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History versus Juan Diego*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Stafford Poole
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Extract

On April 12 1939, from his place of exile in San Antonio, Texas, José de Jesús Manríquez y Zárate, first bishop of Huejutla, Mexico, wrote a pastoral letter to his priests and people, exhorting them to work for the cause of Juan Diego’s beatification. This was the first effective step in the process of canonizing the indigenous peasant who in 1531 is said to have experienced the apparitions of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The story of these apparitions has been the subject of intense controversy, especially with regard to their historical reality and the existence of Juan Diego.

Type
CLAH 2005 Luncheon Address
Information
The Americas , Volume 62 , Issue 1 , July 2005 , pp. 1 - 16
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2010

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Footnotes

*

This article was originally given as the luncheon talk for the Conference on Latin American History, Seattle, Washington, 7 January 2005.

References

1 José de Jesús Manríquez y Zárate, Carta pastoral que el Excmo. Y Rvmo. Obispo de Huejutla dirige a sus diocesanos sobre las necesidades de trabajar ahincadamente por la Glorificación de Juan Diego en este mundo. 12 April 1939. N.p. Beltrán, Lauro López, Orto, cenit y ocaso de Monseñor Manríquez y Zárate, Colección cincuentenario del Movimiento Actual pro Canonización de Juan Diego, vol. 4 (Mexico City: Editorial Tradición, 1989), pp. 54–55 Google Scholar.

2 The Guadalupe tradition has been the subject of intensive study in recent years. Among the more important works have been Poole, Stafford, Our Lady of Guadalupe: Origins and Sources of a Mexican National Symbol, 1531-1797 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Brading, D. A., Mexican Phoenix: Our Lady of Guadalupe: Image and Tradition Across Five Centuries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)Google Scholar; S.J., Xavier Escalada Enciclopedia Guadalupana, 4 vols in 2 (Mexico City, 1995);Google Scholar Fernández, Fidel Gonzalez, Sánchez, Eduardo Chávez, and Rosado, José Luis Guerrero. El encuentro de la Virgen de Guadalupe y Juan Diego (Mexico City: Editorial Porrúa, 1999);Google Scholar Lafaye, Jacques, Quetzalcoatl and Guadalupe: The Formation of Mexican National Consciousness, 1531-1813. Trans. Keen, Benjamin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976)Google Scholar; Maza, Francisco de la, El guadalupanismo mexicano (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1981)Google Scholar; Godinez, Francisco Miranda, Dos cultos fundantes: los Remedios y Guadalupe (1521-1649) (El Colegio de Michoacán, 2001)Google Scholar; Nebel, Richard, Santa María Tonantzin: Continuidad y transformación religiosa en México. Traducción del alemán por el Pbro. Dr.Bustillos, Carlos Warnholtz, arcipreste de la Insigne y Nacional Basílica de Guadalupe, con la colaboración de la señora Irma Ochoa de Nebel (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1995)Google Scholar; Noguez, Xavier, Documentos guadalupanos: Un estudio sobre lasfuentres de infor mación tempranas en torno a las mariofanías en el Tepeyac (Mexico: El Colegio Mexiquense, A.C. Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1993)Google Scholar; O’Gorman, Edmundo, Destierro de sombras: luz en el origen y culto de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de Tepeyac (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1986)Google Scholar.

3 On this see Woodward, Kenneth, Making Saints: Canonization, Theology, History (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997)Google Scholar; Woestman, William H., O.M.I., ed., Canonization: Theology, History, Process (Ottawa: Faculty of Canon Law, Saint Paul University, 2002)Google Scholar.

4 A description of this process by one of the participants is Salinas, Joel Romero, Juan Diego: su peregrinar a los altares (Mexico City: Ediciones Paulinas, 1992)Google Scholar.

5 Acta Apostolicae Sedis 82, n. 9 (4 Septembris 1990), pp. 853, 855.

6 “El milagro de Guadalupe: entrevista con Guillermo Schulenburg,” Ixtus: Espíritu y Cultura 3:15 (Winter 1995), p. 33 Google Scholar.

7 New York Times, 21 June 1996; La Opinión [Los Angeles], 28 and 29 May 1996, 3, 7 and 26 June 1996; National Catholic Reporter, 14 June 1996; Chicago Tribune, 6 and 24 June 1996; Washington Post (date unknown); Boston Globe, 1 June 1996; The Los Angeles Tidings, 13 September 1996; San Diego Union-Tribune, 7 September 1996; San José Mercury News 7 June 1996;

8 San José Mercury News, 7 June 1996.

9 Bill, and Coleman, Patty, “Guadalupe Caught in Clerical Struggle,” National Catholic Reporter, 14 June 1996 Google Scholar.

10 Ibid.

11 Ibid.

12 No. 47, reprinted in a pamphlet, “¡Qué pena Señor Abad!”, corrected 12 July 1996.

13 Fernández, González, Sánchez, Chávez, and Rosado, Guerrero El encuentro, p. xiii Google Scholar.

14 “Juan Diego existió: Las Pruebas,” Zenit [news service], 19 December 1999. This dispatch contains the full report plus an introduction whose author is not identified. The introduction states that González Fernández was studying the social origins of Juan Diego. “It is not know if he was a noble Indian or a ‘poor’ Indian. It is a question of confusion caused by the translations of the Nican mopohua into Castillan.” On the contrary the Nican mopohua says nothing of possible noble origins and consistently refers to Juan Diego as a commoner (macehualli).

15 Gonzalez Fernández, Chávez Sánchez, and Guerrero Rosado, El encuentro.

16 Introduction by Carrera, Cardinal Norberto Rivera, in Eduardo Chavez Sánchez, ed., La Virgen de Guadalupe y Juan Diego en las informaciones jurídicas de 1666 con facsímil del original. Alvarado, Con la colaboración de Alfonso Alcalá, Vázquez, Raúl Soto, Rosado, José Luis Guerrero, Gumpel, Peter. 2nd edition (Mexico, 2002)Google Scholar, unpaginated.

17 Catholic News Service, 7 December 1999.

18 Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe, pp. 219-20.

19 Reforma, date unknown.

20 Reforma, January 2002.

21 Interview with Marcela Turati, Grupo Reforma, 29 June 2002.

22 Rodriguez, Jeanette, Our Lady of Guadalupe: Faith and Empowerment among Mexican-American Women (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), p. 127 Google Scholar.

23 Nebel, Santa Maria Tonantzin, pp. 126-27, 240-41.

24 Brading, Mexican Phoenix, p. 345.

25 [S.J., Esteban Antícoli] Defensa de la aparicion de la Virgen Maria en el Tepeyac, escrita por un sacerdote de la Compania de Jesus contra un libro impreso en Mexico el año de 1891 (Puebla: Imprenta del Colegio Pio de Artes y oficios, 1893), p. 15.Google Scholar

26 America, 30 September 1995.

27 Brading, Mexican Phoenix, p. 361.

28 Anthropos Institut, 92 (1997), unpaginated.

29 Positio for beatification, 1989; Luis Guerrero Rosado, El Nican Mopohua: un intento de exegesis, 102; Princeofeden website.

30 Sousa, , Lockhart, , Poole, , The Story of Guadalupe, pp. 68–70, 69-71Google Scholar.

31 Lefkowitz, Mary, Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History (New York: Basic Books, 1996), p. xiv Google Scholar.

32 Carvajal, Federico Garza, Butterflies Will Burn: Prosecuting Sodomites in Early Modern Spain and Mexico (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003), pp. 3–4 Google Scholar.

33 Ibid., p. 4.

34 Ibid., p. 5.