bulletin of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, 2002, p. 194-195
• O'Connor, Mary. "The Virgin of Guadalupe and the Economics of Symbolic Behavior." The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. Vol. 28, Issue 2. p. 105-119. 1989
• Peterson, Jeannette Favot. "The Virgin of Guadalupe. Symbol of Conquest or Liberation?" Art Journal. Vol. 51, Issue 4, p. 39. 1992

Further reading

• Marian library's discussion of Guadalupe as Mexican national symbol
• BBC photo essay of 12 December festivities in San Miguel de Allende, Gto.
• Photo essay on Los Angeles Latino community's Guadalupan murals, altars and statues.
• The Catholic Encyclopedia
• A Catholic site dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe
• Brief YouTube clip showing the inside of the Basilica
• Extensive historial sourcing for the apparition account. From L'Osservatore Romano
• Archive of Guadalupan documents maintained by Xavier Escalada, the finder of the Codex Escalada
• [51]
• Template:Es icon Official website of the Basilica
• Template:Es icon Critical essays, iconography and documentary information about the Guadalupe
• Template:Es icon Mínima Bilbliografía el Guadalupanismo
• Vera, Rodrigo. "Demanda a cardenal por venta fraudulenta." Originally from Proceso magazine. [52], accessed 29 November 2006.

19°29′04″N 99°07′02″W