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Guadalupe’s Pilgrim Image Visits Our Parish School

Guadalupe’s Pilgrim Image Visits Our Parish School

Last updated on: September 19, 2026 at 1:13 pm by Verónica A. Gutiérrez

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Guadalupe’s Pilgrim Image Visits Our Parish School 2026-09-19T13:13:16-04:00 Verónica A. Gutiérrez

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La Peregrina: Our Lady of Guadalupe on Pilgrimage

Friends, my heart is heavy as I write. One of the moms in my youngest son’s class died suddenly, leaving behind several children, including a 1st and 3rd grader. As a parish school we are devastated. She was Mexican Catholic and I saw her often at daily Mass, so in her honor I describe an event which she would have loved, but was unable to attend. Jennyfer, may you rest in the eternal peace of Christ. Amen.

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Last June in “You Are Enough: Walking the Caminito de Santiago Compostela,” I described the Catholic tradition of traveling to a holy site on pilgrimage, opening yourself through movement to arrive at an unplanned spiritual destination.

This week my family had the opposite experience: a digital reproduction of the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe from the Basilica in Mexico City – which has been blessed and touched to the original image imprinted on an indigenous maguey cloak – came on pilgrimage to us, remaining in our parish church and school for two days. Indeed, from August 1 until a special procession and Mass at East L.A. College Stadium on December 6, la peregrina (female pilgrim) image of Guadalupe accompanied by an image of visionary San Juan Diego, will be traveling around the Los Angeles area; click here for a schedule. For a refresher on the Guadalupe story, see my December 2022 post: “Juan Diego and the Indigenous Engineers of Mexico-Tenochtitlan.”

The morning of la Guadalupana’s arrival was already special, not simply because it was my daughter’s birthday, but because it was the day she became a teenager. My children and I arrived to school early, my daughter opting to wait in her classroom while my sons and I crowded into the church courtyard. Mariachis had already gathered, as had a handful of school children dressed in clothing honoring la Virgen, with matachines (Aztec dancers) lingering in the parking lot.

Suddenly, the mariachis burst into “Las Mañanitas,” a traditional welcome or birthday song, followed by “La Guadalupana,” which describes the Lady’s apparition at Tepeyacac Hill in 1531 outside Mexico City. As the final notes faded, an indigenous dancer began beating with his bare hands on the huehuetl, an upright single-headed wooden drum with an animal-skin membrane traditionally used during sacred rituals, war ceremonies, and community dances. The other dancers held incense and waited as several men pulled the heavy framed image of San Juan Diego out of the back of an Archdiocesan truck; our pastor blessed it and the men on their way into the church.

Native musicians singing and dancing around a huehuetl. Image taken from the Digital Florentine Codex, Book 9, 30v, a 12-volume compendium produced in the sixteenth century by native intellectuals under the supervision of fray Bernardino de Sahagún, O.F.M.

The drumming intensified and the five barefoot dancers began spinning, the shells on their ankles jingling, the feathers in their elaborate headdresses swirling. Faster and faster they moved as the men pulled the heavy framed image of la Guadalupana out of the truck; the dancers stopped when the image appeared, offering smoking cups of copal incense, bowing their heads, and making the Sign of the Cross. Then one dancer blew a conch shell and the dancers began following la Guadalupana as the visiting bishop shouted, “Que viva la Guadalupana!” and we all shouted “Que viva!”

Parishioners carrying the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe into the church as mariachis wait in the background and indigenous dancers follow. Photo by author.

Once inside the church, we proceeded with 8am daily Mass, with the mariachis leading us in beautiful Spanish hymns and the dancers, feathered headdresses removed, sat reverently in a pew reserved for them in the back.

Pilgrim images of San Juan Diego and la Guadalupana next to the crucifix. Photo by author.

I sat in front row next to the school children dressed in their Guadalupana outfits because I had a special role. After everyone returned to their pews after receiving Holy Communion, our parish’s Director of Evangelization introduced me and I went up to the podium to read from the Nahuatl-English text, The Story of Guadalupe: Luis Laso de la Vega’s Huei tlamahuicoltica of 1649, including the Nahuatl words traditionally ascribed to la Guadalupa, translated as: Am I, your mother, not here? Are you not under my protective shade, my shadow? Am I not your happiness? Are you not in the security of my lapfold, in my carrying gear? Do you need something more? Do not let anything worry you or upset you further. Do not let your uncle’s illness worry you, for he will not die of what he now has. Rest assured, for he has already recovered.

Author reading in English and Nahuatl during Mass. Photo by author’s son.

The mariachis followed my reading by singing the Ave Maria, beautifully reflecting what Nahua-Christian neophytes in 1530s central Mexico would have experienced – prayers and Holy Mass in Latin with catechetical instruction in their native Nahuatl.

Juan Diego himself (whose existence scholars continue to debate) or other Nahua-Christians in sixteenth-century Mexico would not have been allowed inside of a church, however. They would have worshipped outside in open-air chapels (called capillas abiertas or capillas de naturales) with mendicant friars, as I discussed in my March 2024 post, Open-Air Worship: Outdoor Chapels for New World Nahuas, because of their sheer numbers, but also because Castilians would not deign to worship alongside native peoples, whom they considered inferior. This was but one example of the mistreatment native peoples suffered in the early years of colonial rule in Mexico [1521-1821], which, tradition tells us, prompted the appearance of the Mother of God in those lands as a Nahua noblewoman, to offer her love and protection to her native children. Today, the image of Guadalupe is ubiquitous in Mexico, in Mexican-American communities, and throughout Latin America. There is a shrine dedicated to her in La Cross, Wisconsin, of all places.

I have visited the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City many times; indeed, in 2019 I co-led a scholarly tour for faculty commissioned by the Conference on Faith and History to indigenous-Christian sites in central Mexico, ending with Mass at the Basilica. Greeting la peregrina at my parish church that morning, I felt transported to Mexico, grateful that those unable to make a pilgrimage to Mexico City might see this replica image and that Guadalupe’s message of love is becoming more widely known, especially as we near the 500-year anniversary of the apparitions.

The Story of Guadalupe: Luis Laso de la Vega’s Huei tlamahuicoltica of 1649 (Stanford University Press, 1998) from which the author read aloud in church, pp. 75-79.

Pope Leo XIV has just declared a jubilee year for the Guadalupe Basilica anniversary, beginning October 12, 2026. Perhaps with a traveling image and a jubilee year dedicated to an indigenous manifestation of the Mother of God, attitudes towards Mexico’s native peoples – both past and present – will finally improve. We need to move beyond the stereotypes of savage, heart-sacrificing, primitive peoples to recognize indigenous contributions in architecture, science, mathematics, and language. As Latin American historian Miriam Melton-Villanueva points out in her book, The Aztecs at Independence: Nahua Culture Makers in Central Mexico, 1799-1832 (Tucson: University of Arizona, 2016), “History books don’t offer the public spectacles of killing from the Roman era as the sole cultural feature, yet that tends to be the only thing many students know about the Aztecs when they enter my classroom….” She adds that students reach conclusions about indigeneity that “dehumanize the American culture that, like Rome, gave its language to vast regions, facilitating trade—and this culture still lives today.”

I feel blessed at the opportunity to read Nahuatl aloud in church this week, as well as to present to a wider audience the beauties of Nahua language and culture in my forthcoming children’s chapter book, Juan Diego and the Lady on the Hill [Vision Book, Ignatius Press, anticipated publication 2028]. May we all recognize the dignity of all peoples, created in God’s image and likeness.

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