Chavez, Lilibeth (week 3)

 All of my life, growing in a traditional Mexican and heavily Catholic household, my mom has turned over all of my struggles, and all of my pains to her devotion to the Virgen de Guadalupe. She is sacred not only in religion but in my house. To me the image of the Virgen de Guadalupe has been the way my mother shows her love for her family, and her deepest desire for our wellbeing and success. Although I am not as religious as my elders, there has always been an evocation of emotion for me surrounding la Virgen de Guadalupe. Drawing from my deep connection to my matriarchal lineage, the image of la Virgen de Guadalupe signifies the anchor of my mother’s and grandmother’s strength to carry out the weight of my family. While I had never analyzed the image itself, beyond what her significance is for my family, I recognize the image of la Virgen insinuates an image of purity and womanhood that is not entirely representative of womanhood in the broadest definitions of what it could be to be a woman. Further I recognize the problematic the image of the Virgen poses in discussions of colonial powers, the reign of Catholicism and its direct link to erasure, the imposition of cis male Europeans in the discussion and adaption of “the idealized woman.” And while in many ways, the image of La Virgen may draw attention to the institutionalized oppression of women, for the women in my family, La Virgen de Guadalupe fills them with a feeling of power and strength, which granted may stem from the possibility that they are unaware of the brutalities of history as well as those of modern society.