Lessons Outside Our Lady of Guadalupe

I want to create a scene for you. Or, I want to recreate a remarkable scene, theatrical in its coincidence. The elements of this scene come together in a way that demonstrates Jungian Synchronicity.  I continually flash back to it, the moment everything came together:

While staying in Nuevo Vallarta, I took a tour of Puerto Vallarta. Filled with old architecture, bustling with a mix of tourists and vendors, residents, participants, performers and indigenous folks, the tour simply could not encompass the chaos of all we were seeing. Until we stopped at the cathedral of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Story has it that in 1531 the native (indigeno) Juan Diego came upon a beautiful woman who told him she was the Virgin Mary.

“When he told his story to the Spanish bishop, Fray Juan de Zumárraga, the bishop asked him to return and ask the lady for a miraculous sign to prove her claim. The Virgin then asked Juan Diego to gather some flowers from the top of Tepeyac Hill, even though it was winter when no flowers bloomed. There, he found Castilian roses (which were of the Bishop’s native home, but not indigenous to Tepeyac). He gathered them, and the Virgin herself re-arranged them in his tilma, or peasant cloak. When Juan Diego presented the roses to Zumárraga, the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe miraculously appeared imprinted on the cloth of Diego’s tilma. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady_of_Guadalupe)”

Our tour guide stood on the Cathedral stairs telling us this story as behind him stood a statue of the Bishop. Historically Catholicism and the ancient Aztec’s religion melded in a way to give new birth to the Aztecs after the invasion of Spain. The Aztecs blended their social lives including their religion where they could to the symbolism of Catholicism.

“In 1611, the Dominican Martín de León, fourth viceroy of Mexico, denounced the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe as a disguised worship of the Aztec goddess Tonantzin.[16] 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.”[19]” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady_of_Guadalupe

As Eduardo, our guide, spoke to us, a young indigenous woman climbed the stairs toward us with a basket of dolls. Holding one in the air, and with a pleading look on her face, she was selling her wares apparently totally oblivious to the nature of the scene before her: we, listening to Eduardo our tour guide teaching us about the Mexican past. And Eduardo, who was a brilliant and wonderful guide, began talking to us not about her as she simultaneously climbed the stairs but about who she represented – about the 3 million indigenous peoples in Mexico who have not been incorporated into the contemporary Mexican fabric. Centuries after the invasion.

Was she pleading to us? Were we the present day Spaniards? Was this an historical re-enactment?

I don’t know. But it was remarkable. It’s like Coleridge’s ‘Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner’ – a poem about a story the Mariner retells because he doesn’t grasp its significance. Though he knows the story has one.

In this case there are two stories: that of the invaders and that of the indigenous people. Both coming together on the stairs of Our Lady of Guadalupe.