ASSIGMENT PILGRIMAGE TO THE VIRGIN OF JUQUILA_ THE NEGOTIATION OF CATHOLIC

INTRODUCTION

In the late sixteenth century and early seventeenth century, Dominican missionaries

arrived to the coast of Oaxaca, the Pacific coastal region of New Spain, to convert

numerous Indigenous peoples in the name of the Catholic Church and complete the failed

Franciscan campaigns that occurred in the early sixteenth century (Figure 1). Many of the

Dominicans carried literal and metaphorical tools of evangelization with them, such as

statues of Mary to visually enhance their practice of religious instruction. Specifically, the

Dominican friar Jordán de Santa Catarina, who arrived in Oaxaca in 1552, preached the

Catholic dogma in various small towns, such as Amialtepec, while wielding a small

statue of the Immaculate Conception, who is today identified as the Virgin of Juquila

(Figure 2). The existing scholarship on the Virgin of Juquila exists only within the social

sciences, and is mostly and mostly written in Spanish. In an art historical framework,

there has been no scholarship produced on the statuette of the Virgin of Juquila, therefore

there has been no concrete examination of the object’s function as a localized icon of

both Indigenous practice and Spanish colonialism. Dominican missionaries used the

statuette as a mediator for religious conversion practices in the local Chatino community.

Moreover, the moment the Virgin of Juquila gained significant Indigenous popularity in

the small town of Amialtepec, the church seized the opportunity to reclaim the statuette

as a source of social control by taking advantage of the object’s developed spiritual

associations among Chatinos.

The first introduction of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception icon in

New

Spain was due to Hernán Cortés’ exploration of the Yucatán Peninsula in 1519. During

Cortés’ journey, he carried with him a banner of the shield of Castilla and León on one

side, representing the Spanish crown, and an image of the Virgin on the other, indicating

the crown’s devotion to the Catholic Church. Cortés and his campaign in the Americas

were used to spread the arrival and presence of the Immaculate Conception, and

demonstrated the Crown’s devotion to the Church in fulfilling the spread of Catholic

faith to the peoples he encountered.1 Many Marian devotional objects and images (i.e.

images of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception) brought to the Americas with the

arrival of the Spanish have transformed into pilgrimage sites later shaped through the

oftentimes violent negotiations between localized indigenous practices and the Catholic

Church. Pilgrimage sites in Mexico, such as the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico City or

Our Lady of San Juan de Los Lagos in Jalisco, receive millions of pilgrims each year to

give their respects and requests. The statuette of the Virgin of Juquila is one of the top

three most visited pilgrimage sites in Mexico but, despite its regionalized popularity, it is

often eclipsed by the more well-known tilma image of the Virgin of Guadalupe who has a

more nationalistic identity.2

Since the seventeenth century, the Virgin of Juquila has had a large devotional

following with her annual pilgrimage being on December 8th—the feast day of the

Immaculate Conception. Currently, the statuette of the Virgin of Juquila resides in the

Sanctuary of Santa Catarina Juquila in the small town of Juquila, Oaxaca, Mexico (Figure

3). Regardless of the Virgin of Juquila’s high volume of pilgrims to the site each year, her

image and legacy have not been critically analyzed in the same way that the Virgin of

1 Iván Martinez, “The Banner of the Spanish Monarchy. The Political Use of the Immaculate

Conception,” in The Conception of Mary Immaculate. The Celebration of Dogma in Mexico, (D.F.

Mexico, Museo de la Basilica de la Virgen de Guadalupe, 2005): 125.

2 Beatriz Quintanar Hinojosa, “Ciudad de Oaxaca,” Guía de Oaxaca, August, 2007,

https://www.mexicodesconocido.com.mx

Guadalupe or the Virgin of San Juan de los Lagos have in scholarship past and present.

This thesis will place the image of the Virgin of Juquila in conversation with the other

popular Virgins in Mexico who each follow the same narrative formula implemented by

the Catholic Church and brought by the Spanish. Additionally, the similar patterns of

pilgrimage and reverence bestowed upon the Marian figures and their sites will be

comparatively explored in order to help guide understanding of the Virgin of Juquila’s

lesser status in Mexico.

Focusing on the statue of the Virgin of Juquila to demonstrate how the image of

the Immaculate Conception was used as a tool for conversion, I will compare and analyze

the sacred images and the pilgrimage sites of the Virgin of Juquila in Juquila, to the

Virgin of San Juan de Los Lagos in Jalisco, and the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico City.

The Virgin of San Juan de Los Lagos and Virgin of Guadalupe both have pilgrimages

attached to their narrative stories and sacred sites. The three devotional images share the

same image of the Immaculate Conception however, the Virgin of Guadalupe is

considered an acheiropoietic painting, while the Virgin of San Juan de los Lagos and the

Virgin of Juquila were built by an artisan. This distinction also elevates the divine

sacredness of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Through an iconographical analysis of these three

Immaculate Conception icon variations, I plan to demonstrate how they each became a

part of a repetitive process, or formula, of overlaying sacred Christian images on to

nonCatholic images and landscapes in New Spain for the sake of both nationalistic and

religious promulgation.

In this thesis I make the following propositions: the miraculous site of the Virgin

of Juquila in Amialtepec derives from a previous Chatino sacred site; the image of the

Virgi n of Juquila resembles a lunar deity recognized by Chatinos and not the

Dominican order; and the miracle story of the Virgin of Juquila, written in 1791 by

Joseph Manuel Ruiz y Cervantes, states the statuette gained an immediate devotional

pilgrimage by Chatinos but, the reverence and power of the statue of Juquila, did not

necessarily originate from Catholic dogma. Rather, it was built upon from a previous

Chatino belief system that had been established in Amialtepec and surrounding towns

before Spanish contact.

I argue that the statue of Virgin of Juquila functioned as an effective tool for

upholding imperial power via Spanish Catholic evangelization of Indigenous Chatinos, in

Oaxaca. Additionally, the consecration of the icon and her site as a location of religious

pilgrimage was a strategic act of imposing a Catholic agenda on to an Indigenous site,

which was already culturally sacred and meaningful for Chatinos. This thesis explores the

complicated negotiation of power between the Catholic Church and Indigenous Oaxacan

populations, as well as the adaptions to the pilgrimage to the Sanctuary of the Virgin of

Juquila in the seventeenth century up to the present day.

For my methodologies, I will use colonizing sight, symbolic articulation, and

iconography to analyze the statue of the Virgin of Juquila and her influence as an

intermediary of Spanish-Catholic evangelization. Additionally, I will explore the

negotiation of symbolic power from indigenous Chatino populations in Oaxaca to the

Catholic Church. Art historian, Jeanette Favrot Peterson, introduces the concept of

“colonizing sight” in her 2014 book, Visualizing Guadalupe: From Black Madonna to

Queen of the Americas. Peterson used the subjectivity of seeing as a method to analyze

the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe from Spain and the Americas. The subjectivity of

seeing positions images of Guadalupe as cultural artifacts and not necessarily as art

objects.3 I have expanded Peterson’s theory of colonizing sight to all five senses, a

colonial sensorium, also used by the Catholic Church to effectively evangelize

nonCatholic subjects. While Peterson primarily focuses on the use of visuality as a potent

weapon of indoctrination, this thesis will demonstrate how the five senses were

incorporated into the processions, prayers, rituals, traditions, and pilgrimages during

Catholic evangelization in New Spain.4

Anthropologists Leopoldo J Bartolomé and Alicia M. Barabas use the theory of

symbolic articulation to present the overlaying of Catholic symbols over Indigenous

symbols in New Spain, specifically in Oaxaca. In Barabas’s 2006 book Dones, dueños y

santos: Ensayo sobre religions en Oaxaca, she articulates that the term symbolic

articulation steps away from the anthropological term hybridity and, instead, shifts the

focus from a fusion of cultures to the study of relations and the maintenance of two

spheres with irreducible significances.5 This concept places cultures as their own entities

who interact with other cultures, often in close proximity. Moving away from the use of

the term hybridity helps break down misconceptions that cultural interactions in the

colonial period were harmonious.

In 1939, Erwin Panofsky presented the methodological approach of iconography

as an effective analysis of art. The importance of cultural knowledge when studying an

image helps the viewer understand the symbols represented, such as the codified symbols

3 Jeanette Farvrot Peterson, Visualizing Guadalupe: From Black Madonna to Queen of the Americas,

(Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014): x.

4 Ibid., 9.

5 Alicia Barabas, Dones, Dueños y Santos: Ensayo Sobre Religiones en Oaxaca, 1.st ed. México,

(D.F.:

Instituto Nacional De Antropologa E Historia, 2006): 45.

used to identify Mary as the Immaculate Conception. Panofsky stressed the

importance of studying the culture of origin a work of art is produced within in order to

properly understand the meaning behind an image. The Catholic Church has

iconographically consolidated very specific meanings and rules to religious imagery so

broader audiences could understand and recognize the visual messages that are being

communicated. Such modes of visual exchange and meaning making between cultural

object and colonized viewer thus ensures power structures are maintained within and by

the Catholic church.

The sources discussed below demonstrate the lack of art-historical research

conducted on the Virgin of Juquila; however, scholars have extensively researched other

Marian images of the Immaculate Conception from Mexico that date back to the colonial

period. The sources that mention Juquila are written through historical, anthropological

and sociological lenses and provide helpful information to understand the socio-historical

and cultural impact of the image of Juquila and the annual pilgrimage. While in Oaxaca, I

visited archives and libraries, and found more primary source research related specifically

to the Virgin of Juquila and her pilgrimage site. The museum and library of Santo

Domingo de Guzmán holds an extensive collection of pre-Columbian artifacts from the

area of Juquila and as the Burgoa Library has missionary documents and correspondence

from the first archbishop of Mexico, Juan de Zumárraga. Most critical is having access to

the documents for the indoctrination of the Virgin of Juquila, approved by Zumárraga. In

addition, the Burgoa Library also has documents related to Friar Jordán de Santa Catarina

and others who encountered the area of Juquila during their mission trips. The Archivo

Histórico de Oaxaca (the Historical Archive of Oaxaca) has a stack of Dominican

documents of their confraternities which provide information about decisions to establish

the Sanctuary of Juquila as well as Dominican encounters with Indigenous

communities throughout Oaxaca.

In Visualizing Guadalupe: From Black Madonna to Queen of Americas, Peterson

studies the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe and how visual culture in Christian images

become a, “potent weapon of indoctrination in the evangelization and colonization of the

Americas.”6 The acts of seeing holy images were intended to spark cognitive, spiritual,

visionary responses through bodily performances.7 Even though Peterson does not

mention the Virgin of Juquila in her book, she does go in depth about how the

Immaculate Conception shaped faith through sacred cloth and veiled body, miracle

narratives, and the importance of processions and bodily performances by devotees. The

Virgin of Juquila and the Virgin of Guadalupe are both Immaculate Conceptions in

Mexico that have an extensive devotional following that includes an annual pilgrimage to

their respective shrines.

In 2015, historian, Graziano Frank published Miraculous Images and Votive

Offerings in Mexico, based on his interdisciplinary field study on miracles and votive

offerings, petitionary devotion, and ex-votos in mostly the southern and west-central

states of Mexico. Frank wrote about a dozen devotional images, including, the Virgin of

Juquila, the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Virgin of San Juan de Los Lagos, and many Marian

figures. The chapter on the Virgin of Juquila primarily centers on her contemporary cult

following of the Virgin and pilgrimage route. Frank describes the mountainous landscape

of the town of Juquila and provides context in the form of short interviews of the Virgin’s

devotees who simply answer with the words, “it’s the tradition,” when asked about their

6 Peterson, Visualizing Guadalupe, 9.

7 Ibid., 10.

ritual pilgrimage . The chapter expands on faith, devotion, and the offerings left for

Juquila along the pilgrimage route and summarizes the history of Juquila, including her

miracle story, but lacks any detail about the Chatino influence or devotees. The rest of the

book articulates the crucial aspect of Saints as critical mediators between the heavenly

realm and the Earth-bound followers. The miraculous images mentioned throughout

Frank’s book demonstrate the importance of a sacred presence where the local

enculturated idea of the saints’ essence helps authenticate the space as sacred.

Joseph Manuel Ruiz y Cervantes wrote the text, Memoria de la portentosa imágen

de Nuestra Señora de Xuquila. Printed in Mexico City by Felipe de Zúñiga y Ontiveros

printing press in 1791, the book proposed an official miracle story about the

Virgin of Juquila that could be distributed around Mexico during the eighteenth century.

The book is a total of 136 pages and includes a description of the statue of the Virgin of

Juquila as well as the Sanctuary of Santa Catarina of Juquila in Juquila, Oaxaca. Aside

from the miracle story, Ruiz y Cervantes also describes the advocations of the

communities in Oaxaca and how pilgrimage gained immense popularity in a short

amount of time. The miracle story has a biased interpretation of the event as it was

written under the guidance of the Church and was dedicated to José Gregorio Alonso de

Ortigosa the bishop of Oaxaca from 1775–1793. The book also includes the coat of arms

of Ortigosa, an engraving of the statue of the Virgin of Juquila, two maps showing the

pilgrimage route to the shrine, and an illustration of the Church of Santa Catarina Juquila,

all created by artist Francisco Agüera.

In 2016, historian, William B. Taylor published, Theater of a Thousand Wonders:

A History of Miraculous Images and Shrines in New Spain. Taylor examines many

shrines throughout New Spain during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

During the colonial period, the advocation of the Virgin Mary spread throughout New

Spain and Taylor asserts the Virgin’s influence grew through the focus on sacred places,

landscapes, and multi-sensory experiences. Taylor divides the book into two sections:

“Part I

Bearings: Historical Patterns and Places of Images and Shrines” and “Part II Soundings:

Divine Presence, Place, and the Power of Things.” In Part I, chapter 2, “Growth, Other

Changes, and Continuities in the Late Colonial Period,” Taylor does mention the Virgin

of Juquila as part of the statistical analysis of twenty-three shrines that gained regional

following in the eighteenth century, but does not go in-depth about the history of the

pilgrimage.8 Later in part II, chapter 5 “Making Miracles,” Taylor mentions the

eighteenth century book by Joseph Manuel Ruiz y Cervantes on the miracle story of the

Virgin of Juquila, and makes note of the 2,000 wax milagritos, or little miracles, left in

1791 at the shrine of the Virgin.9 Taylor other book, Shrines and Miraculous Images:

Religious Life in Mexico Before the Reforma,(2011) that provides more of an insight on

the religious influence of missionaries in New Spain and how chroniclers during the

earlier part of the colonial period formed a “spiritual conquest by mendicant friars.”10

In 2008, historian, Yanna Yannakakis wrote, The Art of Being In-Between: Native

Intermediaries, Indian Identity, and Local Rule in Colonial Oaxaca. Yannakakis

questions and introduces a new way of thinking about the processes of cultural exchange

and Indigenous resistance in colonial Oaxaca. The book focuses on Indigenous

8 William B. Taylor, Theater of a Thousand Wonders: A History of Miraculous Images and Shrines in New

Spain, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016): 98.

9 Ibid., 322.

10 William B. Taylor, Shrines and Miraculous Images: Religious Life in Mexico Before the Reforma,

(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2011): 25.

intermediary figures , such as those who work with the government, assist Catholic

priests, economic middlemen, nobility, and Indigenous, or even as interpreters to aid in

the process of colonization. While Yannakakis does not highlight the Church of Juquila,

she does provide an analysis of the importance of Indigenous intermediaries that shaped

Oaxaca’s political, social, religious, and cultural traditions after the Spanish arrival.

Unlike Mexico City, the area of Oaxaca lacked Spanish officials, such as clergy, teachers,

and other government positions thus leading to Spanish reliance on Indigenous

intermediaries to perform these duties.

Edward Wright-Ros, wrote a chapter called, "Our Lady of Juquila: Nation,

Region, and Marian Devotions” in Marian Devotions, Political Mobilization, and

Nationalism in Europe and America 2016, edited by Roberto Di Stefano and Francisco

Javier Ramón Solans, focuses on Juquila as part of the Americas section with the

inclusion of three other Marian devotions. Wright-Ros challenges secular nationalism

and Catholic counter-nationalism in order to understand Marian devotions in Mexico.

This chapter had the most information on the historiography of the Virgin of Juquila and

how she gained popularity over the centuries. Wright-Ros argues that Juquila gained

popularity during the rise of Mexican nationalism leading up to the Mexican Revolution

in 1910. The institutional impact of the Church of Juquila went beyond ecclesiastical

interests, it also focused on economic activities surrounding the pilgrimage route.

WrightRos critiques Joseph Manuel Ruiz y Cervantes’ book as a romanticized narrative

that places the pilgrimage in the midst of wilderness and civilization through the

multilingual social groups that visited the Virgin of Juquila.

Overall, this literature review of primary and secondary sources provides certain

aspects of a sociocultural framework of the Virgin of Juquila; however, none of them

fully address the impacts of her as a tool of evangelization or how her pilgrimage site is

another form of indoctrination. A crucial aspect that lacks in these sources is the life of

Chatinos prior to the Spanish arrival. A few anthropologists have analyzed the

preColumbian life and influence of Chatinos but have never put them in context with the

colonial period, especially with the image of Juquila. The statue of the Virgin of Juquila

demonstrates the long pattern of Spanish Catholic colonialism through the overlaying of

sacred Christian images on top of non-Catholic sacred images and sacred spaces. The

same pattern observed in San Juan de los Lagos with the Virgin of San Juan de los Lagos,

in Mexico City with the Virgin of Guadalupe, and in the Iberian-Peninsula when the

Spanish exiled Moors in 1492 and placed Catholic images on top of previous Muslim

sites. The statue’s provincial impact in the Oaxacan coast during the colonial period fits

into the development of colonization and evangelization in the Americas. The pilgrimage

route the Virgin of Juquila expanded the statue’s provincial reach into a

nationallyrecognized pilgrimage site. Outside of Mexico City, small communities

throughout New Spain intermittently received visits from religious officials however,

Indigenous laborers and commoners from those towns were left to teach the Christian

doctrine and perform catholic ceremonies. The mendicant orders relied on Indigenous

intermediaries to perform Catholic practices.11 Towns such as Juquila and Amialtepec as

well as other provincial areas in Oaxaca relied on native intermediaries to facilitate

colonial order

11 Yanna Yannakakis, The Art of Being in-between: Native Intermediaries, Indian Identity, and Local Rules

in Colonial Oaxaca, (Duke: University Press, 2008): 16.

demanded by the Spanish Crown. 12 I hope that this M.A. thesis will provide an overview

of Chatinos, the statue of the Virgin of Juquila, Marian devotions in New Spain, and the

issues that have never been resolved since the arrival of the Spanish in Oaxaca in the

sixteenth century.

Ibid., 3.

CHAPTER 1:

THE VIRGIN OF JUQUILA’S APPARITION AND THE MARIAN NARRATIVE

FORMULA

The miracle story of the statuette of the Virgin of Juquila falls under the extensive list of

Catholic miracle narrative stories about the Virgin Mary, what I call the Marian Narrative

Formula. The Marian Narrative Formula presents a three-part miracle story that involves

an individual outside of the church interacting with the Virgin Mary, the placement of a

sacred Catholic shrine devoted to the image (usually on top of a non-Catholic sites), and

the use of multi-sensory responses that generate a large devotional following. Colonial art

historian, Jeanette Favrot Peterson, has illustrated the use of these steps in her 2014 book,

Visualizing Guadalupe: From Black Madonna to Queen of the Americas. Peterson

analyses how visual culture in the Catholic Church has sharpened the Marian Narrative

Formula as an effective method of conversion, a Catholic method that has been replicated

in different cultures since the medieval period in Europe and during the invasion of the

Americas in the colonial period. The miracle story written in 1786 by Joseph Manuel

Ruiz y Cervantes about the statue of the Virgin of Juquila, utilizes the Marian Narrative

Formula through the incorporation of an Indigenous person interacting with the statue, a

transformation of an Indigenous shrine, and the large pilgrimage that formed in the

Virgin’s honor.

The rise of Marian images in Catholic visual culture stems from the medieval

period as the demand for depictions of Mary increased. Other popular images of Mary

include: Madonna and Child, the Annunciation of Mary, the Immaculate Conception, the

Assumption of Mary, and the Virgin as Mother of God. The Spanish crown was directly

involved with the beneficiary of the Real Patronato (Royal Trust), this allowed Isabella

and Ferdinand to make decisions in Church matters. 13 In 1662, the Immaculate

Conception became the official protector of Spain and the Americas, and in 1727, she

became the Queen of the Americas.14 As a symbol of imperial unification carried out

during this period of mass evangelization, Marian shrines proliferated throughout the

Americas. Each shrine dedicated to the Immaculate Conception across New Spain

encapsulated the local culture, often embodying local indigenous characteristics and

traditions.

In 1725, the town of Santa Catarina Juquila was named the head municipality and

district of the coastal region of Oaxaca. As the head town, Juquila would require an

extravagant church that displayed the Catholic presence, especially now that the town had

acquired the statue of Juquila. In 1783, Antequera Bishop, José Gregorio Alonso de

Ortigosa, approved the construction of the new Sanctuary of Santa Catarina of Juquila,

and assigned José Sánchez Parejas as the commissioner to collect the materials needed to

build the new sanctuary. Both Sánchez Parejas and Ortigosa solicited donation from

locals, as the town and the church lacked funding in the late eighteenth century.15 Once

Sánchez Pareja gathered enough materials, he contracted Bernardo Novas as the lead

architect.16 Novas described the plan for the new Sanctuary as 191.1 feet long and 85 feet

wide at the crossing, with eight columns attached to it. Fourteen vaults hold the church

ceiling, while the crossing suspended the large dome that included twenty-seven

clerestory windows. Six arc-paths frame the side chapels as well as strengthen the walls

13 Iván Martnez, the Banner of the Spanish Monarchy. The Political Use of the Immaculate

Conception, in Un Privilegio Sagrado: La Concepción de María Inmaculada: Celebración del

Dogma en Mxico, (Mexico City: Museo de la Baslica de Guadalupe, 2005): 125.

14 Taylor, Theater of a Thousand Wonders, 247.

15 Moisés Soriano Mendoza and Mario Lugos López, Peregrinaje Chatino, Los Caminos de Juquila,

(Oaxaca: 1450 Ediciones, 2014): 66-67.

16 Ibid., 68.

of the church. The altar had a big niche to place the statue of th e Virgin of Juquila.

Ideally, the architect and the bishop wanted the statue to rise above the altar and connect

with the pilgrims who venerated her. On February 22, 1874 the Sanctuary was finally

completed.17 Unfortunately, in 1931, a large earthquake struck the town of Juquila and

damaged the Sanctuary substantially. Minor reconstructions occurred until 1986, when

the priest, Bourguet Mendoza, decided to officially reconstruct the temple in its entirety.18

The Sanctuary that is seen today reflects a late-baroque style of architecture (Figure 3).

Today, upon entering the Sanctuary, a long, single open nave directs the viewer to

the center of the altar. As a pilgrimage site and a place of sacrifice the Sanctuary has no

pews. Unreachable to visitors, the statue of the Virgin of Juquila is placed behind glass in

a half-dome niche in the center of the Sanctuary’s altar. Two gold-plated, rectangular

Corinthian columns frame the opening of the niche (Figure 2 and 4). The statuette, 11.8

inches tall and about four inches wide, stands on a bronze and gold-plated circular base

with a lily ramification at her base. The intricate lilies have small floral charms on the tips

of the petals representing the virtues of the Divine Mother and the archangels Michael,

Gabriel and Rafael.19 Even though her attire is changed periodically, she repeatedly wears

a white and blue cloak with gold and blue embroidered emblems, colors that symbolize

the Immaculate Conception. 20 The delicate brown complexion of her face

17 Soriano Mendoza and Lugos López, Peregrinaje Chatino, Los Caminos de Juquila, 68. The

description was also included in the Joseph Manuel Ruiz y Cervantes Memorias de la portentosa

imagen de Nuestra Señora de Xuquila.: Quiso conservar las con noticia del santuario y antigua

romería, Mexico: Reimpresas en México: Por don Felipe de Zúñiga y Ontiveros, 1796.

18 Ibid., 69.

19 Mario Carlos Sarmiento Zúñiga, “Un portento milagroso en época de reformas. La imagen de la

Inmaculada Concepción de Juquila en la configuración de una devoción secular,” Estudios de

Historia Novohispana 56, (2017): 36.

20 Ibid., 28.

is the only part of her body visible to the viewer. A gold crown with small jewels and

stars decorate her dark hair, which drapes down her backside.

In 1989, El Centro Regional de Oaxaca del Instituto Nacional de Antropología e

Historia (The Regional Center of Oaxaca of the National Institution of Anthropology and

History), was given permission to run radiocarbon dating tests of the statue and

discovered that the image was in fact made during the sixteenth century out of wood and

did not include the bronze and gold-plated base. On the other side of the altar wall, the

niche of the statue can be accessed by the clergy through the sacristy room in the

Sanctuary (Figure 5). A golden scalloped pattern reminiscent of a mandola frames the

niche. Inside of the niche, a wooden frame with a glass window covers the back of the

statue. From this perspective, the white lilies and the golden base can easily be viewed.

The blue dress worn by the statue extends into a floral lace train that is held up to the top

of the niche, covering the back side of the statue. The small stature of the Virgin limits

her visibility to the visitors, nonetheless, thousands travel to the city of Juquila to see the

Virgin annually.

MIRACLE STORY OF THE VIRGIN OF JUQUILA

Historian William B. Taylor notes three types of miracle stories told in Europe about

devotional images: an image that survived a desecration and/or destruction, an image that

was discovered through a supernatural sign, and an image that appeared in a distinct

place. 21 The majority of stories in New Spain followed the third type and emulate the

structure of what historian Vicente de la Fuente, termed in 1879 as the ciclo de los

pastores (shepherd’s cycle). The shepherd’s cycle narratives are about shepherds or non-

21 Taylor, Theater of a Thousand Wonders, 325.

ecclesiastical people who encounter an apparition in a rural setting. 22 Building on de la

Fuente’s work, Honorio Velasco Mallo outlined eleven steps that completed a shepherd’s

cycle miracle narrative, three of which are: the discovery of a sacred object in a distant

place, the image appearing to a low-status person, and the final, most strategic step being

the establishment of a new cultus institutionalized through a shrine or sanctuary.23 The

shepherd’s cycle and the miracle stories about devotional images can be categorized as

part of the Marian Narrative Formula that construct the story of Juquila.

After the placement of the Virgin of Juquila inside of the Sanctuary, the bishopric

of Oaxaca sought to strengthen the pilgrimage route to the Virgin of Juquila at the new

location. To help advocate the pilgrimage route, in 1786 under the patronage of bishop

Ortigosa, Joseph Manuel Ruiz y Cervantes wrote, Memorias de la Portentosa Imagen de

Nuestra Señora de Xuquila (Memories of the prodigious Image of our lady of Juquila) to

establish an official miracle story of the Virgin to promote around New Spain. The first

edition of the book was printed in Mexico City at the Reimpresa en Mxico by don Felipe

de Zúñiga y Ontiveros in 1791. Zúñiga y Ontiveros While the Sanctuary itself did not

print the miracle story book, only images of the Virgin, the Church approved the Ruiz y

Cervantes editions and sent them to Mexico City. By printing the miracle story in Mexico

City, don Felipe de Zúñiga y Ontiveros obtained a monopoly on the Ruiz y Cervantes

book for the next ten years following the initial print. Zúñiga y Ontiveros benefited

22 Michael D. Murphy and J. Carlos Gonzalez Faraco, “Identifying the Virgin Mary,” Disarming

Skepticism in European Vision Narratives." Anthropos 106, no. 2 (2011): 516-517. 23 Ibid., 517.

monetarily from this while the Sanctuary of Juquila received recognition in Mexico

City.24

The Ruiz y Cervantes book contains an introduction, prologue, a section dedicated

to the reader, eight chapters about the miracle story, details about the annual pilgrimage,

news about the new ascendants to the Spanish throne, a novena—a nine-day prayer

devoted to the Virgin, and the index.25 After observing the increase in peregrinos, or

pilgrims, to the Sanctuary, in 1787, the Oaxacan archconfraternity of the Immaculate

Conception of Juquila decided that any reliquary or replication of the Virgin had to be

printed and produced solely at the Sanctuary of Santa Catarina of Juquila. The

archconfraternity claimed that images lost sacredness if they were reprinted or copied

outside of the Sanctuary, thus controlling the devotion and the revenue deriving from the

pilgrimage site of Juquila.

In the Ruiz y Cervantes 1796 imprint copy there is an illustration of an engraving

done by Francisco Agüera of the image of the Virgin of Juquila (Figure 6)26. In this print,

the Virgin of Juquila resembles a medieval style image of Mary, rather than the real statue

of Juquila. The Virgin wears an outsized triangular dress that covers her entire body, only

exposing her face and her praying hands. Throughout the dress, a damask woven pattern

is repeated with gold thread. A golden crown with a cross placed in the center covers the

head of the Virgin. Above the cross, an arc with rays spreads beyond

24 Manuel Suárez Rivera, Dinastía de Tinta y Papel: Los Zúñiga Ontiveros en la Cultura Novohispana

(1756–1825), (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2019): 109. 25 Sarmiento

Zúñiga, “Un portento milagroso en época de reformas,” 35.

26 Joseph Manuel Ruiz y Cervantes, Memorias de la portentosa imagen de Nuestra Señora de Xuquila:

Quiso conservar las con noticia del santuario y antigua romería, Mexico: Reimpresas en México: Por don

Felipe de Zúñiga y Ontiveros, 1796. The first printed copy was done in 1791. This particular 1796 print is

located in the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University. All of the prints in the book were created by

Francisco Agüera.

the crown with twelve stars on each end of the rays. A nimbus radiates around the crown

and ends by her shoulders. Her eyes almost make contact with the viewer, an unusual

glance that is not commonly seen with images of Mary. At the bottom tips of the dress,

two lit candles rest, alluding that the image is a statue. The statue is placed on an overly

elaborate base, presumably the gold-leaf one that the statue stands on today. The print is

framed with filigree, similar to decorations seen on the altars of churches. On the bottom

of the print the text states:

“Su Señora Ilustrísima concede 40 días de Indulgencia a quien rezare una Ave

María delante dejar soberana Imagen de Concepcion de [A]Mialtepeque con su

titulo de Consuelo de Afligidos, se venera en la Cavezera de Santa Catarina

Xuquila del Obispado de Oaxaca.” (Your Illustrious Lady of the agree to 40 days

of Indulgence who I will pray a Hail Mary in front of sovereign Image of the

Conception of [A]Mialtepec with her title as the Consolation of the Afflicted, that

is venerated at the Head of Saint Catarina Juquila of the Bishopric of Oaxaca).27

The placement of the print at the beginning of the first chapter provides the reader with

the image of the Immaculate Conception from the onset. The image is now engraved in

the reader’s mind and can be conceptualized throughout the story.

Most of the miracle stories formulated in New Spain often included an Indigenous

person encountering a sacred image, such as the Virgin of Guadalupe appearing to Juan

Diego miracle.28 The first chapter, “Primeras noticias de nuestra Imágen, y como fu al

Pueblo de Amialtepec” (First news of our Image, and how she went to the town of

Amialtepec) begins in 1552 with the arrival of Spanish Dominican Friar, Jordán de Santa

Catarina, who arrived to the monastery of Valladolid, in Mexico City.29 The Vicar of

27 Ruiz y Cervantes, Memorias de la portentosa imagen de Nuestra Señora de Xuquila, 1.

28 N. Ross Crumrine and Alan Morinis, Pilgrimage in Latin America, (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1991):

35.

29 I translated and every title of the chapters of Joseph Manuel Ruiz y Cervantes, Memorias de la

portentosa imagen de Nuestra Señora de Xuquila.: Quiso conservar las con noticia del santuario y

antigua romería, (Mexico: Reimpresas en México: Por don Felipe de Zúñiga y Ontiveros, 1796) and

placed them in parentheses.

Mexico relocated Fray Jordán to Oaxaca, a relatively unfamiliar area to the Spanish.

During his missionary work in Oaxaca, Fray Jordán carried the wooden statuette of the

Immaculate Conception, or as we know her today, the Virgin of Juquila, which he carried

from Spain to help “evangelize New Spain.”30 A local Chatino accompanied and

translated for Fray Jordán during his “spiritual conquest” of the region of Villa Alta in

Oaxaca, stopping at many rural Indigenous communities.31 Before the death of Fray

Jordán in 1592, he gifted his companion the statuette of the Virgin of Juquila as a form of

gratitude for his service over the years. The Chatino man took the statuette home and

created a small shrine for the Virgin on top of the hill of Amialtepec. This shift in

ownership of the statuette signifies a shift in power as well. The statuette of the Virgin of

Juquila now belonged to an Indigenous man and was not under the clerical authority of

the church.

Chapter two, “Hacese famosa nuestra Señora en el Xacale del Indio, trasládase à

la Iglesia, y à expensas de un portento queda clebre Santuario” (Our Lady becoming

famous in the hut of the Indian man, transporting to the church, and the expenses of a

portent celebrated Sanctuary) references multiple appearances and miracles of the Virgin

of Juquila after the Chatino man created the shrine for her. The most notable being in

1633, when an immense fire in Amialtepec destroyed the entire village, except the

wooden statuette of the Virgin. The story also claimed that the fire darkened the

complexion of the Virgin, giving her the nickname, La Morenita, (the little brown one),

allegedly because she wanted to resemble the skin tone of local Indigenous people of

30 Deidre Cornell, American Madonna: Crossing Borders with the Virgin Mary, (Maryknoll, N.Y: Orbis

Books, 2010): 42.

31 Sarmiento Zúñiga, “Un portento milagroso en época de reformas,” 28.

Oaxaca. 32 The scholarship currently published on the statue does not

substantiate the previous claim of the darkening of the statue.33

Chapter three, “Llega a la Ciudad la fama de nuestra Señora de Amialtepec:

crece la Romería: intentase trasladar muchas veces á Xuquila, y otras tantas lo resiste

multiplicando portento: condesciende por último con las devotas instancias” (The fame

arrives to the city of Our Lady of Amialtepec: the pilgrimage grows: attempted to

transport the image multiple times to Juquila, and other more times that she resists

multiplying the portent: condescends for the last devotional instances) recounts how the

church in Juquila observed the increase of visitors to the Amialtepec site during the

seventeenth century. In 1719, the church in Juquila decided to officially transfer the statue

to the church as a preventative measure of further abuses, and to ensure orthodox

devotion.34 However, the transfer was more than just an act of protection, rather it was an

exertion of institutional power to centralize economic growth and regulate Indigenous

devotional following at the pilgrimage site. The Church engaged in a process of gifting

and reacquisition with Chatinos. Once the Church noticed the statuette of Juquila was

acquiring a local following and prominence among indigenous peoples, the Church

seized the opportunity to reacquire Juquila’s power through a framed

reinstitutionalization of the icon via her enshrinement at the site of Amialtepec. Starting

32 Sarmiento Zúñiga, “Un portento milagroso en época de reformas,” 29.

33 In 2019, the Sanctuary of Santa Catarina Juquila conducted lab tests to figure out the provenance of the

statue, unfortunately, the evidence has not been published but the Sanctuary theorizes that the statue may

have been carved in Northern Europe. There are also theories circulating that the statue came from the

Philippines but there is no evidence that friar Jordán went to the Philippines or that the statue was

imported from there.

34 Edward Wright-Rios, "Our Lady of Juquila: Nation, Region, and Marian Devotions,” in Marian

Devotions, Political Mobilization, and Nationalism in Europe and America, edited by Roberto Di

Stefano and Francisco Javier Ramón Solans, (Cham: Springer International Publishing: Palgrave

Macmillan, 2016): 265.

with the creation of t he shrine on the hill of Amialtepec, the pilgrimage to the Sanctuary

of Juquila became the apex of a social and cultural structure in Oaxaca through the

emblematic symbol that Juquila perpetuated.

Since the Virgin of Juquila appeared mostly to Indigenous people, it made her

miracle story all the more relevant in converting Indigenous people to Catholicism.

Chapter four, “Cuentanse por mayor los milagros de nuestra sagrada Reyna, y pondrase

su especial mocion como una de sus mayores maravillas” (Telling the major miracles of

our sacred Queen, and praise her special motion with one of the major wonders) placed

Indigenous people as the protagonists of Catholic miracle stories that provided a false

homogeneous narrative of quiet, devout, evangelized natives as a model to convert other

non-Christian communities. Ruiz y Cervantes emphasized how the placement of the

statue in the Sanctuary helped increase sacred confessions by those who were “Black,

mulatos, native and the many combinations of mixed races were seen in the castas.”35

The reference of ethnicities in the miracle story indicates the “success” of the Church to

reach to various ethnicities living in New Spain, beyond Indigenous groups. The casta

paintings produced in colonial Ne Spain demonstrated the complexity of race and

ethnicity during this time period. Ruiz y Cervantes mentioning the arrival of Black and

mulatos in Juquila increased the power of the Virgin of Juquila beyond Indigenous and

Spanish communities. The story claimed that, “the Virgin appeared to numerous

indigenous converts—as if to bequeath the Christian faith to them without Spanish

intermediaries,” placing the power of conversion to the Virgin of Juquila and not on the

Catholic Church. The Church believed that the statuette of Juquila held the power of

35 Ruiz y Cervantes, Memorias de la portentosa imagen de Nuestra Señora de Xuquila, 41.

evangelizing Indigenous populations, and the pilgrimage route reinforc ed that notion

of institutional power. The chapter also articulates how busy the Sanctuary was with the

vast number of pilgrims that arrived to see the Virgin, another justification for the

oftentimes violent methods of evangelization. This demonstrated to the bishopric in

Mexico City that the Dominican missionaries had done a better job in Oaxaca than the

Franciscan’s did in Mexico City.

Another technique that showed the impact of the Virgin of Juquila was through

alms. In chapter five, “Persuaden la innumerables piedades de la Reyna de Xuquila los

dones y quantiosas limosnas con que los Fieles significan su reconocimiento,”

(Persuading the innumerable mercies of the Queen of Juquila of the gifts and the large

alms with the Faithful means her recognition), Ruiz y Cervantes concentrated on the

amount of alms and gifts the Sanctuary received. He explicitly remarked on the

Indigenous worshipers who arrived at the temple from far away distances and

brought

“endearing” gifts such as wheat, corn cobs, strings of cotton, silk, mats, baskets made out

of leather and/or palm leaf, oils, and flowers. These items did not parallel common

Catholic offerings seen in Europe. Ruiz y Cervantes also stated that between 1765 and

1785, the Sanctuary received 482 silver figurines and 2,000 wax figures.36 Providing

concrete numbers and demonstrating diversity among pilgrims let the reader comprehend

the large advocation that Juquila had during the switch from Amialtepec to Juquila.

Chapter six, “Romería al Templo y Santuario de Xuquila, con su devotero desde

la Ciudad de Oaxaca,” (The pilgrimage at the temple and the Sanctuary of Juquila, with

devout since the city of Oaxaca) provided details of the pilgrimage route, highlighting the

36Ruiz y Cervantes, Memorias de la portentosa imagen de Nuestra Señora de Xuquila, 51.

abundance of Indigenous groups arriving from the Southern coast of the towns. 37 Ruiz

y Cervantes reiterated about the diversity of those who visited the sanctuary, mentioning

the Black and mulata (a person of mixed white and Black ancestry in casta systems)

women who arrived on horse to the town of Juquila. On December 8, the feast day of the

Immaculate Conception, Ruiz y Cervantes affirmed that twenty-five thousand people

visited the shrine annually.38 Starting on page 67, a subsection called “Derrotero de

Oaxaca a Xuquila” (Course from Oaxaca to Juquila) denoted specific directions on how

to arrive to the Sanctuary of Juquila from Oaxaca City.

Chapter 7 is titled, “Devota contienda de los interesados en el culto de nuestra

ilustre Reyna sobre fabricarle Templo. Dificultades que retardaron comenzarlo ya

vencidas. Quanto se interesa en la Obra nuestro Illustrisimo Mecenas” (Devout dispute

of the interests of the cult of our illustrious Queen over the fabrication of the temple.

Difficulties that delayed the start that had already expired. How much has been interested

in the work of our illustrious patron) The author included an illustrated map of the

pilgrimage route in Oaxaca, emphasizing and identifying the hills mentioned in the

previous chapter (Figure 7). The chapter explained the difficulties of building a Sanctuary

in Juquila, as the entire town is on multiple hills. A second map of the pilgrimage route is

shown that has noted and numbered the important towns that pilgrims passed along the

way (Figure 8). At the end of the chapter, Ruiz y Cervantes included a document that

communicated the conduciveness of the “illustrious Juquila,” another insinuation to the

astonishing impact of the statue.

37 Ibid., 59. 38

Ibid., 62.

The final chapter 8, “Nuevo Templo y su estado. Exbortacion á los Fieles para

conlusion de la Obra” (The New Temple and her state. Exhortation of the faithful for the

conclusion of the work) concludes the miracle story by starting the chapter with the

details of the interior of the newly built Sanctuary by architect Novas. A folded

illustration of the side and façade of the Sanctuary is depicted. The outside of the

remodeled church that is there today is reminiscent of the original structure (Figure 9).

After the print, Ruiz y Cervantes summarized the timeline of the statue of Juquila and the

impacts of her “sacred” status throughout the years. The novena then follows and

concludes the book.

The miracle story written by Ruiz y Cervantes parallels the pattern that Taylor, de

la Fuente, and Velasco Mallo describe as a non-ecclesiastical person who encounters a

miraculous apparition in a rural setting. Ruiz y Cervantes introduces Friar Jordán’s

Chatino “companion” as a humble man living in Amialtepec who “willingly” offered to

accompany Jordán throughout the coast. The shepherd’s cycle also aligns with the

Marian Narrative Formula, the emphasis on the interaction between the Chatino man in

Amialtepec and the statue, as well as the interactions with other Indigenous and Black

people living in Oaxaca supports the impact of Juquila and the rising of her Marian cult

during the eighteenth century. Oaxacan scholars, Moisés Soriano Mendoza and Mario

Lugos López, identified Friar Jordán’s Chatino “companion” as Antonio Anastacio.39

While the scholarship does not specify if Ruiz y Cervantes knew the identity of the

Chatino man that Jordán interacted with, throughout Ruiz y Cervantes’s book, every

person he mentioned by name was affiliated with the Catholic church or was of Spanish

39 Soriano Mendoza and Lugos López, Peregrinaje Chatino, Los Caminos de Juquila, 57.

des cent. It is possible that Ruiz y Cervantes intentionally left out the identity of

Antonio Anastacio as a method to keep the Indigenous man anonymous so more people

could relate to him.

RISE OF THE MARIAN CULT IN NEW SPAIN

In 1517, Pope Léon X granted all of Spain the privilege of officially celebrating the

Immaculate Conception after the Council of Florence (1431–1449) accepted the

immaculate of Mary as free from original sin.40 During the Spanish Inquisition, King

Ferdinand and Queen Isabella exiled the Moorish and Jewish subjects from Spain, and

granted Columbus his notorious voyage. Queen Isabella adopted the Immaculate

Conception as the symbol of nationalistic unity of Spain which concurrently led to Mary

becoming a symbol of conquest. In the XXV Session of the Council of Trent that

occurred on December 3rd and 4th, 1563, Church officials addressed the, “invocation and

veneration of relics of the saints and holy images,” and had institutions acknowledge the

reasoning behind the use of cultic, didactic, and devotional, images which were included

in the book called Discourse Concerning Sacred and Profane Images from 1594.41

Church officials at the Council of Trent discussed the importance of recognizing holy

images as a representation of faith, an edict spread to the furthest reaches of the empire.

In both Spain and New Spain, however, many of these cult images were granted

humanizing characteristics by devotees and members of the Church, especially during

pilgrimages.

40 Maria Evangelina Muñoz Santos, La Inmaculada Concepción En Alcalá de Henares: Historia, Fiestas

y Arte, Siglos XVI, XVII , XVIII, (Guadalajara : Aache Ediciones, 2012): 33.

41 Martha Reta, “Living Expressions of Faith and Artful Connection to Divinity,” 195.

The Statuette of the Virgin of Juquila in Oaxaca embodies the idea of holy Mary

of the Immaculate Conception.42 The Immaculate Conception eventually was utilized to

represent numerous characters such as a queen, virgin, bride, the new Eve, mother, and

intercessor; whereas the Virgin of Juquila’s role as a fertile mother and intercessor,

became a crucial part of her symbolic incarnation as a unifier of Spanish and Chatinos in

Oaxaca. 43 Mary became “the most familiar representation of the mother of god in

America, often invoked as the indispensable intercessor to her son at the last judgment

and the representation of many famous shrines known by their local place names in New

Spain.”44 Taylor deliberates the importance of Marian advocations in New Spain as

another dimension of the complex interplay of image and presence that are centered on a

shrine and/or defined by it. 45 In the case of the Sanctuary of Juquila, the statue represents

both.

In particular, the devotion of the Immaculate Conception coincides perfectly with

the story of colonization. “The church fostered Marian devotion because of obedience to

the plan of God… His covenant has a Marian modality since the figure of the Mother of

God is fundamental in the story of Salvation.”46 In Catholic dogma, Mary obediently

follows the plan that God has created for her, and becomes the Queen of Heaven. Spanish

who arrived to the Americas used the same salvation story of Mary when they attempted

to evangelize Indigenous groups. Curator, Martha Reta argues that the veneration of

Mary in the Americas also became a form of surrender.47 In the mind of conquistadors

42 Taylor, Theater of a Thousand Wonders, 247.

43 William B. Taylor, “The Virgin of Guadalupe in New Spain: An Inquiry into the Social History of

Marian Devotion.” American Ethnologist 14, no. 1 (1987): 11. 44 Taylor, Theater of a Thousand

Wonders, 247. 45 Ibid., 248.

46 Reta, “Living Expressions of Faith and Artful Connection to Divinity,” 198-199. 47

Ibid., 199.

and missionaries, surrendering to Mary equated to surrendering to the Crown and the

Catholic Church. Furthermore, Mary epitomized much more than the Mother of God, she

also epitomized colonization.

During the European crusades that occurred between the eleventh–seventeenth

centuries, the image of the Immaculate Conception symbolized fortitude in their

campaigns. 48 Spain in particular, advocated for the immaculate movement of Mary,

especially by the Franciscans and the Mercedarians. Spain sought to personify the symbol

of the Immaculate Conception to fight against Islam in the fifteenth and sixteenth

centuries.49 The emblematic placement of the Virgin Mary on top of a crescent moon

represented “both her triumph over the sublunary world of sin, and also her power over

the enemies of her son, the Muslim people of the crescent moon.”50 Since the medieval

period, the Spanish have weaponized the image of the Immaculate Conception, 1using

her image as a reason and a right to colonize and eradicate non-Catholic populations.

In 1519, Hernán Cortés replicated the same actions in the Americas as the ones

used by the crusaders in Europe. On the banner carried by Cortés as a “spiritual

armament,” the image of the Immaculate Conception swayed on one side while the shield

of Castilla and León was placed on the back side (Figure 10).51 The red Damascus silk

material on the banner replicated the material used on images of the Madonna created in

Italy.52 On the banner, Mary sits in a three-quarter pose, the portrait only exhibiting the

48 William J. Nowak, “Virgin Rhetoric: Fray Luis De León and Marian Piety in Virgen, Que El Sol

Más Pura,” Hispanic Review 73, no. 4 (2005): 502.

49 Suzanne L. Stratton-Pruitt, The Immaculate Conception in Spanish Art, (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1994): 5-8.

50 Nowak, “Virgin Rhetoric: Fray Luis De León and Marian Piety in Virgen, Que El Sol Más Pura,”

502. 51 Peterson, Visualizing Guadalupe, 109.

52 Martnez, “The Banner of the Spanish Monarchy. The Political Use of the Immaculate Conception,”

126127.

upper half of her body. Mary wears a blue cloak over her shoulders with a red dress

underneath the cloak. Her hands are in a praying position and her exposed hair drapes

down her shoulders. An eloquent gold crown, nimbus, and twelve stars adorn her head,

delineated her as the Immaculate Conception. The performance of processing the banner

through the Americas was a symbol of “ownership of uncharted lands” that the Catholic

Church and the Crown completely supported. Cortés justified his deadly campaign in the

Americas by stating that it benefitted natives, “so that they would come to knowledge

concerning our holy Catholic faith and so that they would be vassals to our Majesties.”53

The banner embodied colonization. Cortés had the banner restructured to recount the

conquest of Tenochtitlan as a grand military enterprise that easily compared to the

campaigns that occurred in Europe.54

The image of Mary in the Americas also signified the death of thousands of

Indigenous people who encountered her image. The Spanish Crown and the Catholic

Church agreed to use the image of Mary as a tool and model for conversion, regardless of

the massacres that ensued in order to place the Catholic church above non-Catholic

entities. The image of the Virgin of Juquila symbolized the violent transformation of the

Coast of Oaxaca, her serene image hiding the deaths that happened because of her arrival

to Oaxaca in the sixteenth century. Nonetheless, her image continued to flourish in the

Americas.

Marian devotions, such as the Virgin of Juquila, classify into the category of

Catholic image-centered devotional practices utilized in New Spain as a tool for

evangelization. The Virgin of Juquila became the beholder of devotion and power

that

53 Ibid., 128.

54 Ibid., 126.

was activat ed through each individual who embarked on the pilgrimage journey to the

Sanctuary. The pilgrimage journey reinforces communal identity through the power of

divinity—an aspect that is not controlled by the institution itself but by the peregrinos.55

Outside of institutional control, the peregrino engages in a multisensory journey that is

not always a sanctified practice. According to anthropologist Arthur A. Joyce, Chatino

religion was based on the belief of a vital force that animated all “living” things. Animate

objects included natural resources: such as rain, mountains, light, wind and plants.

Perhaps the rich natural environment at the original shrine at Amialtepec may have been

the indicator of the initial popularity among Indigenous people in the seventeenth century.

The pilgrimage site today reflects the culture of Oaxaca, an area that continues to have a

strong Indigenous presence despite the arrival of the Dominican missionaries in the

sixteenth century.

The rise of the Marian cult in the Americas did concern some of the clergy

members, such as Spanish Friar, Toribio de Benevente. Commonly known as Motolina,

he was one of the twelve Apostles of Mexico who arrived in 1524 to New Spain. Friar

Motolina expressed his concerns about the extensive spread of Marian images to

Indigenous groups without much explanation of who Mary represented. Friar Motolina

claimed that the first generation after the conquest would call every Christian image

“Maria,” including God.56 This concern sprouted from the “recycling” of images of

Indigenous deities with the image of the Virgin Mary. The replacement of deities,

especially those deities with motherly, protective attributes, did not erase the memories

and the rituals conducted toward those deities.

55 Crumrine and Morinis, Pilgrimage in Latin America, 16.

56 Peterson, Visualizing Guadalupe, 16.

CHAPTER CONCLUSIONS

Since the medieval period in Europe, the Catholic Church has implemented the Marian

Narrative Formula as a tool for conversion and colonialism around the world. Mary’s

versatile characteristics as mother, queen, and intercessor easily adapted to Indigenous

mother deities who worked as mothers, intercessors and the embodiment of fertility. The

repetitive physical attributes of the image of Mary also became a tool of “colonizing

sight,” a term used by Peterson that will be discussed in the following chapter. Mary was

one of the first images seen by Indigenous groups as the Spanish arrived. Paintings and

sculptures spread throughout the Americas, as missionaries learned about mother deities

who they would immediately replace with the Virgin Mary. Miraculous stories of Mary

interacting with Indigenous people established a new cultus of Mary as the one who

chose to embrace those living in the Americas as her own. Missionaries wasted no time in

placing catholic structures on top of sacred lands and destroying any image that did not

represent Catholic belief.

The Dominican missionaries carefully thought out the emergence of the Virgin of

Juquila in the coastal region of Oaxaca. Fray Jordán carried the statue of the Virgin from

Spain to deliberately place her in a location that he knew would require a physical

embodiment of God that evoked Catholic dogma through her visual prominence as the

caretaker of Chatinos. The 1786 miracle story written by Joseph Manuel Ruiz y

Cervantes exemplified the significance of the Virgin of Juquila as the symbol of Oaxaca

and for the Catholic Church, became a symbol of Spanish invasion and evangelization.

The story highlighted the immediate impact of the statue and the series of miracles that

occurred on the hill of Amialtepec. The narrative placed the Virgin of Oaxaca on the long

list of famous Catholic shrines that represented the Immaculate Conception and that had a

pilgrimage attached to it.

CHAPTER 2:

COLONIZING SIGHT THROUGH SACRED SPACE, COSTUMING, AND

VISUAL CULTURE

The importance of dress, as not only the regalia/costume adorning statues of saints and

Mary, but also the dressing of the interiors of ecclesiastical institutions helps create a

sensory response that works to retain faith and supports and maintains the Marian

Narrative Formula. The images and sculptures of the Virgin of Juquila, the Virgin of San

Juan de los Lagos, and the Virgin of Guadalupe prove how the Church uses the icon of

the Immaculate Conception as a tool of indoctrination. The three Virgins all have a strong

following in Mexico and have similar miracle stories that place Indigenous people as the

main protagonist. By the end of the colonial period, the towns of Juquila, Mexico City,

and San Juan de los Lagos all had institutionalized shrines and pilgrimages established in

their towns. What often gets overlooked in the scholarship surrounding this topic is the

transformation of land and its use when the Spanish arrived, especially for Indigenous

sacred places. The miracle stories articulated by the Catholic Church attempted to erase

the indigenous histories of these sacred places that had been venerated for centuries prior

to the Spanish arriving. The creation of miracle stories was only a small component of a

greater process of evangelization, the Catholic Church also manipulated visual culture in

order to transform Indigenous sacred spaces into mostly Catholic spaces, usually

completed through “colonizing sight.”57

Peterson introduced the concept of “colonizing sight” as the foundation of her

book, Visualizing Guadalupe, demonstrates the prominence of the prolific image of the

Virgin of Guadalupe in the Americas. Oral and pictorial communications became the

57 Peterson, Visualizing Guadalupe, 8.

preferred method of interaction between different cultures in the Americas. Iberian

invaders sought to eradicate elements of Indigenous belief systems, including the sensory

experience of worship and veneration; however, mendicant orders recognized the central

role of performance, song, music, and dance to Indigenous groups and they attempted to

harness those practices to facilitate the acceptance of the new faith among Nahuas and to

honor Catholic saints and feast days. The Catholic Church repeatedly colonized the entire

sensorium of ritual to attempt to overlay an already existing religious experience. Going

beyond colonizing sight, the statue of the Virgin of Juquila colonized the entire sensorium

through the statue itself, the replicas of the statue, the practices of procession, singing,

incense, and the physical interaction with the replicas of the statue and the offerings left

on her mantle. The use of incense, the construction of altars, and the integration of

Indigenous figures into Catholic miracle stories all functioned as tools to evangelize

Indigenous people. The mendicant orders who arrived in the Americas brought medieval

systems of vision, which prioritized physical sacred objects as the fundamental method of

communication, as proven effective in medieval Europe during the crusades. As Peterson

stated, “Catholicism continued to rank vision as the primary organ for understanding

God’s universe, above the ear in the hierarchy of the senses.”58 Friars and conquistadors

heavily relied on the visual signs of Catholic images to profess their religiosity and

convince others of their truth.

METHODS OF EVANGELIZATION IN NEW SPAIN

The Dominican friar and second Archbishop of Mexico City (1551–1572), Alonso de

Montúfar y Bravo de Lagunas, advocated heavily for Marian devotions in New Spain,

Ibid., 8.

especially for the veneration of the Virgin of Guadalupe at the hill of Tepeyac. Montúfar

promised King Charles V that he would create a Provincial Council in New Spain as a

tactic to amalgamate the evangelization process as well to establish ecclesiastical

provinces. The first Mexican Provincial Council occurred in 1555, wherein it was noted

how non-Catholic practices continued to occur regardless of the efforts made by the

missionaries to eradicate “pagan” symbols.59 The clergy decided to blend Indigenous

deities and Catholic saints, one of the first being the image of the Immaculate Conception

as the Virgin of Guadalupe and the Nahuatl mother goddess, Tonantzin. The embodiment

of a motherly figure conceptionally worked in both a Catholic and a non-Catholic

framework.

After the Council of Trent (1545–1563), the Catholic Church demanded that New

Spain incorporate the edicts proposed at the council however, the bishops at the Third

Mexican Provincial Council did not apply the Tridentine legislation to New Spain until

1585.60 The third Archbishop and Viceroy of New Spain, Pedro Moya de Contreras,

hosted the council to discuss the interactions between Indigenous populations and Church

officials in New Spain. The mendicant orders who attempted to evangelize native

populations after 1585, had more aggressive and less lenient campaigns than the first

wave of mendicant orders. The clergy in Oaxaca ensured to confiscate any Indigenous

religious texts and would publicly whip anyone who performed or worshiped

nonCatholic beliefs.61

59 Ibid., 40.

60 Kristin Norget, "Hard Habits to Baroque: Catholic Church and Popular-Indigenous Religious Dialogue in

Oaxaca, Mexico," Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 33, no. 1 (2008): 139-140. 61 Ibid., 140.

The passing of the Ordenanza del Patronazgo in 1574 by the Third Provincial

Council, created an Indigenous autonomy in Oaxaca.62 The Spanish Crown, now led by

King Phillip II, withdrew control of the Catholic parochial duties in New Spain. The

Crown also retracted power from the individual friars. This vacating of authority and

enforcement resulted in the preservation of Indigenous traditions throughout the

seventeenth century, especially in rural towns like Juquila.63 With the edicts from the

Council of Trent, the Crown elected the bishops of New Spain, monitoring the mendicant

orders through the bishops.64 The bishops had to approve the construction of churches,

shrines, and the use of sacred images proposed by the friars. Conversely, in Oaxaca, the

constant disagreements among the Church clergy in regards to keeping Christian texts in

Indigenous languages, led to an inconsistent teaching of Catholic dogma. Towns such as

Juquila, had a heavy Indigenous presence prior to the arrival of the Spanish hence the

prevalence of Indigenous traditions incorporated into Catholic traditions. As historian

Yanna Yannakakis stated, by 1700, only ten percent of coastal Oaxaca had Spanish

priests: most teachers of the Christian doctrine were Indigenous, and many of these

people secretly conducted rituals at night, thus preserving the 1500-year-old traditional

songs veiled in Catholic rituals.65

The Tridentine decree also asserted the use of devotional images as a method of

conversion. The decree stated that sacred images should be handled by bishops to

communicate Christian dogma, however bishops had to highlight and emphasize that the

62 John Frederick Schwaller,"The Ordenanza Del Patronazgo in New Spain, 1574-1600," The

Americas 42, no. 3 (1986): 253.

63 Norget, "Hard Habits to Baroque: Catholic Church and Popular-Indigenous Religious Dialogue in

Oaxaca, 145.

64 Stafford Poole, "Opposition to the Third Mexican Council," The Americas 25, no. 2 (1968): 254. 65

Yanna Yannakakis, The Art of Being In-between: Native Intermediaries, Indian Identity, and Local Rule in

Colonial Oaxaca, (Duke University Press, 2008): 3.

images did not physically embody God. 66 The tools of evangelization used in

Oaxaca were by no means new concepts, in fact these tools were refined during the

Spanish

Inquisition. As historian Stafford Poole articulated, “from the earliest day of Christianity

words were borrowed, appropriated, and endowed with new meanings."67 The mendicant

orders simply adjusted their tools as they encountered different ethnic groups. In New

Spain, most didactic interactions with sacred images happened during sermons or

catechetical instruction for Indigenous populations, usually occurring in open-air atriums

in the newly constructed churches or outside if a church had not been constructed yet.

The Church believed that the sacred images provided the answer that could not be

answered through reading or listening, especially with the limitations in language

barriers. These actions all fall under the concept of “colonizing sight” as the mendicant

orders build churches with open-air atriums, use devotional images, and have Indigenous

leaders teach the Catholic doctrine.

Spanish-invaded communities in New Spain generated a collective identity

around Catholic devotions, especially in relation to the Virgin Mary. It has been noted that

the popularity of bultos, or carved wooden religious figures, which have appeared in

remote areas, tend to have higher cult followings. In the late 18th century, as illustrated by

William Taylor, 23 other shrines in New Spain gained regional following through

promotional religious programming.68 In 1675, the Novohispanic creole, Luis Becerra

Tanco wrote a book about the Sanctuary of the Virgin of Guadalupe called, Felicidad de

66 Martha Reta, “Living Expressions of Faith and Artful Connection to Divinity: Devotional Images of New

Spain,” in Un Privilegio Sagrado: La Concepción De María Inmaculada: Celebración Del Dogma En

Mxico, (Mexico City: Museo de la Baslica de Guadalupe, 2005): 196-195.

67 Stafford Poole, "Some Observations on Mission Methods and Native Reactions in Sixteenth-Century

New Spain," The Americas 50, no. 3 (1994): 339.

68 William Taylor, Theater of a Thousand Wonders, 98.

Mxico en el principio y milagroso origen que tuvo el santuario de la Virgen Mar ía de

Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, and deliberated the concept of the conservation of

memory in Indigenous societies. Becerra Tanco stated that, “by means of their songs,

traditions and narratives 1500 years old were passed down from century to century: in

these they referred to their wars, victories and disgraces, famines, plagues, births or

deaths of the kings and illustrious nobles, the beginning and end of their rule, and

memorable events which were slowly disappearing.”69 Those traditions were orally

passed through generations regardless of the tools the friars used to eradicate Indigenous

belief systems.

After arriving in Oaxaca, Franciscans held sacrament of penances, or confession,

with Indigenous populations that they encountered as they attempted to expand west. In

1733, Fray A. de Quintana, who primarily worked with Mixes, (from the Northeastern

region of the modern state of Oaxaca) wrote a series of Mixe/Spanish translations of

questions that friars and priests could ask when giving confession to Mixes. The

following questions were asked:

Confessionary: ¿Has idoltrado? (Have you idolatrized?)

Confessionary: ¿Has venerado, has revernciado como a Dios algún Ídolo, o

piedra o algún árbol, o palo? (Have you venerated, have you

reverenced God like an idol, or a rock or a tree or a stick?)

Confessionary: ¿Has creídola idolatria o sacrificios, que hicieron los Antiguos

antiguamente? (Have you believed the idolatry or the sacrifices

that were made by the Ancestors in the past?)

Confessionary: ¿Has encendido candelas, has quemado copal, has rajado ocote

en tu milpa, o en el camino, o en el Serro, como los Antiguos

hicieron en la Antigüedad? (Have you lit candles, burnt copal,

have sliced pine tree in your field, or on the road, or on the hill,

like the Ancestors did in Antiquity?)

69 Becerra Tanco, Felicidad de Mxico en el principio y milagroso origen que tubo el santuario de la Virgen

Maria Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, (1675) 1979 Facsimile.

Confessionary: ¿Has hecho encender candelas, has hecho quemar copal a alguna

persona en qualquier parte? (Have you lit candles, have you made

copal burn for another person in whatever part?)70

These questions reveal that friars sought to determine who continued to venerate

Indigenous deities, sacred lands, and/or practiced/led/attended shamanic rituals. Similar

questions were asked to Zapotecs in the latter half of the eighteenth century, proving that

the Spanish continued to use the same tactics used when they first arrived to the

Americas.71

MARIAN REGALIA

In the Americas, especially in New Spain, the images of Mary continued to reproduce the

regal insignia worn by the images of Mary in Europe: extravagant blue and white robes

with golden emblems made out of the finest fabrics known.

“The opulent labor intensive and expensive fabric elevated the mundane to the

reverential. In Judeo-Christian liturgy cloth was used to embellish holy figures in

a manner appropriate to their status as royalty of the celestial court…The Virgin

Mary was adorned in regal layers of embroidered damask and her throne was

draped with an honor cloth befitting her role as queen of heaven.”72

Particularly with the image of the Immaculate Conception, Mary’s adornments not only

reflect the power that the Catholic Church holds, it also represents her role as queen of

heaven and the queen of Spain and the Americas. The dress maintains the faith through

sacred, reverential garments and through the adaptation of sacred traditions at the place of

worship.

70 Fray A. de Quintana, Confesionario en lengua mixe, viuda de Ortega, Puebla, 1733, in Marcello

Carmagnani, El Regreso de los dioses: El proceso de la reconstitución de la identidad tnica en Oaxaca

Siglos XVII y XVIII, (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1988): 31. The text has been translated in

Spanish by Carmagnani, I have translated the text into English.

71 Marcello Carmagnani, El Regreso de los dioses: El proceso de la reconstitución de la identidadtnica en

Oaxaca Siglos XVII y XVIII, (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1988): 31.

72 Peterson, Visualizing Guadalupe: From Black Madonna to Queen of the Americas, 161.

Peterson categorizes the Virgin Mary sculptures that wear aristocratic, triangular,

bell-shaped dresses as “Triangular Virgins,” as seen on the Virgin of Juquila and the

Virgin of San Juan de los Lagos.73 The dress begins at the collar and gets wider towards

the bottom, going beyond the end of her feet, giving no indication to the height of the

statue. The bell shape of the dress covers the entire body of the Virgin, only revealing the

face, with the exception of some who do have their hands exposed. The oversized dress

placed on Mary avoids any allusion to Mary’s anatomical features. The incorporation of

multiple foreign styles taught in Spain, including those from the Flemish School,

developed a Virgin Mary that was more monumental than the Church itself. The use of

the draped clothing and the sunburst mandorlas alluded to Mary, “making her journey

from the corporeal to the otherworldly.”74 Not all images of Mary go to such extreme

measures to hide her body, such as the Madonna of Parturition, who depicts Mary

pregnant with the Christ Child, or Madonna Lactans that depicts Mary nursing the Christ

child. It is important to note that these types of Madonnas were seen less frequently in

New Spain than the “triangular Virgins.” In the case of the Virgin of Juquila, the statue

never displays her hands, only her small face and long black, straight hair. Most

depictions of the Immaculate Conception wear white dress and a blue cloak with gold and

silver embroidery. Overall, the images of the Immaculate Conception, including the one

of Juquila, share similar attributes and methods of display.

The “Triangular Virgins,” fall into the category of devotional objects, that often

moved around for evangelization purposes. According to Peterson, most of these images

of the Virgin are carved out of wood or are painted on canvas. These types of devotional

73 Ibid., 56.

74 Ibid., 123.

images are often smaller in size, to limit the damage that can occur during transportation.

The triangular shape of the dress also emulates the literal and metaphysical concept of

mountain/stone/Virgin Mary.75 The connection of Mary to the shape of mountains helped

create a connection to those who believed in mountains and hills as sacred places, in the

case of the Virgin of Juquila, the hill of Amialtepec became a multifaceted worship site.

The hill of Tepeyac for the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico City, is another example of the

mountain, stone, and the Virgin Mary becoming one metaphysical concept. Chapter

Three provides a case study of the Virgin of Juquila and her connection to the hill of

Amialtepec, the first location of the shrine.76

The Immaculate Conception took on a new role as the patron of the Spanish and

was used as the justification for the invasion of the Americas. After the establishment of

various ecclesiastical institutions, such as convents, confraternities, and missionaries, the

cult of the Immaculate Conception exploded as the primary tool of evangelization.77

Missionaries carried small, portable statues that could be easily transported as

they walked around the numerous towns.78 The Virgin of Juquila’s small stature is what

allowed friar Jordán to carry the statuette from Spain all the way to Oaxaca without it

sustaining much damage. Aside from building churches, missionaries did not prioritize

75 Ibid., 67.

76 Another example of the Virgin Mary connecting to the mountain and stone is the Andean deity

Pachamama. The fertility goddess from Peru represents the physical mountain, fertility, and harvesting.

When the Spanish arrived in Peru, they equated Pachamama as the Virgin Mary, an attempt to overlay

Catholic belief over Indigenous belief systems that were being practiced at the time. See Carol Damian,

“The Virgin of the Andes: Queen, Moon and Earth Mother,” in Southeastern College Art Conference

Review 14, no. 4 (December 2004).

77 Reta, “Living Expressions of Faith and Artful Connection to Divinity,” 199. 78 Peterson, Visualizing

Guadalupe, 132.

78 Michael D. Murphy and J. Carlos Gonzalez Faraco, "Identifying the Virgin Mary: Disarming Skepticism

in European Vision Narratives," Anthropos 106, no. 2 (2011): 518.

monumentality during their initial attempt s of evangelization in the sixteenth and

seventeenth centuries.

Mary ‘as the Immaculate Conception’ does not allude to her humbleness or the

Virgin Birth of Jesus, but rather to Mary’s status as being free from original sin and her

eternal place in heaven. The physical placement of devotional images becomes a crucial

aspect to the impact she makes as a tool of conversion. The didactic images were always

placed in a location that evoked public venerations. In order to be successful, the location

has to invite the public to the space through the illusion of marvels and miracles. The

image is surrounded by captivating accompaniments such as, candles, vases, jewelry,

flowers, and other offerings that signify the evidence of worship of those who walked the

pilgrimage to see the image in person.79 In Amialtepec, the Virgin of Juquila had a shrine

built by the Chatino man. Today, a replica of what the shrine might have looked like is

placed next to a single-nave chapel (Figure 11). A replica of the Virgin of Juquila in an

enclosed vitrine frames the center of the altar. Similar to the altar at the Sanctuary in

Juquila, at Amialtepec the statue is placed high above the viewer in a niche surrounded by

large bouquets of flowers. Visitors leave milagritos, money, and flowers at the chapel

before they walk down the hill to venerate the spring where the Virgin of Juquila also

appeared (Figure 12).

THE VIRGIN OF SAN JUAN DE LOS LAGOS

Similar to the virgin of Juquila, the statue of the Virgin of San Juan de los Lagos (Our

Lady of Saint John of the Lakes) is also small in size, almost 15 inches tall (Figure 13).

The statue is located inside of the basilica of San Juan de los Lagos (completed in 1779)

79 Reta, “Living Expressions of Faith and Artful Connection to Divinity,” 196.

in the town of San Juan de los Lagos in the modern state of J alisco, Mexico. The

Franciscan missionaries began inhabiting the town of San Juan de Los Lagos, then known

as Mezquittitlán or Mezquitic, in the modern state of Jalisco, around 1530, soon after the

order had arrived to New Spain.80 The statue of the Immaculate Conception was

transported to San Juan de los Lagos in the early 1530s by the Spanish priest named

Miguel de Bologna, and fray Antonio de Segovia. Prior to arriving to San Juan de los

Lagos, the statue of the Immaculate Conception was located in the town of Pátzcuaro, in

the modern state of Michoacán.81 In Pátzcuaro, the image was placed inside of a hospital

chapel, without much of a large following. The statue was sculpted by an Indigenous

artist out of pasta de caña de maiz, corn stalk paste, a material used by Indigenous people

specifically for crafting representations of deities. 82 In San Juan de los Lagos, the statue

was first placed in a small hermitage in 1543 and then later was moved to the chapel built

in 1638. The current basilica of the Virgin of San Juan de los Lagos was built between

1732–1779.83

The miracle story of the Virgin of San Juan de los Lagos also follows the Marian

Narrative Formula, the image miraculously appeared to non-ecclesiastical people, in this

case, Indigenous people and mestizos. These miracles caused an increase of pilgrimages

to visit the Virgin. One of the first miracles reportedly performed by the Virgin of San

Juan de Los Lagos occurred in 1623, when a family of acrobats were traveling on the

“Royal Highway” to Guadalajara from San Luis Potos. During their performance in the

town of San Juan de los Lagos, the youngest daughter fell during her stunt onto the

80 Bohórquez Molina, Coatlique Sanjuanita. La peregrinación a San Juan de los Lagos, 38.

81 Ibid., 24.

82 Ibid., 24.

83 Ibid., 27-29.

knives placed as part of the performance and perished instantly. The family prepared the

daughter’s body and transported her to the small chapel of the Virgin of San Juan de los

Lagos. Ana Lucia, the Indigenous caretaker of the church, received the grieving family

and took the body inside the sacristy to plead to the Virgin, asking for a miracle. Ana

Lucia brought the statue of the Virgin down from sacristy and placed it near the deceased

daughter. The parents unwrapped the body of the daughter to find that she was alive and

well.84 From 1623 on, pilgrims from all over New Spain came to venerate the statue of

the Virgin. The bishop at the time, verified the incident and reported it as a legitimate

miracle.85 In the year 1666, the church of San Juan de los Lagos counted two-thousand

pilgrims and towards the end of the eighteenth century, the church accounted for

fivethousand pilgrims.86

The feast day of the Virgin of Juan de los Lagos falls annually on February 2, the

day that the Virgin Mary was purified after giving birth.87 Devotees all around Mexico

embark on their pilgrimage to the Basilica of the Virgin, in a similar fashion to the

pilgrimage in Juquila and the one in Mexico City. The increase in registered miracles

during the seventeenth century encouraged the numbers of worshippers and helped shift

the regional sacred site to a national sacred site. By the mid twentieth century, the shrine

was the second most popular shrine in Mexico, after Guadalupe.88

Out of all the mendicant orders, the Franciscans were the primary advocates for

the use of the image of the Immaculate Conception to evangelize New Spain. For the

84 Ibid., 26.

85 Mary Lee Nolan, "The Mexican Pilgrimage Tradition," Pioneer America 5, no. 2 (1973): 19. 86

Bohórquez Molina, Coatlique Sanjuanita. La peregrinación a San Juan de los Lagos, 29. 87 David P.

Sandell, “Mexican Pilgrimage, Migration, and Discovery of the Sacred," The Journal of American

Folklore 126, no. 502 (2013): 361.

88 Nolan, "The Mexican Pilgrimage Tradition," 19.

Franciscans, the Immaculate Conception symbolized charity and redemption, two of the

numerous virtues that they attempted to teach Indigenous groups.89 The small size of the

statue of the Virgin of San Juan de los Lagos aligns with Peterson’s categorization of

“triangular virgins” that Franciscans easily transported from town to town. The small

stature of the Virgin of Juquila increased the didactic connection with Indigenous people

in New Spain. The mendicant orders enhanced the visual experience through

manipulation of visual culture that altered Indigenous sacred spaces into Catholic sites.

THE TILMA IMAGE OF THE VIRGIN OF GUADALUPE

The painted image of the Virgin of Guadalupe has overtaken the Americas as the

emblematic, cultural representation of mestizaje dating back to the time of the Spanish

invasion in the sixteenth century. Unlike the statue Virgin of Juquila and the statue Virgin

of San Juan de los Lagos, the painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe is a two-dimensional

painted image on a tilma, a garment worn by Nahuas in Central Mexico, that has been

mounted and framed. The difference in medium, placed the tilma image of the Virgin of

Guadalupe into an art historical context with other Spanish colonial artworks. In 1751,

the Sanctuary of Guadalupe invited art experts to conduct an analysis to verify the

miraculous nature of the tilma, Novohispanic painter, Miguel Cabrera, José de Ibarra, and

other Mexico City painters were invited. In 1756, Cabrera published Maravilla

Americana y conjunto de raras maravillas observadas con la de Guadalupe de Mxico,

that included the testimony of the analysis of the painting.90 Cabrera compared the

onepoint perspective of the Virgin to other artists such as Albrecht Dürer, Apelles, and

89 William B. Taylor, "The Virgin of Guadalupe in New Spain: An Inquiry into the Social History of

Marian Devotion," American Ethnologist 14, no. 1 (1987): 11.

90 Ray Hernández-Durán, The Academy of San Carlos and Mexican Art History: Politics, History,

and Art in the Nineteenth-Century Mexico, (London and New York: Routledge, 2017): 117.

Spanish painter such as Baltasar de Echave, Juan Correa, among others. The

testimony concluded that the tilma image was in fact an acheiropoietic image, even

though Cabrera distinguished the disparity in the length of Guadalupe’s legs, as well as

the types of colonial pigments found on the canvas. This first in-depth analysis of the

tilma image that occurred in the colonial period, placed the tilma into an art historical

context as well as a devotional acheiropoietic image.

The miracle story states that the titular tilma image miraculously appeared on the

tilma of Juan Diego, an Indigenous man that lived near the hill of Tepeyac. The hill

transformed into one of the most iconic sacred Catholic shrines in the Americas, and the

most visited Catholic pilgrimage site in the world. The Virgin of Guadalupe successfully

intruded the lives of Indigenous, mestizos and the Spanish in New Spain, and her legacy

continues to thrive as La Morenita, the little brown one, the same nickname given to the

Virgin of Juquila.

The official miracle story of the Virgin of Guadalupe begins in December of 1531,

when she appeared to Juan Diego, who had recently been Christianized. The Virgin of

Guadalupe asked Juan Diego in Nahuatl if a church could be made in her honor at the hill

of Tepeyac. After the first interaction, Juan Diego asked the first Archbishop of

Mexico City, Juan de Zumárraga about the Virgin’s desire of wanting a church in her

honor. Unconvinced, Zumárraga ignored Juan Diego’s pleas. Diego then returned to the

hill and told the Virgin that Zumárraga did not believe him. Mary asked Diego to try

again. After his second failed attempt, he asked Mary if she could provide proof of these

interactions so Zumárraga could believe him. The day Diego planned to go, his uncle

Juan Bernardino grew ill and Diego went to find a priest to give the last confession

instead of going to find Zumárraga as the Virgin Mary had asked him to. During his

walk, the Virgin appeared to Juan Diego and asked him why he did not obey her requests.

The Virgin assured Diego that his uncle had fully recovered and that he needed to pick

roses from the Tepeyac hill to take to Zumárraga. Diego arrived to the church and showed

Zumárraga the tilma filled with roses and the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the

image we see today in the basilica.91 Even though the tilma image claims a miraculous

appearance on the tilma of Juan Diego, Peterson revealed the artist of the tilma image as

Marcos Cipa de Aquino, a Nahua artist who worked with Franciscan workshops in the

sixteenth century. Nonetheless, this revelation did not negate or discourage veneration

and worship in Mexico. The artist workshops in Mexico City preserved small European

prints of Mary, including woodcuts, illustrated books, painted panels, and textiles that

Indigenous artists referenced when producing Catholic imagery.92

The painted tilma image is placed on the altar inside of the new Basilica of the

Virgin of Guadalupe, in Mexico City consecrated in 1976. As the Immaculate

Conception, the attire worn by Guadalupe slightly differs from the usual blue, gold, and

white attire as seen on the Virgin of Juquila and the Virgin of San Juan de los Lagos

(Figure 14). Guadalupe stands on top of a dark crescent moon and a small angel holds her

cloak and dress. The ovular, golden mandorla with dozens of rays frames her entire

figure. The artist intentionally painted Guadalupe with ashen olive skin, oval face, and

dark brown hair to assimilate to the common hair color and skin tone of Nahuas.93 Mary

serenely looks down with her hands in prayer, her brown skin peeking through her cloak.

91 Peterson, "The Virgin of Guadalupe: Symbol of Conquest or Liberation?" 39.

92 Peterson, Visualizing Guadalupe: From Black Madonna to Queen of the Americas, 102. 93 Ibid.,

105.

She wears a long pink gown with golden embroidery, above the gown, an aquamarine

cloak with a golden outline and gold stars drape her entire body. As with the Virgin of

Juquila and the Virgin of San Juan de los Lagos, the cloak and gown draped on

Guadalupe hide any anatomical features that may accentuate her as a woman. The

angel holding the cloak of Guadalupe had teal, white, and red colored wings, a color

scheme that changed to red, white, and green for the Mexican flag colors: a slight

change to fit the national identity that Mexico struggled to exemplify.94 The colors of the

wings and the color of the Virgin’s skin became tools of nationalism, especially after

Independence in 1821. According to Edward Wright-Rios, the Virgin of Guadalupe

emblematized “a state-led attempt to generalize a monolithic secular nationalism pitted

against church-sponsored, equally monolithic, counter-nationalism.”95 As a devotional

figure, the Virgin of Guadalupe represented the unifying touchstone of Catholic

resistance and the rise of the nationalist identity.

The Virgin of Juquila and the Virgin of Guadalupe share one important similarity

in this comparison: brown skin. The numerous miracle stories written about the Virgin of

Guadalupe during the colonial period emphasized the brown skin tone as a method for

connecting to Indigenous and mestizo readers. Around 1648, the Catholic Church in

Mexico City pushed to legitimize the apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe and published

an official miracle story written by Miguel Sánchez. The story emphasized the

Indigenous qualities that the Virgin had, such as her dark skin, her appearance to Juan

94 Ibid., 105.

95 Edward Wright-Rios, "Our Lady of Juquila: Nation, Region, and Marian Devotions,” in Marian

Devotions, Political Mobilization, and Nationalism in Europe and America, edited by Roberto Di

Stefano and Francisco Javier Ramón Solans. (Cham: Springer International Publishing: Palgrave

Macmillan, 2016): 257.

Diego and her speaking to Juan Diego in Nahuatl. 96 Similar to the Ruiz y Cervantes

story about Juquila, both stories discuss the importance of the Virgin connecting with

Indigenous populations in the area where they appeared.

One of the numerous miracle stories written during the colonial period, was

written in a Nahua style. To further push the miracle story of Guadalupe, three annalsstyle

native histories created in 1555–1556, illustrated the appearance of the Virgin written

Nahuatl. In folio 9r, one sentence stated that Santa Maria Guadalupe appeared in 1555 in

Tepeyac.97 Peterson emphasizes on the use of the term monextitizino, meaning

“appear” in Nahuatl. The word did not mean she appeared in a supernatural context, but

rather, she was shown publicly, for the first time in 1555.98 Most likely this referred to the

placement of the tilma image at the shrine on the hill of Tepeyac. This exemplifies that

the local comprehension of the “apparition” of the Virgin of Guadalupe was actually

based on merely the physical arrival of a sacred image, not an unworldly miraculous

apparition. While the Catholic Church enforced these colonizing concepts of miraculous

apparitions of the Virgin of Guadalupe, this annal demonstrates that many of the

Indigenous populations living in the Valley of Mexico did not truly believe the apparition

was a genuine occurrence.

Peterson also asserts that the image of Guadalupe did not exist prior to 1555–

1556. 99 The shrine and the image were created during the decade of the 1550s,

constructed by archbishop Montúfar and recent Indigenous “converts.”100 As mentioned

96 Peterson, "The Virgin of Guadalupe: Symbol of Conquest or Liberation?" 42. 97

Peterson, Visualizing Guadalupe, 111.

98 Ibid., 111.

99 Jeanette Favrot Peterson, "Creating the Virgin of Guadalupe: The Cloth, the Artist, and Sources in

Sixteenth-Century New Spain," The Americas 61, no. 4 (2005): 571.

100 Peterson, Visualizing Guadalupe, 109.

in the previous chapter, the statue of the Virgin of Juquila survived a fire in Amialtepec,

resulting in the darkening of her skin. The miracle story claimed the darkening of the skin

was the statue adapting to the environment in which she was enthroned. Deliberately

changing the skin tone in representations of the Virgin Mary signifies the importance of

adaptation as a tool of evangelization. This is not an uncommon trope in Catholicism, it is

part of the Marian Narrative Formula that was used globally in areas where mostly

nonwhite people resided.

CHAPTER CONCLUSIONS

Friar Jordán brought to Oaxaca the statue of the Virgin of Juquila as one of his main tools

of evangelization. The shrine created in Mary’s honor at Amialtepec continued the

tradition of veneration at the hill, except the central image had changed to a Catholic

figure. Peterson’s concept of “colonizing sight” was adapted to the creation and

prominence of the icons of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Virgin of Juquila, and the Virgin

of San Juan de los Lagos. The maintenance of faith through the manipulation of

Indigenous sites during the time of the Spanish invasion played a crucial role in the

Church’s attempt of evangelization. However, the lack of Spanish leaders in rural areas

such as Oaxaca, limited the Spanish influence, and resulted in the continuance of

Indigenous traditions through the colonial period.

The dress and the regal insignia worn by the Immaculate Conception did not

demonstrate a humble Madonna, rather she resembled the queen of the Americas. The

sacred adornments on the dress as well as the shrines demonstrated the power both the

Church and the Crown had in New Spain. Even with the assimilation of the Virgin of

Juquila and the Virgin of Guadalupe to physically resemble the Indigenous population in

New Spain, the golden mandora and stars place the statue hierarchically and

physically outside the reach of any individual.

Consolidating the power of the statue of Juquila to the clergy operating at the

Sanctuary of Juquila reflected the tyrannous nature of the Crown and Church usurping

political and monetary power from New Spain. The passing of the Ordenzanza del

Patronazgo in 1574 led to the regulation of the ceremonies and display of the statue of

Juquila in the following centuries. The harsh reprimanding of anything non-Christian

resulted in the Virgin of Juquila becoming a gateway for Chatino people in Oaxaca to

cherish an icon that somewhat reflected their own deities. Unfortunately, the oppressive

devotional assimilation that Indigenous people in New Spain endured during the colonial

period has continued through modern times.

CHAPTER 3:

PILGRIMAGE ROUTE TO THE VIRGIN OF JUQUILA AND THE

TRANSFORMATION OF SACRED LANDSCAPE

In the seventeenth century, the prominent pilgrimage route to the Virgin of Juquila took

shape shortly after Antonio Anastacio built a shrine dedicated to the statue of the Virgin at

the hill of Amialtepec. The statue of the Virgin gained a large Indigenous following that

the Catholic leaders in Oaxaca saw as key to their success to evangelization. Yet, the

Indigenous sacred element of the statue of Juquila on top of a hill, a detail emphasized in

the Ruiz y Cervantes miracle story that has not received adequate scholarly attention.

Similar to the Virgin of Guadalupe appearing on top of the hill of Tepeyac, the Virgin of

Juquila was placed on the hill of Amialtepec, indicating that these two hills had a sacred

attribute that the Marian Narrative Formula required for evangelization to succeed. The

overlaying of Catholic sites can also be seen in the coast of Oaxaca, a method used

throughout the Americas. The act of pilgrimage, including the pilgrimage to Amialtepec,

was not a new concept to Chatinos in the coastal area of Oaxaca, it was essentially an

adaptation to what was a previous pilgrimage site prior to the Spanish arrival. The

Oaxacan coast had established devotional sites that were well known by Chatinos,

Mixtecs, Mexicas, Zapotecs and other groups. Amialtepec continues to be one of the

many sacred hills venerated by Chatinos in the coast of Oaxaca. The veneration at the hill

at Amialtepec did not originate with the arrival of the statue of Juquila in the sixteenth

century but rather, the arrival of the Virgin of Juquila transformed the hill of Amialtepec

into a Catholic devotional place that was built on earlier Chatino belief systems as will be

discussed in what follows.

The term pilgrimage contains two implications: one, a personal religious journey

to a sacred place, and the other, an institution that involves human and material aspects

designed to facilitate a spiritual experience embedded with ritual and symbolism.101

Pilgrimages in New Spain merged Spanish and Indigenous traditions through

performance, written word, and conversations to facilitate the divine experience that the

peregrinos (pilgrims) personified.102 Anthropologists, Alan Morinis and N. Ross

Crumrine, contextualized pilgrimages through a historical lens, stating that each

pilgrimage takes shape in a dynamic relationship that works within and outside of the

institution itself. The pilgrimage site of the Virgin of Juquila exists within the historical

context of colonialism and as a reflection of the shaping of a Mexican identity, however

the institutionalization of the Virgin of Juquila’s pilgrimage site did not stop the

continuation of non-Christian practices at the pilgrimage site.103

Pilgrimages did not solely occur in Europe. Prior to the European arrival, in the

Americas, numerous Indigenous groups embarked on pilgrimages that had processions

similar to the Christian counterparts. After the arrival of the Spanish in the Americas, the

Spanish combined Catholic and Indigenous rituals and processions to the Catholic

Marian pilgrimages, resulting in a fusion of rituals and traditions. The Virgin of

Guadalupe, the Virgin of San Juan de los Lagos, and the Virgin of Juquila all demonstrate

that the process of embarking on a dangerous sacrificial pilgrimage was not a new

concept in the colonial period, simply an adaptation to rituals that had previously

occurred.

101 N. Ross Crumrine and Alan Morinis, Pilgrimage in Latin America, (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1991):

102 Ibid., 6.

103 Ibid., 8.

In both traditions, the physical landscape of the sacred site that pilgrims visited

was a key component in the experience. Both pre-Columbian and Medieval European

pilgrimages had landscapes that involved heights, water, sacred flora and fauna, caves

and/or sacred stones. For the Marian Narrative Formula to prosper in the Americas,

missionaries often generated miracle stories that involved sacred images brought from

Europe that created miracles for Indigenous people.104

PILGRIMAGE ROUTE TO THE VIRGIN OF JUQUILA

The annual pilgrimage route that occurs on December 8 to the statue of the Virgin of

Juquila is known today as, La Ruta de Fe, or “The Route of Faith” (Figure 15). Pilgrims

begin their pilgrimage route from various parts of Mexico such as Oaxaca City, Mexico

City, Chiapas or other Southern regions. Pilgrims first stop at the hill of Amialtepec, the

initial place of apparition of the Virgin of Juquila, about thirteen miles outside of the town

of Juquila. The second stop during the pilgrimage is at El Pedimento chapel in the town

of Santiago Yaitepec. The chapel was built in the early eighteenth century by Chatino

devotees and not the Catholic Church. El Pedimento chapel contains a replica of the

image of the Virgin of Juquila, but unlike the original sculpture in the Sanctuary of the

Virgin at Juquila, el Pedimento chapel has a more intimate connection that allows the

pilgrims physically touch the replica of the Virgin and leave offerings, such as milagritos

and money on her cloak. Touching sacred objects enhances the sensory response that

helps retain the faith, as mentioned in Chapter 2. The third and final stop is at the

Sanctuary of Santa Catarina Juquila. Most pilgrims follow a path that was set up prior to

104 Mary Lee Nolan, “The European Roots of Latin American Pilgrimage,” in Pilgrimage in Latin America,

edited by N. Ross Crumrine and Alan Morinis, 33.

the Spanish arrival, Chatinos believe that their deities had created a path to successfully

cross through the hilly terrain without any issues.105

Initially, in the eighteenth century, the pilgrimage of Juquila began at the hill of

Amialtepec and ended at the Sanctuary of Santa Catarina of Juquila. Now, the statue of

the Virgin of Juquila is brought down annually from her niche in the Sanctuary and

placed on the altar on November 8, the day of the celebration of the Virgin of Juquila in

the town of Amialtepec. This specific pilgrimage route mimics the route taken by Don

Manuel Cayetano y Casaus de Acuña after he received official authorization from the

bishop Fray Ángel Maldonado, who transferred the statue of the Virgin to the Sanctuary

of Juquila on June 30, 1719.106 Today, the Ruta de Fe, encompasses multiple shrines and

miracle sites around the coastal region that devotees can visit and visitors can choose any

of the sites to begin the pilgrimage journey. Most devotees conclude their pilgrimage at

the Sanctuary of Juquila, where the priest greets them and gives mass. As the centuries

have passed, the pilgrimage route has expanded as roads were paved and transportation

increased, making the route more accessible to thousands of annual visitors. Pilgrims and

individuals partake on the journey, carrying out different observances to the Virgin of

Juquila, oftentimes incorporating Indigenous non-Catholic rituals such as offerings to

other deities or reciting prayers in their native language.

The pilgrimage to the Sanctuary of the Virgin of Juquila has prospered through the

economic hardships, wars, and the Church’s attempt to promote the Virgin of

Guadalupe in Oaxaca. Historian Brian Connaughton, asserts the notion that people in

105 Moisés Soriano Mendoza and Mario Lugos López, Peregrinaje Chatino: Los Caminos de Juquila,

(Oaxaca: 1450 Ediciones, 2014): 11.

106 Ibid., 63.

Mexico were bound politically and spiritually by their place, a form of national

unity that stemmed from divinely ordained hierarchical bonds during the colonial period.

107 Rather than attempting to promote the image of Juquila as a national symbol the way

Mexico City did to the Virgin of Guadalupe, Oaxaca embraced the Virgin of Juquila as a

regional symbol that did not have the necessity to encompass a national identity.

Marian devotions, such as the Virgin of Juquila, fall into the category of Catholic

image-centered devotional practices utilized in New Spain as a tool for evangelization.

The Virgin of Juquila became the beholder of devotion and power that was activated

through each individual who embarked on the pilgrimage journey to the Sanctuary. The

pilgrimage journey reinforces communal identity through the power of divinity—an

aspect that is not controlled by the institution itself but by the devotees.108 Outside of

institutional control, the peregrino engages in a multisensory journey that is not always a

sanctified practice. According to anthropologist Arthur A. Joyce, Chatino religion was

based on the belief of a vital force that animated all “living” things. Animate objects

included natural resources: such as rain, mountains, light, wind, and plants.109 The

pilgrimage site today reflects the culture of Oaxaca, an area that continues to have a

strong Chatino presence despite the arrival of the Dominican missionaries in the sixteenth

century and the strong presence of the Catholic Church that remains prevalent through the

twenty-first century.

HISTORY OF CHATINOS IN OAXACA

107 Edward Wright-Rios, "Our Lady of Juquila: Nation, Region, and Marian Devotions,” in Marian Devotions,

Political Mobilization, and Nationalism in Europe and America, edited by Roberto Di Stefano and

Francisco Javier Ramón Solans, (Cham: Springer International Publishing: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016):

259.

108 Crumrine and Morinis, Pilgrimage in Latin America, 16.

109Arthur A. Joyce, Mixtecs, Zapotecs, and Chatinos: Ancient Peoples of Southern Mexico, (Malden: Wiley-

Blackwell, 2010): 56.

The Indigenous group known as the Chatinos, have lived in the coastal region of Oaxaca

since 400 BCE. Chatinos refer to themselves as Kitse Cha’tnio, translating to “difficult

word.” 110 In the twenty-first century, Chatinos live in three main regions along the coast:

Juquila/Yaitepec, Tataltepec, and Zenzontepec.111 Ethnically, Chatinos are related to

Zapotecs, and did not diverge from the Zapotecs until the later Formative period, around

400 BCE–250 CE.112 In the Late Postclassic period (1100–1522 CE), the Mixtecs

controlled the territory of Tututepec for about 300 years. The Mixtecs incorporated five

ethnolinguistic groups to their territory during that time including, Amuzgo, Chatino,

Zapotec, Chontal and Nahuatl.113 In the fifteenth century, the Mexica arrived to the

Oaxaca region, and conquered a large portion of the Mixtec empire. Soon after, the

Spanish arrived in the sixteenth century. The arrival of the Mixtecs, Mexica and the

Spanish all have influenced the coastal region of Oaxaca but have never eradicated

Chatinos nor their language.

The Indigenous ideology of Chatinos venerates a few deities such as the rain,

wind, mountains, and fire. Two main deities, Cuichá (Holy Father Sun) and Yuu (Holy

Mother Moon) receive the most veneration.114 The modern Chatino rain deity is known as

ho’o ti’yu.115 Chatinos also believe that there are nine levels in the underworld, each level

contains natural elements such as rain and dirt that embody certain attributes of deities, a

110 Ibid., 65.

111 Eric Campbell, "The Internal Diversification and Subgrouping of Chatino," International Journal of

American Linguistics 79, no. 3 (2013): 395.

112 Alexander F. Christensen, "Colonization and Microevolution in Formative Oaxaca, Mexico," World

Archaeology 30, no. 2 (1998): 265.

113 Arthur A. Joyce, Andrew G. Workinger, Peter Kroefges, Maxine Oland, Stacie M. King, and Byron

Hamann, “Lord 8 Deer ‘Jaguar Claw’ and the Land of the Sky: The Archaeology and History of Tututepec,”

Latin American Antiquity 15, no. 3 (2004): 274.

114 Soriano Mendoza and Lugos López, Peregrinaje Chatino, Los Caminos de Juquila, 32.

115 Joyce, Mixtecs, Zapotecs, and Chatinos: Ancient Peoples of Southern Mexico, 57.

similar ideology to the Mex icas.116 The Dueños (owners, loosely equivalent to deities

and/or spirits), that lived in the underworld formed groups with certain dueños to then

present themselves as an avatar on earth. The manifestations of dueños in Chatino

ideology, did not have a Catholic equivalent that the Spanish could replace with. Dueños

could manifest in dreams, or visions, as a zoomorphic avatar.117 Distinct to the good/evil

dichotomy in many European belief systems, dueños could have both good and bad

attributes, depending on the rituals erected in their honor. Similar to the process that

happened to the Mexica in Mexico City, the Dominican missionaries attempted to recycle

the implication of dueños as evil so Chatinos could recognize the meaning of Satan in

Catholic dogma. 118 The Spanish repeatedly reused and morphed Indigenous beliefs and

daily processes and practices in order to teach Spanish concepts.

PRE-COLUMBIAN INDIGENOUS RECORD KEEPING

Indigenous groups in the area of Oaxaca used lienzos and codices as a way to represent

land distribution before and after the Spanish arrived in the Americas. The word lienzo

means canvas; Mesoamerican lienzos can be made out of sheets of cloth, varying greatly

in size, painted on one side with maps, narratives, historical and authoritative

information. Mesoamerican codices are screenfold manuscripts made out of amate,

deerskin or fibers from agave plants. Spanish and elite Indigenous pole often sought to

incorporate the lienzos and codices into their official documentation of land disputes that

related to division of numerous territories. The lienzos and codices depicted sites

116 Alicia Barabas, Dones, Dueños y Santos: Ensayo Sobre Religiones en Oaxaca, 1.st ed. México, (D.F.:

Instituto Nacional De Antropologa E Historia, 2006): 39.

117 Edward Wright-Rios, Revolutions in Mexican Catholicism: Reform and Revelation in Oaxaca, 18871934,

(Durham: Duke University Press, 2009): 253.

118 Barabas, Dones, Dueños y Santos: Ensayo Sobre Religiones en Oaxaca, 45.

conquered by Indigenous groups and Spanish conquistadors, as well as sacred places,

ancestral lineages, Catholic institutions, and land disputes that ended in death. The

Indigenous sacred sites drawn on lienzos and codices usually referenced hills, bodies of

water, or rituals. The hills and water elements usually signified a site sacred or

meaningful to Indigenous groups, but not necessarily meaningful to the Spanish. Many

cities were represented with an altepetl sign/glyph, a Nahuatl word for a city-state that

usually incorporated a hill, water source, and/or an animal of some kind. There are

different size variations of altepetl, the size determining the prominence of a city rather

than its physical size.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Spanish officials ordered the

Indigenous elders or scribes to create lienzos and codices dividing the land among

different territories. Lienzos and codices created during the colonial period included

Catholic churches, usually represented with a bell, cross, and a building, most often these

were located above or near an Indigenous sacred site. Lienzos and codices provided

crucial information that was passed down through priests and high officials such as

geographical and historical information about a certain area. Some of the narratives

written in the codices and lienzos described lineages to ancestors and creation stories that

depicted travel through space and time.119 Lienzos and codices in many cases became

crucial evidence for claims of processions of lands and ancestral lineages, and especially

relevant to the present study, they included indications/notations of sacred elements of

nature, such as springs/waterfalls, hills, and caves that relate to life and death.120

119 Ross Parmenter, "The Lienzo of Tulancingo, Oaxaca: An Introductory Study of a Ninth Painted Sheet from

the Coixtlahuaca Valley," Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 83, no. 7 (1993): 2.

120 Barabas, Dones, Dueños y Santos: Ensayo Sobre Religiones en Oaxaca, 20.

A few of the Mixtec codices mention the coastal site of Juquila, in relation to the

famous Mixtec ruler, of Lord 8 Deer Jaguar Claw. Lord 8 Deer (for short), ruled during

the eleventh century, living from 1063–1115 CE. He enjoyed a successful life as one of

the military rulers who expanded his territory around the Mixteca Alta, Mixteca Baja, and

Coastal Mixtec regions of Oaxaca121. Anthropologist, John Pohl, wrote extensively on the

life of Lord 8 Deer and the ninety-four cities that he conquered during his reign. The

preColombian Mixtec screenfold style Codices Colombino-Becker and Bodley mention

Lord 8 Deer’s activities and interactions within the area of Juquila. In the Codex Bodley,

before Lord 8 Deer enthroned himself at Tututepec in 7 Flint (1084 CE), he is shown

meeting the king and queen of Juquila (Figure 16).122 Unfortunately, the Codex Bodley

did not indicate if Lord 8 Deer visited any of the pilgrimage site. The Codex Colombino-

Becker describes a coastal version of Lord 8 Deer’s biography, giving a slightly biased

history that favored the ruling family of Tututepec in the Mixteca Coast.123 The first

section, known as the Codex Colombino was used by the Tututepec lord in 1541 as an

official document to define the land distribution in the coastal region. The Tututepec lord

hired a scribe to add boundaries of towns that were under his control.124 The Codex

Colombino-Becker had been repurposed prior to the Spanish arrival, the codex was

broken up and had some images erased. The Codex Colombino worked as a historical

biography and as an official document, similar to the lienzos.

121 Joyce, Mixtecs, Zapotecs, and Chatinos, 260-262.

122 Joyce, Workinger, Kroefges, Oland, King, and Hamann, “Lord 8 Deer ‘Jaguar Claw,’” 283. 123 Elizabeth Hill

Boone, Stories in Red and Black: Pictorial Histories of the Aztecs and Mixtecs, (University of Texas Press,

2000): 88.

124 Ibid., 248.

Art historian, Mary Elizabeth Smith wrote extensively about Mixtec and other

Mesoamerican codices such as Codex Colombino Becker, Codex Nuttal, and Codex

Bodley in her 1973 book, Picture Writing From Southern Mexico. The book provides

detailed occurrences of every town that Lord 8 Deer visited during his reign. Both the

Codex Bodley and the Codex Colombino include a place sign for Juquila that is

represented with the Hand Holding Grass with an alternating circle and stepped

pyramidlike frieze (Figure 17). Page 9-III of the Codex Bodley depicts Lord 8 Deer

visiting 1

Death “Serpent Sun” and 2 Serpent “Flower Feathers.” This scene occurs right before

Lord 8 Deer enthrones himself on top of the place sign for Tututepec.125 In the Codex

Colombino, the place sign of Juquila is shown as a compound sign with the town of

Tututepec that is represented with a bird’s beak emerging from a stone hill.126

As previously stated, the town of Juquila was ruled by the Mixtecs for a brief

period of time. In the Mixtec language in the modern period, Juquila translates to ñuu sii

to’o, meaning “town of the Virgin,” although the literal translation is “town where the

ruling grandfathers originated,” or “town of the hereditary nobility.” In the Codex Bodley

14-13 IV, the son of Lord 8 Deer, 6 House “Tiger Descending from the Sky” married 9

Flower “Jewel Heart,” the daughter of the rulers of Juquila.127 This marriage tied one of

the most prodigious Mixtec rulers to the coastal town of Juquila. Smith suggested that the

marriage also tied together the Coast and the Alta regions that Lord 8 Deer had seized.

The representation of Chatinos and Mixtecs who lived in Juquila in the Codex

Colombino and in Codex Bodley illustrates the power and influence of Chatinos in the

125 Mary Elizabeth Smith, Picture Writing from Ancient Southern Mexico; Mixtec Place Signs and Maps,

the Civilization of the American Indian Series: 124, (Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1973):

76.

126 Ibid., 76.

127 Ibid., 75.

late Postclassic Period until the Spanish arrived at the coast of Oaxaca. At the time of

the Spanish arrival, the census data record indicates that an even amount of both Chatinos

and Mixtecs lived in Tututepec near the Ro Verde.128 In 1674, Dominican Francisco de

Burgoa, compiled the expeditions made by missionaries in Oaxaca to send to King Phillip

II of Spain. In the Relaciones Geográficas, the second section Geográfica Descripción:

de la parte septentrional, del Polo Ártico de la Amrica, introduces Juquila and

Dominicans interactions with Chatinos, Zapotecs, and Mixtecs. The book describes the

sacrifices made by missionaries but does not indicate the level of affluence of Chatinos

throughout the coast, as the codices suggest.

INDIGENOUS PILGRIMAGES AND VENERATIONS IN OAXACA

Oaxaca has a long tradition of veneration of sacred sites. Prior to the arrival of the

Spanish and the rise of the Virgin of Juquila, Chatinos made pilgrimage and prayed to

various sacred sites around the coastal region of Oaxaca. Many of the primary sources

written by Dominicans during the colonial period did not reference specific names of the

sacred sites but did allude to the knowledge of their existence. On December 8, 2019, the

feast day and annual pilgrimage of the Virgin of Juquila, the Oaxaca City newspaper, El

Imparcial: El mejor diario de Oaxaca, wrote an article about the significance of the

Sanctuary of the Virgin of Juquila as well as other important sacred sites that Chatinos

venerated in the area surrounding the town of Juquila. Journalist, Andrés Carrera Pineda

stated that Chatinos prayed to individual hills around Juquila that have specific rocks

with prayers and cave paintings such as El Cerro Tlacuache (Opossum Hill) and La

Piedra Letra in San Juan Lachao (Letter Rock at Saint John Lachao). Carrera Pineda also

128 Joyce, Workinger, Kroefges, Oland, King, and Hamann, “Lord 8 Deer ‘Jaguar Claw,’” 281.

argue d that Chatinos used to venerate Piedra del Sol (the Rock of the Sun) and Piedra

Rey (King Rock) in K’chen skui (San Miguel Panixtlahuaca).129 His article in 2019

referencing at least four sacred Chatino sites in relation to the pilgrimage of Juquila,

validates the prominence of these sites, and supports the idea that specific geographic

features in and around the shrine of Juquila have enjoy–and continue to enjoy– a long

history of sacrality despite colonial to erase those traditions (Figure 18).

One of the hills mentioned in the article, El Cerro Tlacuache, in the municipality

of San Juan Lachao, has a series of petroglyphs, that are located inside of a small cave

that many Chatinos believe is one of the entrances to the underworld.130 The petroglyphs

inside of the cave were drawn in red dye, the zigzag figures representing a strong natural

force such as wind, water, fire, or Venus. Scholars, Moisés Soriano Mendoza and Mario

Lugos López argue that the zigzag shapes also represent Quetzalcoatl, the feathered

serpent aka Ehecatl the Wind deity in many Mesoamerican cultures (Figure 19).131 One of

the zigzags represents a lightning bolt that is known to Chatinos as the Son of the Sun, the

one who announces that the rain is approaching, as they had prayed for. In traditional

Mesoamerican Quetzalcoatl is an ancient deity who flies on the wind bringing the rain.

Another sacred rock, Piedra Letra (Letter Rock), over three and half feet tall, has traces

of what may be an archaic alphabet.132 The alphabet has yet to be deciphered by scholars,

and although not of pre-Columbian origin, Chatinos claim that their ancestral

grandfathers carved the alphabet on the Piedra Letra. In the lower part of the town of

129 Andrés Carrera Pineda, “La Virgen de Juquila también peregrinó,” El Imparcial: El Mejor diario de

Oaxaca, December 8, 2019, http://imparcialoaxaca.mx/oaxaca/382860/la-virgen-de-juquila-tambien-

peregrino/?fbclid=IwAR2C74xNw9zNGWvgsFwqZYSTJ7LOkwx_twBOGORhOXBVZyN2xeUB0eXcvI

130 Soriano Mendoza and Lugos López. Peregrinaje Chatino, Los Caminos de Juquila, 32.

131 Ibid., 32-33.

132 Ibid.,, 35-36.

Juquila, Piedra del Rey (Rock of the King) is near a small water deposit that has

been a pilgrimage site since sixteenth century.133 The sacred caves are only accessed by

shamans who have ability to interact with deities and other natural forces while the rocks

could be approached and venerated to by any devotee. Soriano Mendoza and Lugos

López state that El Cerro Tlacuache and other sacred hills along the coastal region have

been places of pilgrimage for thousands of years.134

Chatinos refer to the hill of Amialtepec as El Cerro de la Virgen, or the Hill of the

Virgin, in Spanish, or in Chatino ki’ ya ku ne’ (montaña comerá persona or mountain will

eat a person). El Cerro de la Virgen is where devotees petition, and venerate the footprints

and the staff of the Virgin of Juquila as she had passed through the hill during her journey

from the town of Juquila before the Sanctuary had officially transferred her in 1719.135

Chatinos today refer to the Virgin of Juquila as the Virgen del Cerro, the Virgin of the

mountain, connecting her spiritually to the sacred hill. Throughout the year, multiple

devotees stop at Amialtepec to see the place of the miracles of the Virgin of

Juquila as well as to take some of the water from the sacred waterfall.

Arthur Joyce conducted excavations of a place that was also named El Cerro de la

Virgen, however, this is not the same place as the hill of Amialtepec. The archaeological

site of El Cerro de la Virgen, is located a few miles south of the town and municipal

capital of Villa de Tututepec del Melchor Ocampo on the Pacific coast of Oaxaca. The

archaeological site, excavated by Joyce is near the area of Tututepec, that was mentioned

by Lord 8 Deer in the Codex Colombino and the Codex Bodley. The archaeological

133 Ibid., 43. 134

Ibid., 34.

135 Ana Bella Pérez Castro, La Identidad: Imaginación, Recuerdos y Olvidos, (México, D.F.: Instituto de

Investigaciones Antropológicas, UNAM, 1995): 35.

evidence of offerings sugges ts that the Tututepec Cerro de la Virgen has been venerated

since the Terminal Formative Period (250–900 CE).136 These excavations yielded

ceremonial caches, mortuary offerings, and other objects. Analysis of ash and charcoal

remains demonstrate that these offerings were imported to the Oaxacan coast. The

offerings traded and/or imported suggest the circulation of wealth along the coast and

points towards the importance of veneration for certain sacred hills.137

The pilgrimage to the Virgin of Juquila is not the only pilgrimage dedicated to the

Virgin Mary in the coast of Oaxaca. In Santa Cruz Mitlatongo, Nochistlán, about 150

miles north of Juquila, the primary hill named Monterey is surrounded by seven other

hills that are surrounded by the hills that represent the houses of the wind and the houses

of the water.138 The hills in the coastal region of Oaxaca have an extraordinary sacred

significance to Chatinos because they physically and spiritually place them closer to the

Holy Mother Moon and the Holy Father Sun.139 Topographically, the area around Juquila

is very mountainous, and the abundance of hills provides Chatinos with numerous sacred

hills that they venerate throughout the year. According to one of the Chatino myths, king

Camanderú, one of the deities who lived on the hill of Monterey, competed with

surrounding kings for the land. Every 6th of January, pilgrims arrive to the hill pleading

for abundance and health, and on every 3rd of May, devotees plead for rain by embarking

136 Arthur A. Joyce, Sarah B. Barber, Jeffrey Brzezinski, Carlo J. Lucido, and Vctor Salazar Chávez,

"Negotiating Political Authority and Community in Terminal Formative Coastal Oaxaca," in Political

Strategies in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, edited by Kurnick Sarah and Baron Joanne, 61-96,

(Colorado: University Press of Colorado, 2016): 65. I think it is important to mention the sites that have

been excavated around the coast of Oaxaca because they provide an additional form of evidence that

shows the power and the circulation of wealth that occurred during the pre-Columbian period.

Oftentimes, the preColumbian period gets overshadowed or oversimplified when discussing the colonial

period.

137 Ibid., 65.

138 Barabas, Dones, Dueños y Santos, 76.

139 Soriano Mendoza and Lugos López, Peregrinaje Chatino, Los Caminos de Juquila, 32.

on a week -long pilgrimage through the seven hills where the houses of the wind and

rain deities are located, and at each hill they pray at each of the caves on the hill.140

Chatinos and Mixtecs both venerate the hill of Yucusáa, a few towns south of the

town of Juquila. According to Chatinos and Mixtecs, the Yucusáa hill has a sacred snake

that oversees the water on the hill and surrounding areas and also invites the rain to the

area. Chatinos and Mixtecs continue to dispute over the proprietorship of Yucusáa hill.141

El Cerro Gavilán, near the town of San Juan Quiahije, fifteen miles north of Santa

Catarina Juquila, is the hill that the supposed El Rey Chatín (The King Chatn) resides.

According to the Chatino myth, El Rey Chatín appeared to create the territory in the

Coastal region of Oaxaca to the Chatinos. In return, he placed symbols of his facial

features on hills and rocks around the region so Chatinos could venerate him and leave

offerings.142

Similar to the pilgrimage that happens at the hill of Monterey, Chatinos from

Yaitepec, where El Pedimento Chapel is located, have a pilgrimage where they also visit

and venerate the water deities. In the twenty-four-mile pilgrimage route, the devotees

visit Ki’ya ka’yu (the Five Mountains), the spring called Xkwa (Hoyo de Atole), the house

of the water deity, Ki’ya chko (Adorned Mountain), the Cerro de la Virgen, and lastly

Chku la kati (the Seven Waterfalls) in the Río Manteca. At each of these locations,

Chatinos of Yaitepec burry offerings of bread and chocolate, light candles and shoot

fireworks.143 The pilgrimages to the sacred hills mentioned above are all part of a long,

140 Barabas, Dones, Dueños y Santos, 76-77.

141 Ibid., 76.

142 Pérez Castro, La Identidad: Imaginación, Recuerdos y Olvidos, 35.

143 James B. Greenberg, Religión y economía de los chatinos, (México, D.F.: Instituto Nacional Indigenista,

1987): 171.

tradition of sacrificial journeys, offerings, and pediments that have been dedicated to the

Santo Padre Sol (Holy Father Sun), the Santa Madre Luna (Holy Mother Moon) and to

other important deities that impact Chatinos directly.

Caves are equally as venerated as the hills in the region of Oaxaca. Between the

Formative and the Post-Classic period, are cited as origin points for many ethnic groups,

for example, Chicomoztoc (the place of the seven caves) in the Mexica origin story, is

among the most well known in the Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca. In the pre-contact

period, caves had multiple connotations, such as: the womb of the earth, dwellings of the

deities of the hill, the snake, the holder of water, dwelling of the deceased, tombs of

ancestors, the mythical place of the birth and disappearance of cultural heroes, the

birthplace of multiple ethnic groups, the cult of idols, the place of sacrifice for children to

bring rain, agricultural rituals, oracle, and the entryway to the underworld.144 Caves

continue to hold the same meanings that they did in the Ancient Americas. One of the

most significant caves for Chatinos is the Cueva de la Neblina (the Cave of the Fog),

located north of Juquila in Yaitepec, represents the entrance to the underworld for the

deceased.145

The sacredness of water, in all forms, holds a sacred significance to many

Indigenous groups. Manantiales, or springs, are other sacred natural elements that are

venerated by Chatinos. Sacred water sources may include waterfalls, water runoffs, and

lakes. These type of sacred water sources hold seeds, fruits, vegetation, and animals and

others give abundances of treasure.146 Springs have a prodigious sacred value because of

144 Barabas, Dones, Dueños y Santos, 77.

145 Ibid.,, 79.

146 Ibid.,, 83.

the inclusion of springs in one of the episodes of the Cycle of the Hero Twins, where the

sun creates the spring.147 Las tonas, or the animistic entities of people, live inside of many

of the sacred springs and only a ne ho’o (a Chatino shaman) can rescue the tona to restore

the health of an ill person.

The santa cinegas (sacred wetlands) and the springs that run down the hillsides

are known as Ho’o Ycua’, a place of worship for Chatinos and a place where deities can

live.148 Each santa cinega has a protector called Kuna Ko (Snake of the Fog) who takes

care of the land and prevents it from being desecrated. The protector Kuna Ko has the

power to punish those who have violated the norms.149 Near the town of Juquila, a santa

cinega named Hondura de la Culebra Flor or Culebra de Siete Cabezas (Depth of the

Serpent Flower or Flower of the Seven Heads) is the hill where the community can take

offerings that comprise of candles and sempervivum plants in order to ask for rain and a

good harvest for the upcoming season.

OTHER MARIAN DEVOTIONS IN THE JUQUILA DISTRICT

Not all of the sacred hills along the coast are solely dedicated to Indigenous deities. Some

of the sacred hills have shrines dedicated to figures of the Virgin Mary that are venerated

in a similar custom as the Virgin of Juquila. In the Juquila District, statuettes of the

Immaculate Conception are venerated as the sisters or daughters of the Virgin of Juquila

that is in the Sanctuary of Juquila. Unlike the replicas of the Virgin of Juquila placed in

Amialtepec and the Pedimento Chapel, these statues are a less miraculous version of the

original statue. The sanctuaries in Chontecomatlán, Ixcuintepec, Tejalapam, Huiccisl,

147 Ibid., 83.

148 Ibid., 83-84.

149 Ibid., 84.

and Agua Virgen dedicate their shrines to the sisters and daughters of the Virgin of

Juquila.150 The Virgin’s that are the supposed sisters or daughters to the Virgin of Juquila

all have interacted with the Virgin but fall into a lower rank of the hierarchy of worship, a

concept that is more Indigenous. All of the Virgin’s appeared to Indigenous people at the

locations mentioned above, usually in a non-Catholic sacred place. The apparitions of the

sisters and daughters of Juquila demonstrate the significance of the influence of the

Marian Narrative Formula, even with images that did not emerge from the Catholic

Church.

The placement of replicas of the Virgin of Juquila derive from the supposed

miraculous apparitions that occurred to devotees during their pilgrimage journey. The

pilgrims, usually of native descent, allegedly encounter the Virgin of Juquila in other

sacred forms during their sacrificial journey to the sanctuary. The sanctified replicas, such

as the statues of Juquila at the Pedimento Chapel, inside the reconstructed original shrine

at Amialtepec, and the small temple at the bottom of the hill at Amialtepec all become

places to rest and venerate the image. Each replica falls under a hierarchy of worship,

above the images of the sisters and daughters of the Virgin of Juquila. Depending on the

number of miracles each replica conducts, that determines where they fall on the

hierarchy of worship. A similar claim can be made about Catholic saints that perform

miracles, such as Saint Anthony of Padua.

The miracle stories about the Virgin of Juquila involve the apparition of the statue

at the waterfall of the hill of Amialtepec as well as a tiny cave in the crevices of the hill

immediately to the left of the waterfall. Most of the Virgin’s apparitions occur at

150 Barabas, “Los santuarios de vrgenes y santos aparecidos en Oaxaca,” Cuicuilco 13, no. 36. (2006): 250.

Amialtepec, suggesting to devotees that she preferred to appear at the location of her

original shrine. As mentioned in Chapter 2, the Virgin of Guadalupe also appeared on the

sacred hill of Tepeyac. Prior to the emergence of the Virgin of Guadalupe, at the hill of

Tepeyac, Mexica’s venerated several earth deities and the mother deity, Tonantzin, who

had a temple dedicated to her on top of the hill. Tonanztin represented the mother of the

gods for the Mexica and had an annual celebration around the winter solstice. The

apparition of Guadalupe happened in December of 1531, soon after the invasion of the

Spanish in the Americas.151 The miracle story of the Guadalupe was conveniently

structured to happen during the same date as the winter solstice and the feast day of the

Immaculate Conception, that falls on the 8th of December. Peterson suggests that the

miracle story of Guadalupe was published by Miguel Sánchez in 1648, as a way push the

image of Guadalupe as a national symbol of New Spain.152 As Ruiz y Cervantes did with

Juquila, Sánchez and the “four evangelists” constructed a miracle narrative that

historicized an American Madonna that connected to her Indigenous subjects.

Similar to the Virgin of Juquila and the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Virgin of San

Juan de los Lagos was placed in the small town of the Indigenous group known as

Mezquitic. Since the twelfth century CE, the Mezquitic became a sedentary society to the

area of Los Altos in the modern state of Jalisco. Multiple pre-contact archeological zones

also exist around the same area of San Juan including: Teocatitlán, el Cerro Támara,

Tlacuitapan.153 The town of Mezquitic de la Magdalena, near the town of San Juan de

151 Peterson, "The Virgin of Guadalupe: Symbol of Conquest or Liberation?" Art Journal 51, no. 4 (1992):

39-40. 152 Ibid., 42.

153 José Gerardo Bohórquez Molina, Coatlique Sanjuanita. La peregrinación a San Juan de los Lagos: un

rito Solidario de retorno a Aztlán, (Guadalajara: Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro, 2008): 32.

Los Lagos, has a hill that has been a place of adoration of the cuichá (sun), Venus,

the moon, and other animals that reside on the hill, from Epiclassic period to the twenty-

first century.154

Anthropologist, Alicia Barabas describes the anthropomorphism and

sociomorphism of saints and virgins, a similar transformation that occurred to the dueños

and other deities.155 Many of the images of the Virgin Mary throughout New Spain have a

humanistic personality that devotees have shaped and morphed throughout the centuries.

In the case of the Virgin of Juquila, from the Ruiz y Cervantes miracle story, the Virgin

does not appreciate the transfer of her shrine from Amialtepec to Juquila, her supposed

return to Amialtepec is a human decision that a statue should not have the capacity to do.

These humanistic attributes also do not follow the Christian dogma of giving sacred

images humanistic values, as the image should only represent a vessel to reach God. The

positive and negative emotions that the Virgin of Juquila supposedly has also falls under

the belief that Indigenous deities have both good and evil attributes, depending on how

they are venerated. Barbabas connects the sociomorphism of the Virgin of Juquila to that

of the Chatino deities, as they appear to fulfill certain pleas made by Chatinos.

In the case of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Peterson also notes the humanistic

attributes placed on the image by many Indigenous devotees. The images are vivified and

worshiped directly, rather than their celestial prototypes.156 The Franciscans who arrived

to Mexico City initially believed that they had successfully evangelized the Mexica since

154 Bohórquez Molina, Coatlique Sanjuanita. La peregrinación a San Juan de los Lagos, 42.

155 Barabas, “Los santuarios de vrgenes y santos aparecidos en Oaxaca,” 228.

156 Peterson, "Creating the Virgin of Guadalupe: The Cloth, the Artist, and Sources in Sixteenth-Century

New Spain," The Americas 61, no. 4 (2005): 583.

missionaries witnessed Indigenous folks “praying” to sacred images. The Council of

Trent had already expressed their reluctance to devotional images and most of the

veneration of saints that occurred in the Americas could be defined as idolatrous. The

failure of the Franciscans worried other mendicant orders as they attempted to expand

North, South, and West of Mexico City throughout the following centuries.

THE VIRGIN OF JUQUILA AS HO’O KI-LA’/SANTO LUMBRE/HO’O’ KO

In the miracle story written by Ruiz y Cervantes, he mentions how Fray Jordán gives the

statue of the Virgin of Juquila to an Indigenous man, what Ruiz y Cervantes excludes

from his 1791 book, is the deity who the Virgin of Juquila represented to the Chatinos

living in Amialtepec. They identified the Virgin of Juquila with the Chatino deity Ho’o

Ki-la’, Santo Lumbre or with the lunar deity Ho’o Ko.157 If you say the Chatino word

Ho’o Ki-la’ out loud, it sounds like the word Juquila, demonstrating that the word

“Juquila” was a Spanish adaptation to Chatino term. Ruiz y Cervantes does mention the

apparition of the Virgin of Juquila in a small cave on the side of the waterfall in

Amialtepec. The waterfall today is at the bottom of main hill of Amialtepec, the sanctuary

with a replica of the Virgin was placed at the top and the bottom of the hill. The

image of the Immaculate Conception always includes Mary standing on a crescent moon.

The reference originates from the Book of Revelation 12:1, where they describe the

Apocalyptic Woman as “a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and

upon her head a crown of twelve stars.” 158 While moons are represented

throughout Pre-Columbian visual culture, crescent moons did not appear in Pre-

157 Barabas, “Los santuarios de vrgenes y santos aparecidos en Oaxaca,” 249.

158 Peterson, "Creating the Virgin of Guadalupe,” 592.

Columbian codices, that symbol came from Europe. 159 The Virgin of Juquila, the

Virgin of Guadalupe and the Virgin of San Juan de los Lagos all stand on a crescent-

shaped moon. The veneration of a lunar deity named Ho’o Ko is also venerated at the hill

of Amialtepec. I suggest that the placement of the statue of the Virgin of Juquila during

the seventeenth century was deliberate choice made by both Antonio Anastacio who built

the shrine and friar Jordán who most likely asked Anastacio about the deities that

Chatinos venerated at the hill of Amialtepec.

CHAPTER CONCLUSIONS

The Spanish failed to completely evangelize Indigenous sacred land in the coastal area,

especially at the hill of Amialtepec and other surrounding sacred hills. Pilgrimages to

sacred sites occurred far before the arrival of the Spanish to the Americas. The statue

Virgin of Juquila proves once again that many of the Catholic sacred images, especially

those in the Americas, are an adaptation of previous venerated Indigenous sites, such as

the Cerro of the Virgen, Ho’o Ki-la’, and Santo Lumbre at Amialtepec. The surrounding

hills in Amialtepec elevate the sacredness of the hill, as articulated through the details of

caves, waterfalls, and hills that represent dwellings for deities and entrances to the

underworld. Even though the miracle story written by Ruiz y Cervantes does not mention

or allude to any Indigenous deity or sacred site, the codices and modern practices indicate

otherwise. The Dominicans who arrived in Oaxaca did not mention the sacredness of land

and how the veneration of such landscapes transformed into Catholic rituals. The

suppression of Chatino sacred knowledge of land was another tool used by the Spanish to

159 Smith, Picture Writing from Ancient Southern Mexico, 92.

diminish traditions however, these traditions continue to take place alongside and within

the Catholic realm in Mexico.

Mesoamerican codices have narratives that use a thematic approach to tell a story.

The historical portion of codices often describe the life of a warrior or a leader however,

the story tends to have a strong bias towards the main character, such as the enigmatic

story of Lord 8 Deer and his excursion through the coastal region of Oaxaca and

surrounding states. The same issue occurs in the creations of the Marian Narrative

Formula. The miracle stories about Mary have the same structure that helps create a local

and eventually, a national following. The Virgin of Juquila, the Virgin of San Juan de los

Lagos and the Virgin of Guadalupe are all “one of the many cults of the Virgin of the

Immaculate Conception imported by the Spanish.”160

160 Peterson, "The Virgin of Guadalupe: Symbol of Conquest or Liberation?" 39-40. Peterson stated this in

regards to the Catholic hermitage that was built on top of the hill of Tepeyac however, it also works for the

Virgin of Juquila and the Virgin of San Juan de los Lagos.

CONCLUSION

The statuette of the Virgin of Juquila’s symbiotic representation of Indigenous and

Catholic iconography transformed the cultural identity of Oaxaca from the moment Friar

Jordán introduced the small statue to Chatino locals and the Oaxacan bishopric. The

devotional Indigenous following of the Virgin at the beginning of the seventeenth century

provided the towns of Juquila and Amialtepec with a localized symbol that appeared to

have Indigenous and Catholic iconography embedded into both the statuette and her

associated pilgrimage. The image of Juquila’s transference of power from the local

population to the Catholic Church demarcated Juquila as the region’s primary symbol of

Oaxacan identity, thus hindering the influence of other Marian devotions in this area.

The Virgin of Juquila, the Virgin of San Juan de los Lagos, and the Virgin of

Guadalupe can all follow a similar Marian Narrative Formula. The Catholic Church used

these three images, among many others, as tools to evangelize indigenous communities

whom they viewed as needing salvation. The three-part miracle story used in Marian

Narrative Formulas, include: Mary appearing to an individual who has not been

converted, the creation of a shrine dedicated to the sacred Marian image, and the use of

multi-sensory responses that increase devotional following during pilgrimages. The

miracle story written by Joseph Manuel Ruiz y Cervantes highlighted the humility and

devotion of the Indigenous people that interacted with the statuette, as well as the

regional influence generated by the pilgrimage. The “miraculous” survival of the Virgin

of Juquila in the 1633 fire generated a mythic multi-sensory response for Chatinos and

the Spanish living in the area at the time. The fire incident demonstrated that the

statuette could survive natural disasters and functioned as evidence of the Virgin’s divine

power.

With the Virgin of Juquila’s resilience after the fire, the rise of the Marian cult in

Oaxaca found stronger footing in the region while, in New Spain more broadly, other

rising Marian popularization gained influence through new strategies of visual culture

manipulation. The Spanish Inquisition confirmed that the image of the Immaculate

Conception, generally, worked as a symbol of defining a nationalistic identity in New

Spain while simultaneously representing the success of conquest by both the Spanish and

the Church. The Council of Trent accepted the veneration of holy images and relics

through didactic, cultic, and devotional means, which further helped legitimize the

adaption of Mary in New Spain as the emblem of conquest. Mary’s presence, as “the

most familiar representation of the mother of god in [the] America[s],” became visual

confirmation for successful missions by the mendicant orders to provide to the Spanish

Crown. It is evident that the Church used the statuette of the Virgin of Juquila as an icon

of divine truth and evidence of evangelization through divine intervention. The

overlaying of Catholic rituals over Indigenous rituals at the hills of Amialtepec and Cerro

de la Virgen represent a form of what many anthropologists would consider hybridity.

However, I rather agree with term that anthropologists Leopoldo J. Bartolomé and Alicia

M. Barabas suggest, which is “symbolic articulation.” The statuette of the Virgin of

Juquila functioned as a tool of institutional power and has been claimed time and time

again by the people of Juquila who have established and applied their own localized

traditions to the act of pilgrimage.

While the affluence of Chatinos prior to the arrival of the Spanish was not written

about in Spanish documents, the Mixtec codices Bodley and Colombino-Becker provide

evidence supporting the importance of Chatinos and the town of Juquila during the zenith

of Zapotecs and the Mixtecs during the time of Lord 8 Deer Jaguar Claw (1063–1115).

The archaeological research conducted by Arthur A. Joyce and others suggest the

importance of offerings, especially to the solar and lunar deities. The petroglyphs at El

Cerro Tlacuache and La Piedra Letra also determine how Chatinos have gone on

pilgrimages to specific shrines to give their offerings and penances. Evidence suggests

the act of pilgrimage to Amialtepec did not begin with the establishment of the shrine of

the Virgin of Juquila, but five-thousand years before the seventeenth century.

The hill of Amialtepec as El Cerro de la Virgen/ki’ yak u ne’ (“the hill of the

Virgin”/ “mountain will eat a person”), and the Virgin of Juquila as the Chatino deity

Ho’o Ki-la, Santo Lumbre, and the lunar deity. Ho’o Ko answers the question of what was

the sacred presence at the hill of Amialtepec before the statue of the Virgin of Juquila

arrived in the late sixteenth century. Spanish primary sources fail to mention the

importance of Amialtepec as a site of veneration and pilgrimage prior to the arrival of the

statuette, however, they overly emphasize the immediate influence of the Virgin of

Juquila after the Chatino man, Antonio Anastacio, built the official shrine for the Virgin.

The hill, the waterfall, and the small cave in Amialtepec were a part of indigenous

significance and ritual that occurred prior to Spanish arrival. The placement of the statue

of Juquila was a mere adaptation of an already long-running site of signification.

The pilgrimage to the Sanctuary of Santa Catarina of Juquila is one of many

Marian devotions and pilgrimages around Mexico that continue to prosper, yet the impact of

colonization and cultural disparity still lingers. In t he late 1990s, Indigenous people from

the town of Juquila created the Pedimento chapel for the Virgin of Juquila outside of the city.

The people sought to have a shrine dedicated to the Virgin that was out of reach from clerical

control. This moment demonstrates the persistence of indigenous cult devotions to the Virgin

of Juquila that began in the early colonial period before Spanish missionary contact in Oaxaca.

The constant confrontation between indigenous and institutional control is a common trope

throughout the Americas. The statuette of the Virgin of Juquila reflects the identity crisis that

still confronts Mexico and its own sense of national identity. The inability to maintain Juquila

as a solely Catholic image is indicative of the indigenous communities’ own tenacious

resistance in the Oaxacan regions of Juquila and Villa Alta. Friar Jordán understood the sacred

impact of the hill of Amialtepec when he deliberately decided to gift the statuette to Anastacio,

which follows a similar instance with the image of Guadalupe at the hill of Amialtepec in the

Valley of

Mexico a few decades prior.

The fight over sovereignty for the land of Juquila continues to be contended

among the Chatino population and Catholics in the area. In recent history, the weeks

leading up to the annual pilgrimage to the sanctuary of Juquila, which occurred on

December 8, 2019, protests emerged within the Chatino communities from Santiago

Yaitepec and Santa Mara Chicholta. Protestors began blocking the road used by pilgrims

to travel to the Sanctuary of Santa Juquila. The blockage of roads occurred after agrarian

conflicts between Santa Catarina Juquila and Yaitepec we nt unresolved.161 Aside from

the agrarian conflicts, another issue arises: El Pedimento Chapel of Juquila.

Another issue arose in 2019 when local communities discovered the amount of

money the El Pedimento Chapel received annually, given the area’s high levels of

poverty. The chapel itself received around 10 million pesos in monetary alms.

Throughout 2019, the residents of Santiago Yaitepec claimed the land where El

Pedimento located belongs to their community therefore they should be in control of the

money, rather than the city of Juquila who has managed the pilgrimage revenue since

1980.162 The protests resulted in the presence of police and the unfortunate death of an

elderly Chatino woman who would sell tortillas and seeds at the chapel. The woman was

killed by brute police force and tear gas inhalation. For a few days, access to Juquila was

completely closed off, numerous people were wounded, dozens were left stranded, and a

vehicle was set on fire.163 These historic disputes and violence are by no means new and

parallel the testament of the Virgin of Juquila as both an image of worship and

contention.

The statuette of Juquila clearly demonstrates how the image of the Immaculate

Conception was successfully used for conversion in the coastal region of Oaxaca and the

areas of San Juan de los Lagos and Mexico City. Even though the impacts of colonization

still thrive today through the twenty-first century in a myriad of ways, the Marian Cult’s

161 Andrés Carrera Pineda, “Habitantes de Yaitepec bloquean la carretera al santuario,” El Imparcial: El

Mejor diario de Oaxaca, November 26, 2019, http://imparcialoaxaca.mx/oaxaca/378698/cierran-el-

paso-aperegrinos-en-juquila/

162 Pineda, “El Pedimento, zona en disputa: La Capilla de este lugar sagrado más de 10 mdp al año,” El

Imparcial: El Mejor diario de Oaxaca, November 30, 2019,

http://imparcialoaxaca.mx/losmunicipios/380163/el-pedimento-zona-en-disputa/

163 Miguel Maya Alonso, “Por la fuerza recuperan el pedimento de Juquila,” El Imparcial: El Mejor diario

de Oaxaca, December 1, 2019, http://imparcialoaxaca.mx/los-municipios/380417/por-la-fuerza-

recuperanel-pedimento-de-juquila/

influence in the Americas, despite its ubiquito us visual power, represents a colonial

legacy that was not completely successful since Indigenous traditions and rituals still

survive today. The Virgin of Juquila and her associated pilgrimage are exemplary of

resistance by Chatino people who adapted and realized ways to innocuously interweave

their own histories and culture into the patterns of Catholic orthodoxy.

IMAGES AND MAPS

Figure 1. Map of Mexico, the state of Oaxaca and Juquila. Accessed February 28, 2020:

http://reydocbici.com/blog/2010/12/juq/

Figure

2. Unknown Artist. The Statue of the Virgin of Juquila. ca. 16th Century. Wood with bronze/gold base. 11.5 x 4 inches.

Sanctuary of Santa Catarina de Juquila. Juquila, Oaxaca, Mexico. Accessed February 29, 2020

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe

Figure 2. Bernardo Novas. Façade of the Sanctuary of Santa Catarina of Juquila. Completed in 1874, renovated in

1986. Juquila, Oaxaca, Mexico. Accessed February 29, 2020 https://www.flickr.com/photos/ilhuicamina/23532722351

Figure 3. Altar and Statue of the Virgin of Juquila inside of Sanctuary of Santa Catarina of Juquila. Juquila, Oaxaca,

Mexico. (Photograph by Paloma Barraza. Taken January 9, 2020).

Figure 5. The back of the niche of the statue of the Virgin of Juquila inside of the Sacristy room. Sanctuary of Santa

Catarina of Juquila. Juquila, Oaxaca, Mexico. (Photograph by Paloma Barraza. Taken January 9, 2020).

Figure 6. Francisco Agüera. Print of the statue of the Virgin of Juquila. In Memorias de la pontentosa imagen de Nuestra

Señora de Xuquila: Quiso conservar las con noticia del santuario y antigua romería. (Mexico: Reimpresas en México:

Por don Felipe de Zúñiga y Ontiveros, 1796) bound to page 1.

https://archive.org/details/memoriasdelaport00ruiz/page/n23/mode/2up

Figure 7. Francisco Agüera. Print of the Pilgrimage Route to the Sanctuary of Juquila from Oaxaca City. In Memorias de

la pontentosa imagen de Nuestra Señora de Xuquila: Quiso conservar las con noticia del santuario y antigua romera.

(Mexico: Reimpresas en México: Por don Felipe de Zúñiga y Ontiveros, 1796) bound to page 77.

https://archive.org/details/memoriasdelaport00ruiz/page/n23/mode/2up

Figure 8. Francisco Agüera. Print of the Pilgrimage Route to the Sanctuary of Juquila from Oaxaca City with a legend

that includes a list of towns. In Memorias de la pontentosa imagen de Nuestra Señora de Xuquila: Quiso conservar las

con noticia del santuario y antigua romera. (Mexico: Reimpresas en México: Por don Felipe de Zúñiga y Ontiveros,

1796) bound to page 82. https://archive.org/details/memoriasdelaport00ruiz/page/n23/mode/2up

Figure 9. Francisco Agüera. Print of the exterior of the Sanctuary of Santa Catarina Juquila. Juquila, Oaxaca, Mexico. In

Memorias de la pontentosa imagen de Nuestra Señora de Xuquila: Quiso conservar las con noticia del santuario y

antigua romería. (Mexico: Reimpresas en México: Por don Felipe de Zúñiga y Ontiveros, 1796) bound to page 102

(top). https://archive.org/details/memoriasdelaport00ruiz/page/n23/mode/2up. Photograph of the exterior of Sanctuary of

Santa Catarina Juquila. Photograph by Paloma Barraza. Taken on January 10, 2020 (bottom).

Figure 10. Anonymous Spanish Artist. Banner of Hernán Cortés. Immaculate Conception, (top) Seal of Castilla and

León (bottom). c. 1519. Oil on Damask.In Iván Martnez, “The Banner of the Spanish Monarchy. The Political Use of

the Immaculate Conception.” Edited by Martnez Iván, Martha Reta, Lenice Rivera, and Jorge Guadarrama.Un

Privilegio Sagrado: La Concepción De María Inmaculada: Celebración Del Dogma En Mxico. México, D.F.: Museo

de la Baslica de Guadalupe, 2005. Page 125-126.

Figure 11. Replica of the shrine that the Chatino man (Antonio Anastacio) built for the Virgin of Juquila, according to

the Joseph Manuel Ruiz y Cervantes miracle story about the Virgin of Juquila. Amialtepec, Oaxaca, Mexico.

(Photograph by Paloma Barraza. Taken January 10, 2020).

Figure 12. Inside of the chapel of Santa Maria of Amialtepec (left). Close up of the altar with two statues of the Virgin of

Juquila (right). Amialtepec, Oaxaca, Mexico. (Photograph by Paloma Barraza. Taken January 10, 2020).

Figure 13. Unknown Artist. The Virgin of San Juan de los Lagos. c. 1623. Sugar Cane Paste. 13.18 inches tall. Basilica

of Our Lady of San Juan de los Lagos. San Juan de los Lagos, Jalisco, Mexico. (Photograph by Alejandro Linares

Garcia, 2011). Accessed on February 29, 2020.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ImageOurLadySanJuanLagos02.jpg

Figure

14. Attributed to Marcos Cipac de Aquino. The Virgin of Guadalupe (the titular tilma image). ca.1555. Oil and

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Tempera on Cloth. 68.9 x 43 inches. Basilica de la Virgen de Guadalupe. Mexico City, Mexico.

Figure 15. Map of Pilgrimage route to the Sanctuary of Santa Catarina of Juquila, known as Ruta

de Fe. Painted at a bus stop destined to Juquila, in Oaxaca City, Oaxaca, Mexico.

100

Figure 16. Codex Colombino, page 5, Tututepec and Juquila place glyph on top of ballcourt (top). Drawing of the same

image (bottom). Mixtec. 12th century CE. Tanned deer hide folded and painted on one side. Accessed on February 29,

2020 https://www.wdl.org/en/item/3245/ Drawing in Smith, Mary Elizabeth. Picture Writing from Ancient Southern

Mexico; Mixtec Place Signs and Maps. The Civilization of the American Indian Series: 124. Norman, University of

Oklahoma Press, 1973. Page 246.

101

Figure 4. Drawing of place sign of Juquila in Codex Bodley, eagle head combined with geometric platform and tuft of

grass, 13-IV. Mixtec. 14th-15th Centuries CE. Tanned deer hide. Drawing in Smith, Mary Elizabeth. Picture Writing from

Ancient Southern Mexico; Mixtec Place Signs and Maps. The Civilization of the American Indian Series: 124. Norman,

University of Oklahoma Press, 1973. Page 257.

102

Figure 5. Coastal Oaxaca Map of Sacred Indigenous Sacred Hills and Towns. Created by Felicia Nez.

103

Figure 6. Petroglyphs at El Cerro Tlacuache. In Soriano Mendoza, Moisés and Mario Lugos López. Peregrinaje

Chatino, Los Caminos de Juquila. Oaxaca: 1450 Ediciones, 2014. Page 33.

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