maxwell, charlina (week 3 blog)

 As Chicanx/Latinx, CA residents, and/or Catholics, we have knowledge/experiences with the Virgin of Guadalupe. Please write about your experience with this image.

As a non-catholic California resident I have never had much contact with the idea of the virgin Guadalupe, in fact until this year I had never heard of her. The first time she was mentioned to me was in a conversation with my girlfriend about how Catholicism is a scam, and she explained that the virgin guadalupe is how essentially Catholicism was sold to Latinos. However in looking at this image of the virgin guadalupe I do recognize her, and not only since I’ve seen the Virgin Mary. I used to have a bracelet I got at a dollar store as a child, that was a rosary with this tiny image. I must've seen this lady all over the place, and never known of her significance. From what I gather, like most aspects of Catholicism and religion in general the virgin is like a necessary symbol for the control of a new mass. As Catholicism was spreading and being forced upon indigeonous peoples around the globe there needed to be a unifying symbol to convert Mexican catholics to this Spanish religion. In a book called the Colonial Order, which I was referred to by a friend in chicano studies, there is a quote from a Spaniard in Mexico. He is basically saying that in order to convert the Mexicans, whom he calls Indians, that they should not just civilize them. They should instead Indianize catholicism so that they Mexicans will not be immediately disdainful of whatever religion the barbaric Spaniards are forcing upon them. Instead to make a Mexican version of the virgin mary as an especially sneaky way of assimilation. It’s incredible that in the war for independence from Spain, all those warriors were praying to the Virgin Guadalupe to protect them, and she in and of herself was a completely Spanish invention.