At Tepeyac, the sacred hill on the outskirts of Mexico City, where the shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe attracts millions every year, I did not find her.
She was omnipresent -- on key chains, refrigerator magnets, posters, T-shirts, holy water bottles; in resin, tile, stone, plastic and behind bulletproof glass in the Basilica de Guadalupe, where the tilma (cloak) of Juan Diego bears her miraculous image on 474-year-old maguey fiber that should have deteriorated after 20 years.
But she didn't touch me there in her gigantic villa the size of a convention center with moving walkways up to the altar, where pretty young girls with brightly colored ribbons in jet-black hair sit motionless and weathered old men holding tattered sombreros bow their heads and mumble prayers, where priests begin and end Mass and begin again in a never-ending service. No, I didn't find her there.
I was moved by the faithful -- carrying photographs, banners, rosaries and sick children; devotees who came in polished new shoes and on their knees to seek La Virgin's blessings. On the lava stone plaza outside the basilica, I was swooped up in the theatrics of fire-eaters, jugglers, mimes and hawkers. I tasted the greasy, sugary gorditas , smelled the copal incense and fragrant roses, had my picture snapped in front of Our Lady painted on plywood in a makeshift photo studio (I did not sit on the live donkey). I bought a statuette, a cross with her picture and a bar of soap with her image in relief.
Good grief, I wondered, what's wrong with me? Here I am at the shrine of the most beloved Mother of the Americas, an icon who has crossed physical, political, spiritual and cultural borders, whose banner in the hands of Hidalgo led downtrodden Mexicans to their liberation from Spain, whom Cesar Chavez called on to rally grape pickers in California . . . and I am not getting it.
It would take two years and several more treks through Central America before she made her presence felt to me. It was in the home of a schoolteacher in Chichicastenango, in the highlands of Guatemala. Kindly invited in off the street for a refrescos because I looked hot and confused, I was offered juice and a rest. There, sitting with his grandmother while assorted children, cousins and chickens wandered in and out, I glanced into the tiny living room and -- eureka .
 |
| A shrine to the Virgin of at the Basilica de Guadalupe, outside of Mexico City.(Juan Barreto - AFP/Getty Images) |
It was a simple home altar. Flickering votive. Tuberose in a chipped blue pitcher. Black-and-white family photos. A rosary, ceramic figurine, plastic toy. A hand-carved Our Lady in a wooden shadowbox surrounded by paper flowers and strips of tinsel and ribbon.
She was serene. Her place of honor and hope in that humble home was instantly recognizable. I was touched by La Virgin and have been looking for her on my journeys ever since, hailing her presence everywhere from roadside shrines to kitschy souvenir stands, from softly fading chapel frescoes to the corner store where her visage is often surrounded by loudly flashing Christmas lights, from the barrios of California to a housewares emporium in Amsterdam.
Guadalupe is a traveler. She is rolling across the Rio Grande like a tidal wave, and she's even going global. She is one of the most recognized icons in the world, her appeal going beyond religious significance -- to cultural pride, equality, liberation and artistic inspiration. She has spawned a merchandising landslide, with her image appearing on just about everything imaginable: hood ornaments, baseball caps, belt buckles, switch-plate covers.
Mexico was her birthplace. In 1531, after the Spanish conquered Mexico, taking their Aztec culture and religion and giving them Catholicism, legend has it that the Virgin appeared to the peasant Juan Diego, telling him to go the bishop and ask that a chapel be built on Tepeyac. The skeptical bishop sent Juan Diego on the impossible task to gather roses in the dead of winter as proof of this miraculous apparition. When Juan Diego returned with the roses and opened his tunic to reveal them, the imprint of the New World Virgin Mary, La Morena, appeared -- only she was brown-skinned like the Mexicans, not white like the Europeans.
It was love at first sight. Today, seemingly every home and business throughout Central America displays her image.
"You like Our Lady," said the young woman approvingly, putting four Virgin of Guadalupe tin niches into my bag. She ran an artisan's booth in San Miguel de Allende, the charming colonial town four hours north of Mexico City. "She is mother to all poor people," said the vendor. "She liberated us."
