Rossini-hein, Amanda Lara (Week 3)

Before this assignment, I did not know that the symbol I am familiar with is known as the Virgin of Guadalupe. Until first grade, I was loosely raised Catholic, though we were never the most devoutly practicing family. Truly, I think I am only familiar with this image because of how iconic it is, and not because of my upbringing. Growing up in Brazil, it was expected that almost everyone in my community was Catholic, either by association or belief. After moving and becoming more familiarized with my Protestant, American family, I stopped seeing Catholic icons, as they weren't included in our nondenominational church. Thus began one of my first steps toward Americanization.

One of my earliest memories of the Virgin Mary, as I have always known her to be called, in America was when I was watching The Hunchback of Notre Dame, when Esmeralda sings "God Help the Outcasts," asking the Virgin Mary to protect her, as she has just taken sanctuary in the cathedral. I have seen icons representing the Virgin Mary in missions throughout California and in the Met Cloisters in New York. She is familiar to me because of my interest in art history and the compulsory education in California which teaches all the impressionable 4th graders that the early missions were places of refuge and not institutions of slave labor. I always thought that if she were watching the missionaries, as a mother, she would not like how they behaved with their "brethren" very much. 

The part of Southern California I grew up in does not have a very large Latina or Catholic population (I was one of two Latinas in my senior class), so my familiarization with this image does not bring back memories of my community, but rather memories of places I visited (and in the case of Brazil, memories of the home I returned to). I asked my mother if we refer to the Virgin Mary as the Virgin of Guadalupe in Brazil, too, and will update this blog post when she replies to me. 

I have attached an image of  The Virgin of Guadalupe with the Four Apparitions by Nicolás Enríquez (1773).