Mestizaje de símbolos religiosos

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Mestizaje de Símbolos Religiosos Focus: Religious Mestizaje of Indigenous and European symbols resulting from the Spanish Conquest of MesoAmerican as exemplified by La Virgen de Guadalupe.

Transcript of Mestizaje de símbolos religiosos

Page 1: Mestizaje de símbolos religiosos

Mestizaje de Símbolos Religiosos

Focus: Religious Mestizaje of Indigenous and European symbols resulting from the Spanish Conquest of MesoAmerican as exemplified by La Virgen de Guadalupe.

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Roman Catholicism vs. Folk (Mexican Catholicism)• Roman Catholicism is highly

influenced by and representative of Western Christianity.

• It is monotheistic but also acknowledges many saints and the Virgin Mary.

• European in appearance and represents a geographical region’s race and cultural customs/values.

• The extent to which the Virgin Mary became a central figure in Spain in relation to the intermixing of religious symbols in MesoAmerica and Spain.

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Mestizaje de Mary

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European Virgin Mary• Throughout the centuries,

Catholics have viewed the Virgin Mary from a multitude of perspectives, at times derived from specific Marian attributes ranging from queenship to humility, and at times based on cultural preferences of events taking place at specific points in history.

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Apparitions of La Virgin for Mexican Catholicism

• By all accounts, when Juan Diego, age 57, reported the apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe on Tepeyac hill in Mexico in 1531, he did not receive a lot of attention in Rome, since the Church was busy with the challenges of the Protestant Reformation of 1521 to 1579 and perhaps very few Cardinals in Rome had ever heard the details of Mexico and its environs. Yet, just as a large number of people were leaving the Catholic Church in Europe as a result of the Reformation, Our Lady of Guadalupe was instrumental in adding almost 8 million people to the ranks of Catholics in the Americas between 1532 and 1538.

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La Virgin de Guadalupe (hybrid religious figure)Another example is the Saint Juan Diego's account of the appearance of the Virgin of Guadalupe in 1531 as a tanned Aztec princess who spoke in his local Nahuatl language. The clothing of the Virgin of Guadalupe image has been identified as that of an Aztec princess.

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La Virgen De Guadalupe• Indigenous Roots: Borrowed from the Nahuatl name

Coatlalopeuh: a central diety for MesoAmerica that connects us to our Indian ancestry. Pg#49

• Mother of God• Holy Mary of Guadalupe• Our Lady of Guadalupe• Indigenous History of La Virgin: Following the Conquest of 1519-

21, the Spanish destroyed a temple of he mother goddess Tonantizin (pg. 49) at Tepayac outside of Mexico City and built a chapel dedicated to the Spanish Catholic Virgin on the Site.

• But Anzaldua tells us a different story of, Coatlalopeuh and Coatlique as the female deities who were marred by dark images and being from an under world. And associated with

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The Dark Transformation of Indigenous Female Deities. The Resulting Need for Purity.

• Evil aspects such as Tlazolteotl and Cihuacoatl (Kali)

• Tlazolteotl• In Aztec mythology, Tlazolteotl

(or Tlaçolteotl, Nahuatl pronunciation: /tɬasoɬˈteotɬ/) is a goddess of purification, steam bath, midwives, filth, and a patroness of adulterers. In Nahuatl, the word tlazolli can refer to vice and diseases

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Dual Nature Female Indigenous Dieties Split Apart• However, she was a purification goddess as well, who forgave

the sins and disease of those caused by misdeeds, particularly sexual misdeeds

• Regardless of the dual nature of these Dieties, the European version of Catholicism and Christianity did not allow for duality. It was believed that deities were either all good or all bad.

• Tonantsi had to be a split of the pagan goddesses dark side and this was done with the Lady of Guadalupe. She is a descendent, however, from indigenous history, culture and language.

• Lady of Guadalupe is a Mestiza version of Tonantsi who is a descendent of Coatlalopeuh. (bottom of 49)

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Dual Nature cont…• Aztec deities could not only be of double gender but different

names represented different facets of the character of the same deity. Tonantzin, therefore, may be associated with the dread goddess Cihuacoatl (a serpent woman), whom Sahagun identified not with the Virgin Mary, but with Our Mother Eve and her encounter with the serpent of good and evil in the Garden of Eden.

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De-Sexualization of Guadalupe and Demonizatin of Indigenous Female Deities

• After the Conquest, the Spaniards and their Church continued to split Tonantsi/Guadalupe (Coatlaopeuh)

• Eventually, La Virgen was made into a chaste Virgin and Tlazoleteotl/Coatlcue/la Chingada became putas and beasts.

• This process was begun by Nahuas and continued with Europeans to the point where all Indian deities and religious practices appeared to be the work of the devil.

• So all that was impure was associated with the indigeonous, while all that was pure was associated with the new Lady of Guadalupe or La Virgin de Guadalupe.

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The Dark Side and the Serpent

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Indigenous Religious Roots cont..

• Tonantzin was transformed in La Virgin de Guadalupe

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More to the story of Religious Mestizaje….• Declaring herself to be the Virgin Mary, Mother of Christ, she

called Juan her son. He reported his vision to Bishop Juan de Zumarraga, who demanded additional evidence of the divine apparition.

• Whatever the "scientific" explanation, this image of the Virgin Mary not only reflects the sudden and violent clash of two cultures, Spanish and Aztec, but remains for many a symbol of the birth of the Mestizo nation of modern Mexico.

• However, there is another side to the story. Before the fall of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan in 1521, the hill where Juan Diego had his vision had also been the site of an ancient temple to the Aztec goddess Tonantzin (Our Revered Mother), later leveled to the ground by the Spaniards.

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Anzaldua says…• Guadalupe is a symbol of the Mexican rebellion against the

rich, upper and middle class; against their subjugation of the poor and the indio.

• La Virgen de Guadalupe is the symbol of ethnic identity and of tolerance for ambiguity that Chicanos, Mexicanos people of mixed race, people who have Indian blood, people who cross cultures by necessity possess.

• 52: La gente Chicana tiene tres madres. All three are mediators.

• Guadalupe, the virgin mother, la Chingada (Malinche), the raped mother whom we have abandoned and la Llorona, the mother who seeks her lost children.

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Cont.• Guadalupe is supposed to make us docile and enduring. • La Chingada makes us ashamed of our Indian side. • La Llorona to make us long-suffering people. • Coatlicue, Lade of the Serpent Skirt, contained and balanced

the dualities of male and female, light and dark, life and death.

• The devotion to the Virgin of Guadalupe is a syncretic manifestation of Catholic and Aztec beliefs

• In the 1960's César Chavez marched with the image when The United Farm Workers went on strike. Ester Hernández's 1975 depiction, "The Virgin of Guadalupe Defending the Rights of Chicanos" is a radical interpretation of the religious icon as warrior-defender of minority rights.

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• According to Carlos Fuentes, the orphaned children of the New World were granted a mother through Juan Diego's apparition, allowing the Spanish authorities to transform the Indian people from children of violated women (see Malinche) to the children of the pure virgin.

• Into the 21th century, Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe remains enormously popular, appearing even now on the posters of a bitter López Obrador.

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58• Rationality vs. Mystique

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Duality in Religious Beliefs vs. Spiritual Beliefs• http://

www.mexconnect.com/articles/2614-our-lady-of-guadalupe-tonantzin-or-the-virgin-mary

• Voodoo…quote from 59

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La Facultad• 60-61

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• Castillo, Ana. ed. Goddess of the Americas/ La Diosa de las Américas. Riverhead Books, N.Y. 1996.Chabram-Dernassian, Angie. "I Throw Punches for My Race, But I Don't Want to be a Man: Chica/nos (Girl, Us/Chicanas) into the Movement Script." ed. Nelson, Cary; Paula Treichler; and Laurence Gross-berg. Cultural Studies. New York: Routledge, 1992.De la Maza, Francisco. El Guadalupanismo Mexicano. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1953.Gonzales, Sylvia A. "La Chicana: Guadalupe or Malinche" ed. Beverly Lindsay. Comparative Perspectives of Third World Women: The Impact of Race, Sex and Class. New York: Praeger 1980.Paz, Octavio. The Labyrinth of Solitude: Life and Thought in Mexico. New York: Grove, 1961.Rodriquez, Jeanette. Our Lady of Guadalupe: Faith and Empowerment among Mexican-American Women. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994.Lafaye, Jacques. Quetzalcoatl and Guadalupe: The Formation of Mexican National Consciousness. tr. Benjamin Keen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976.Harrington, Patricia. "Mother of Death, Mother of Rebirth: The Mexican Virgin of Guadalupe." Journal of the American Academy of Religion LVI/I 25-51.Valdés, Maria Elena. "Guadalupana Syncretism and Postcolonial Literature in Mexico." Canadian Review of Comparative Literature. vol 22, 729-743.Wolf, Eric R. "The Virgin of Guadalupe; A Mexican National Symbol." Journal of American Folklore. 71, 1958.