Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Evangelical
Religious Events
Juan Diego and the Indigenous Engineers of Mexico-Tenochtitlan

Juan Diego and the Indigenous Engineers of Mexico-Tenochtitlan

Last updated on: December 9, 2022 at 2:04 pm by Verónica A. Gutiérrez

Juan Diego and the Indigenous Engineers of Mexico-Tenochtitlan 2022-12-09T14:04:04-04:00 Verónica A. Gutiérrez

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, I am currently writing a children’s chapter book about St. Juan Diego for Ignatius Press’s popular Vision series. “Writing” is a generous term, since between launching the Great Books Program en español for the Angelicum Academy last week (it went so well!) and homeschooling my three children (K, 2nd, and 4th), I am advancing slowly on the manuscript. Writing this post has reignited my enthusiasm for the project.

According to Catholic tradition, Juan Diego was a widowed, middle-aged, recently-Christianized native commoner to whom the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared over several days in early December 1531, 10 years after the Castilians with their African slaves and indigenous allies vanquished Mexico-Tenochtitlan. He was walking along a footpath past a hill called Tepeyacac (at-the-nose-of-the-mountain) on his way to Saturday morning Mass when he heard the ethereal singing of birds, then a voice from the crest of the hill sweetly calling him by name in Nahuatl (the Mexica [Aztec] language). He encountered an ichpochtli, or young unmarried native woman, outlined brilliantly in the pre-dawn darkness. Maternal despite her youth, she spoke with him tenderly, asking him to go to the local bishop, fray Juan de Zumárraga, a Franciscan, and request that he build a chapel in her honor at that location so she might hear the cries of her people.

As to be expected, the friarly teopixque (person-who-guards-the-divine) though kind, did not believe the poor macehualli (native commoner) and asked him to return another day. Juan Diego reported his failure to the Lady and asked her to send somebody important, but she assured him that he was the messenger she desired. She asked him to try again and he agreed to return to the bishop the following morning. After Sunday Mass, Juan Diego visited fray Juan de Zumárraga again, and though the friar questioned him, he would not believe without a divine sign. After reporting the disappointing encounter to the Lady back at Tepeyacac, Juan Diego agreed to return in the morning for a sign she would provide.

Upon reaching home that evening, however, Juan Diego found his uncle, Juan Bernardino, also a Christianized Nahua, in his death throes. Setting out in the early morning darkness to fetch a priest, Juan Diego took the long way around Tepeyacac to avoid the Lady, but she saw him, stopped him, and asked where he was going. He politely requested that he be pardoned from their meeting given his important errand. After revealing that Juan Bernardino had been healed, the Lady instructed Juan Diego to gather the flowers that were growing on the hillside, Caxtillan xochitl (Castilian flowers) and take them to the bishop as a sign. He went and gathered the flowers, showing them to the Lady who gathered them in her arms and then arranged them in his tilmatli (working class maguey-fiber cloak) with her own hands – this is my favorite part!

When, in the presence of the friarly teopixque, Juan Diego let fall the blossoms, the Virgin’s image imprinted itself on the cactus fibers. The bishop, regretting his disbelief, took the image off Juan Diego’s neck and placed it in his personal oratory. The next day, fray Juan de Zumárraga asked the humble reed mat seller to take him to the site where the Lady had appeared, and a contingent from the bishop’s residence followed him across the causeway to Tepeyacac. Afterwards, Juan Diego insisted on seeing his uncle and they would not allow him to go alone, accompanying him over the hillsides to his family’s complex of simple homes in Cuauhtitlan (Place-of-the-Eagle). There, Juan Bernardino confirmed that the Lady appeared to him and revealed her name as “Guadalupe” — or at least this is what the Spaniards heard, recognizing the name from an existing Virgin in Spain; to the Nahuas this word would have been unpronounceable as Nahuatl lacks a d or g.

The bishop oversaw construction of the chapel and devotion began immediately among the native population, or as the Nahuatl story beautifully describes it: “There was a movement in all the altepetls [city-states] everywhere of people coming to see and marvel at her precious image. They came to show their devotion and pray to her; they marveled greatly at how it was by a divine miracle that she had appeared, that absolutely no earthly person had painted her precious image.” (The Story of Guadalupe: Luis Laso de la Vega’s Huei tlamahuiçoltica of 1649, 89).

Mexico - Our Lady of Guadalupe - 206 Tours - Catholic Tours

The main complication in writing this book is that beyond the basic story line, we know very little about Juan Diego’s life. Indeed, several prominent Latin American historians, among them the late Vincentian priest, Stafford Poole, and British historian David Brading, deny Juan Diego’s existence altogether. Stafford Poole is one of the translators of The Story of Guadalupe: Luis Laso de la Vega’s Huei tlamahuiçoltica of 1649 (with Lisa Sousa and the late James Lockhart), the earliest extant written source we have in Nahuatl, published 118 years after the apparitions. Penned by Luis Laso de la Vega, the vicar of the Guadalupe chapel, it appeared one year after his friend, another priest named Miguel Sánchez, published Imagen de la Virgen María, Madre de Dios de Guadalupe, embedding the apparition story within an extensive biblical exegesis. Because of the unwieldy nature of the Sánchez publication, the concise Nahuatl version has become the official story, and it is the one upon which I rely for my narrative framework.

While devotional materials on Guadalupe have appeared steadily since the sixteenth-century, only recently have scholars such as Timothy Matovina, Professor of Theology at Notre Dame, begun arguing for the veracity of the story in ways we have not seen since pro-apparitionist writings published during Mexico’s colonial period. Our own former CFH secretary, Rick Kennedy, shared with me an article he penned defending Juan Diego and Guadalupe after visiting the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City on a CFH trip that Ron Morgan and I co-led under the auspices of the CFH’s Latin American Initiative in 2019, and then reading Poole and Matovina.

I myself attended Juan Diego’s canonization ceremony in Mexico City on July 31, 2002 with my mother and my sister. Pope St. John Paul II presided over the canonization and with thousands of others, we lined the streets leading to the Basilica to watch the papal procession pass and to follow the ceremony on the large screens set up on street corners, witnessing the historical declaration of the first indigenous saint of the Catholic church. This experience serves as the epilogue to my book.

A portrait of Mexican peasant Juan Diego is carried past Pope John... News Photo - Getty Images Pope John Paul Ii Mexico Photos and Premium High Res Pictures - Getty Images
Images of the canonization of Juan Diego as the first indigenous saint of the Catholic Church in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mexico City, July 31, 2002

Even so, how does one write 38,000-48,000 words in a captivating way for children about a saint whose biography is so limited and whose story involves only a few characters? Invention. Or more accurately, calling upon my training as a creative non-fiction writer (thank you, MFA!) to re-create the historical context of San Juan Diego’s world, relying heavily on Camilla Townsend’s Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs and Barbara E. Mundy’s The Death of Aztec Tenochtitlan, The Life of Mexico City. And invention.

You’ve stayed with me this far, so…. what do indigenous engineers have to do with Juan Diego’s story? Nothing directly, for they are not characters in the story, and yet they affected Juan Diego’s experience profoundly precisely because of their absence.

Most renditions of the Guadalupe story that I’ve seen do not take into account that Mexico-Tenochtitlan was located on an island in Lake Texcoco, sharing the northern portion with the altepetl (city-state) of Tlatelolco. Residents remained connected to the mainland via three long causeways (raised roadways serving as dikes), which Juan Diego would have had to traverse to reach the bishop. Ten years earlier, in 1521 during the final 3-month siege of the Mexica-Castilian war, Hernando Cortés had launched 12 small brigantines he had built with his indigenous allies in Tlaxcala and carried in pieces to the lake outside Texcoco (see map below). Giving orders to destroy the aqueducts from Chapultepec and Nonohualco and thus cut off Tenochtitlan’s water supply, Cortés, his captains, and their indigenous allies attacked via causeway and lake, breaching the dikes separating the saltwater from the freshwater. European smallpox had already decimated the people and eventually the Mexica’s last tlatoani (Great Speaker) Cuauhtemoc surrendered from a canoe.

The Valley of Mexico, c. 1492

Because of the devastation, death, and flooding, Castilians did not occupy Tenochtitlan right away, but rather lived in nearby Coyoacan, across the lake, for three years. Cortés supposedly wished that Tenochtitlan would fall into the lake, and set up gallows to hang anyone who dared to settle there. For years the aqueduct and the dikes remained unrepaired, even after the Castilians moved to Tenochtitlan in 1524, so that when Juan Diego walked from his home village of Cuauhtitlan (Place-of-the-Eagle) across the causeway to “see the precious Mass” (a Nahua expression) in Tlatelolco in 1531, he would have passed the former freshwater lagoon whose waters were receding into the lower-lying salty lake. Previously supporting abundant man-made chinampan, or “floating gardens,” a technology the Mexica had learned from Chalco and Xochimilco, altepeme (city-states) they had conquered to the south, the waters in the lagoon in 1531 would have reeked from stagnation, and its aquatic life would have been suffering from these changes.

16th century map of the chinampan in the Chalco region (Archivo General de la Nación, Tierras vol. 2681, exp. 6)

Juan Diego would have been accustomed to crossing the northern causeway to attend the precious Mass with the Franciscan friars in Tlatelolco, but as a poor commoner, a weaver and seller of reed mats, he would have had no reason to visit Mexico-Tenochtitlan, the once-glorious Mexica (Aztec) capital, located in the heart of the island, unless the Lady sent him. As a first-time visitor, he would have noted his surroundings, which means it’s my job to research and describe to my young readers what he would have seen.

Close-up of modern chinampa in Xochimilco, south of Mexico City (www.mexicolore.co.uk)

The Mexica had constructed canals that crisscrossed the island, allowing canoes to enter with their goods, with paths lining the canals for foot traffic. Juan Diego would have walked alongside these canals, and what he would have seen would have been shocking. Since settling in Tenochtitlan seven years before, the Europeans had begun dumping dead animals (and dead native people!) and washing the runoff from slaughterhouses and tanneries into the canals, so that the water was polluted beyond recognition. During the period of Mexica power, native labor would have been dedicated to cleaning the canals, to taking freshwater to the chinampan and maintaining them, and to gathering and taking human excrement away from the island every night in canoes, among other tasks. Europeans, unaccustomed to living in an environment so closely associated with water (they were mostly from the dry region of Extramadura in Castile) either did not understand the value of these “menial” jobs, or preferred to use their indigenous labor on other projects. Either way, they discontinued those practices, going so far as to actively drain and fill in the lake, resulting in unpredictable flooding and a lack of freshwater that lasted for decades.

Artist’s rendition of part of the canal network linking the chinampan in Tenochtitlan; the squiggly lines indicate water and the footprints indicate that these are walking paths (www.mexicolore.co.uk)

In the 1530s, the tianquiztli, or marketplace, in both Tlatelolco in the north of the island and in Tenochtitlan in the central region, would have been dominated by native women, per Mesoamerican tradition, with items arranged on the ground by kind. The main currency would have remained cacao beans, for few Europeans frequented these markets. Women served as overseers and vendors, selling maize dough, cotton mantles, raw materials, foaming drinks, and eventually religious articles; visitors could also buy prepared food or get a haircut, and prior to European arrival, they could buy a slave or purchase a delicious bar of dried algae from the lake. Jonathan Truitt has a chapter on women in the marketplace, describing them as “cornerstones of Catholicism” in his book, Sustaining the Divine in Mexico Tenochtitlan: Nahuas and Catholicism, 1523-1700. Tenochtitlan’s tianquiztli would become a contested space in those early years, as Europeans considered it private property and native peoples viewed it as community land. In my story, Juan Diego traverses the marketplace in Tenochtitlan several times as he goes between the Lady and the bishop, and I have endeavored to re-create the sights and sounds of that early colonial experience for my readers.

Now, what about those indigenous engineers? Their knowledge stumped the Castilians, who made two expensive attempts early in the 16th century to repair the indigenous aqueducts and dikes they had broken, but failed. It would not be until 1575 that don Antonio de Valeriano, a native lord classically-educated at the Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco would, with the support of the Viceroy, receive approval from the Spanish cabildo (town council) to re-construct the aqueduct. This means that Juan Diego would have lived through the before and the after. Even if he had not walked all the way to Tenochtitlan prior to the morning the Lady appeared to him, he would inevitably have heard about the wonders of Tenochtitlan’s waterworks and waterways, and of its order. For the Mexica, Tenochtitlan functioned as the center of the universe, and maintaining order, sustaining equilibrium, was essential for their continued existence. Because the Castilians failed to consult indigenous engineers, Juan Diego’s walk to Mexico-Tenochtitlan in early December 1531 was profoundly affected.

Artist’s rendition of the landscape surrounding Tenochtitlan and the dikes connecting it with the mainland; the dike of Nezhualcoyotl
(separating the brackish waters from the freshwater) is visible on the right (www.mexicolore.co.uk)

Barbara Mundy argues in her book, The Death of Aztec Tenochtitlan, The Life of Mexico City, that indigenous Tenochtitlan did not die so that Spanish Mexico City might live. Rather, she demonstrates how indigenous Tenochtitlan remained, with native peoples being instrumental in sustaining it. Without indigenous involvement in reconstruction and in repairing and caring for waterworks, Tenochtitlan might have sunk into the lake. Mundy identifies native agency in a polity’s shift into a city, mapping the continuities between Aztec Tenochtitlan and 16th-century Mexico City, and in the process, she reorients Spanish-centric historiography. You can read a portion of her research on early Tenochtitlan in Water and the Aztec Landscape in the Valley of Mexico, from which I’ve pulled several images in this post.

For my part, my book, Juan Diego and the Lady on the Hill, relays the well-known Guadalupe story from an indigenous rather than Eurocentric perspective, highlighting the beauties of Nahuatl language and culture against the backdrop of the origins of Mexican Catholicism. My goal is to contest stereotypes of native peoples as primitive, savage, heart-sacrificing people, and immerse my readers – young children and their families – in the world of early colonial Mexico. To my knowledge, this will be the first such attempt to really engage with the indigenous, historical, and geographical context of the Guadalupe story.

It’s been quite a challenge adjusting my writing to a younger audience, but I’ve enjoyed doing the research to re-create Juan Diego’s world and learning more about how Tenochtitlan, the indigenous polity, became Mexico City, a Spanish-indigenous metropolis. Writing a historically-accurate children’s book is a much more intense scholarly endeavor than I had anticipated. I look forward to sharing more of my discoveries as I advance on the manuscript.

Catholic

Religious Events

History and Religion

Roman Catholic church

Verónica A. Gutiérrez

Origins of Mexican Catholicism

Our Lady of Guadalupe

Previous Post

October 13, 2022

The Great War of (Christian) Africa

Next Post

October 17, 2022 Evangélico Coloniality and the Continuing Politics of Translation

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category abolitionism Abortion Abraham Joshua Heschel Abraham Kuyper Abraham Lincoln Academia Activism Adam Renberg Advent Adventist africa African American Religion Agnes Howard Albert Camus American History American Religious History American Revolution American West Anabaptists Ancient History Andrea Turpin Andrei Tarkovsky Anglicanism Annales Ansley Lillian Quiros anti-Catholicism Antisemitism Anxious Bench apologetics Apparitions Arash Azizi Archaeology archives art Artificial Intelligence Asia Asian Americans Augustine Authors Bad Bunny Baptism Baptists Barack Obama Battle of Hastings Benjamin Franklin Bernard-Henri Levy Beth Allison Barr Beth Moore Bethany Mannon Bible Bill Cunningham Billy Graham Black Music Bob Dylan Body Boenhoffer Books Breastfeeding Bruce Springsteen C.S. Lewis Calvinism Cancel Culture Capitalism Carmelites Catholicism Cedric Robinson Cesar Chavez Charismaticism charity Charles Dickens Charles Lindbergh Che Guevara Chicago Children Chinese Christianity Chris Gehrz Christ Christian death Christian Higher Education Christian life Christian Nation Christian Nationalism Christianity Today Christmas Church life Church Practice cinema Civil Religion Civil Rights Movement Civil War civility Classics Climate Change Cold War Colonial Mexico colonialism Comer Communism community complementarianism Conference on Faith and History Congregationalism Conspiracies Conspiracy Conversion Narratives Coronavirus Costa Rica Council of Nicaea Covid-19 Creation Critical Race Theory Crusades Culture culture wars Daniel K. Williams David Barton David Swartz Death Ways death with dignity DEI democracy Democratic Party Devotion Digital Age Diplomacy discipleship diversity Donald Trump Drama Dua Lipa Early Church early modern Early modern Catholicism Easter Eastern Christianity economic exploitation Education elections Elie Wiesel Elizabeth II Elizabeth Taylor emotions Empire Engineering England enslavement Entertainment Episcopal Church Erica Ramirez eschatology Eurocentrism Evangelicalism Evangelicals Exegesis Family Feminism Film Flannery O'Connor folk music Food Foreign Policy founding fathers Franciscans Franciscus Junius fundamentalism Funerals G.K. Chesterton Gender Genocide genre geography George W. Bush George Washington George Whitefield Global Christianity Global church Grief Guadalupe guest post Guest Post gun control gun violence Gustavo Gutierrez Hamid Dabashi Harold John Ockenga Harvest Hate Hawaiian Christianity Healing health care Heather Cox Richardson Hell Heresy Hermeneutics Higher Education Hinduism Hippocratic oath Historical Fiction Historical Methodology Historical Profession Historical Profession Historical Theology Historical Thinking historiography Holidays Holocaust horror movies Human rights Humanitarian Work humanities Hummingbirds Hungary hymns Imago Dei Immigration Injustice Interviews Iran Islam Islamophobia Israel Ivan's Childhood Jacob Randolph James Bratt Janine Giordano Drake Japanese history Japanese Literature Jean Paul Sartre Jesse Miranda Jesus Jesus Christ Jimmy Carter Joan Baez Joan Didion Joanne Freeman João B. Chaves Joao Chaves Joey Cochran John Calvin John Fea John Tillotson John Turner Johnny Cash Jonathan Edwards Jonathan Tran Joseph Smith Josh Howerton Journalism Jr. Judaism Jürgen Moltmann Just War Justice Justin Brierley Karl Barth Katelyn Beaty koi ponds Kris Kristofferson Kristin Kobes Du Mez Latin American Religious History Latino Americans Lectio Divina Leisure Lent Leonard Cohen liberal arts liberalism Liberation Theology Linda Ronstadt Lisa Clark Diller Literature Lou Reed Lynchings Lynneth Miller Renberg Mainline Protestantism Malcolm Foley Marilyn Monroe Maritime history Mark Noll Marriage Martin Luther Martin Luther King Martyrdom Marxism Mary Masih Alinejad mass shootings material culture medieval Christianity Medieval Ethiopia Melissa Borja memory Mennonites Mental Health Mental Illness Methodism Mexican Americans Mexicans Mike Madrid Miles Mullin Min Jin Lee Miscarriage Missionaries Mister Rogers Mitt Romney modernity Monasticism Mormonism Motherhood Mothers of the Church Moving Music Musicals Nadya Williams Nahua Christianity Native Americans Natsume Sōseki New Contributor New England New Year New York Nico Non-Violent Protest Orthodoxy pacifism Paleo Evangelicals Palestinians Parenting Patti Smith Paul Kingsnorth Pedro Calderón de la Barca Pentecostalism Philip Jenkins Phillis Wheatley physician-assisted suicide pilgrimage Pilgrims pluralism Plutocracy Poetry Politics Pope Francis Pope Leo XIV post-modernism prayer preaching Presbyterians prosperity gospel Protest Public history Publishing Puritans purity culture Quakers race Race Massacres Racial Capitalism racial reconciliation racialization Racism Raha Bahloulipour Re-Enchantment reading Reformation Refugees religion and the university religion and war Religious Freedom Religious Nones Religious Pluralism Religious Symbols religious violence Republican Party Revival Rita Coolidge Ritual Roger Williams Roman Catholic church Royalty Russell Moore same-sex marriage Sarah Irving-Stonebraker Scandinavia Science Science and Technology Scopes trial Scriptural Interpretation secularism Selena Quintanilla seminary Seventh-Day Adventists sexual morality Sexuality Sikhs Silence slaveholders theology Slavery Slavoj Zizek social justice Social Media Southern Baptist Convention Southern Religion Spain Spiritual Autobiography Spiritual but not religious Spiritual Discipline Sports Stanley Hauerwas Suffering Summer Camps Sunday Night Odds and Ends Supernatural Supreme Court Syriac Christianity Tal Howard Taylor Swift Teaching Technology Television Thanksgiving The Beatles The Mission theater TheoBros Theology Thomas Dixon Thomas Jefferson Thomas Kidd Thomas Merton Tim Gloege Tim Walz Tom Holland Tourism tradition Tragedy Translation Transnationalism Travel Trump Ukraine Uncategorized Unitarians United Methodist Church US History Vanessa Chan Velvet Underground Verónica A. Gutiérrez Veronica Gutierrez Vikings Violence Virgin Mary Virtue Virtue ethics Visions Voting War WCTU Wendell Berry Westminster Assembly White Evangelicalism Wildfires Winnie the Pooh Witches women Women in Ministry Women's and Gender Studies Work Worship writing Yasunari Kawabata Zena Hitz

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What king sought Isaiah's prayers when facing Assyrian invasion?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Hezekiah Rehoboam Manasseh Josiah