Week 5: La Virgen

My first experience with la Virgen de Guadalupe was when I was a little girl. I used to go to Mexico every summer to visit my grandparents who were Catholic. There was one summer in particular where I had spent the entirety of my summer vacation there, and I remember being so sad that I had to leave my grandma. My mom came to pick me and my siblings up to drive all the way to Guadalajara which was three hours away from our hometown in Nayarit. My grandma wanted to give me a figurine of La Virgen de Guadalupe like the one pictured below. She told me I had to ask my mom if I could take it with me. 

I don't remember being particularly religious then, but my mom was converging to Christianity at the time. She told me I couldn't take the figure because it was wrong. I started crying because I didn't understand. To me, the figure was just a loving gift my grandmother was giving me so I could remember her and my summer of memories. I didn't know the religious connotations behind it. My mom told me it was an icon, and God didn't want us to worship figures. After that, I grew up Christian and following that ideology. I thought la Virgen and Virgin Mary was the same all the way until I went to my community college where I took a Spanish 1 course. My Spanish 1 teacher taught us the history behind la Virgen and how she came as an apparition to Juan Diego. I even learned about the pilgrimage made to her. My grandma (on my mom's side) lives with us now. She is Catholic and has taped an image of la Virgen de Guadalupe against our window. I appreciate what she symbolizes to Catholic followers and those in the Chicanx community, but I'm sad to say I do not relate or see myself in her at all.