If you read about out driving trip to El Salvador (”roadtrip!” in this same section), you’ll know that we ended the trip with a great love, appreciation for and gratitude to the Virgen of Guadalupe.

La Virgincita is the Patron Saint of the Americas. All throughout our trip, we visited roadside shrines to and effigies of her. Accounts published in the 1640’s in Spanish and Nahuatl describe the first appearance of the Virgin to a peasant named Juan Diego in the hills surrounding Tepeyac ouside of Mexico City. The Virgin Mary was addressed as “Tonantzin” by the newly converted Aztec peoples.  Some anthropologists believe that Our Lady of Guadalupe is a syncretic, Christianized Tonantzin–there is some evidence that the base of the hill of Tepayac where the Basilica of Guadalupe was constructed had previously been an important pre-Colubian site for the worship of Tonantzin.

In the Aztec belief system, still currently practiced by Nahuas, Tonantzin roughly translates to “Our Revered Mother” and is a general title bestowed upon various female Deities, including Cihuacoatl (the goddess of war and childbirth). Other female Deity aspects that are referred to as “Tonantzin” are “Mother Earth”, the “Goddess of Sustenance”, “Honoured Grandmother”, “Snake”,”Bringer of Maize”, and “Mother of Corn”. She is also considered to be the sister to the God of Rain (Tlaloc) and a Goddess of Fertility. (Source: Wikipedia, Aztec Religion by Thomas H. Frederikson, 1999). According to ojinaga.com, Tonantzin was also identified with the moon. Her blue green mantle is the colour reserved for the divine Aztec couple Ometecuhtli and Omecihuatl, her belt is considered a sign of pregnancy, and a cross shaped image symbolizing the Cosmos and called nahui-olin is inscribed beneath the image’s sash. She also symbolizes the mother of maguey–the source of the sacred beverage pulque and the rays of light surrounding her also symbolize maguey spines (wikipedia).