The Virgin of Guadalupe is actually Tonantzin, the Mother Goddess of the Nahuatl peoples

The Virgin of Guadalupe is the historical and contemporary belief developed in Mexico from Tonantzin, also called Coatlicue, the ancient deity of the Mexicas. As is generally known, the Virgin of Guadalupe has become the Catholic religious patron of Mexico. In this video we try to describe how this belief arose from a supposed apparition of the Virgin Mary and that it was actually a theatrical adaptation (as described by Eduardo del Río-Rius) that the Spanish religious did for a long time until it was accepted. as actual fact.

 of the ancient Mexica deity Tonantzin (also called Coatlicue).

We remember that the original roots of this image and Catholic belief arose from the Virgin of Guadalupe of Extremadura in Spain, for which many Spanish conquerors had devotion. Guadalupe, a geographical name comes from the Arabic word "wadi-lupi" means "river of wolves" in reference to the animals that could drink near the sanctuary. Hernán Cortés, the main leader of the conquest of Mexico, was precisely a native of Extremadura and had this virgin as his Catholic religious symbol.

Well, indeed, it was on the ruins of the Tonantzin temples that the invaders developed the myth and built the churches of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Gradually over the years the natives became accustomed to the new images until today where few Mexicans remember the deep earthly and creative origins that the Spanish developed to further the beliefs.

And now let's explain who Coatlicue was, the Aztec goddess who was used by the church to reincarnate the belief of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Let's say that Coatlicue also received the name of Tonāntzin 'our (to-) revered mother (nān-) (-tzin)

She was worshiped by the Nahuatl peoples as the mother of the gods and was represented as a woman with a skirt of serpents. She had sagging breasts, a symbol of fertility, and a necklace of human hands and hearts that would represent the ephemerality of life. The best known image is in the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. It is a monumental statue. In it, in addition to the skirt of snakes, you can see snakes throughout the monument. Her head is made up of two snakes that meet, a symbol of the duality that, when created, gave rise to the entire universe.

In Nahuatl mythology, Coatlicue was the mother of the Centzon Hui tznahuac, the "four hundred Surians", who were the gods of the southern stars (what we call the Southern Cross and the Centaur constellation, which are visible from Mexico City in the months of April and May). Coatlicue was the mother of Coyolxauhqui, who was precisely the one who governed his brothers from the southern sky. Coyolxauhqui is often represented as a lunar goddess who was quartered in image by a warrior god who was also presented as the son of Coatlicue, called Huitzilopochtli.

Huitzilopochtli was a god who was born from a hummingbird feather implanted in the womb of his mother Coatlicue of him.

This god, the mythological son of Coatlicue, was born an adult, armed and violent, and the first thing he did was dismember his sister Coyolxauhqui as a symbol of the advent and conquest of the Anahuac Valley, that is, of the Mexican plateau, by the patriarchal and warlike society of the Aztecs. For the Mexica, Huitzilopochtli, who was paradoxically represented as a hummingbird, was the god of the sun and of will, patron of war, war tactics, battles and fire,

As I pointed out before, the Spanish took advantage of the Mexica's belief in Tonantzin or Coatlicue to introduce the cult of the Virgin Mary, in particular the Virgin of Guadalupe (which, as explained at the beginning, was a cult from Extremadura, where Hernán Cortés came from).

These origins are illustratively recounted by Bernardino de Sahagún in the General History of Things in New Spain, 1540-1585

The Mexica “had a temple dedicated to the mother of the gods, which they call Tonantzin, which means our mother. There they made many sacrifices in honor of this goddess, and they came to her from very distant lands, from more than twenty leagues from all the regions of Mexico, and they brought many offerings: men and women and boys and girls came to these parties. The number of people these days was great and everyone said 'let's go to the Tonantzin party';

And Sahagún continues: “now that the church of Our Lady of Guadalupe is built there, they also call it Tonantzin, taking the occasion of the preachers who also call it Tonantzin. ...and now they come to visit this Tonantzin from far away, as far as before, whose devotion is also suspect, because everywhere there are many churches of Our

Lady, and they don't go to them, and they come from distant lands to this Tonantzin as in the past."

The legend imposed by the colonial Catholic authorities at the beginning of the colonization process was based on an event that supposedly occurred on December 12, 1531, when the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared to a Chichimeca indigenous Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin on the hill of Tepeyac, and ordered him to tell the Bishop of Mexico, Fray Juan de Zumárraga, to erect a temple for him in that place. According to Eduardo del Río, a famous Mexican cartoonist and scholar known as Rius, this myth was gradually imposed by the church from theatrical representations of the apparition that, being repeated countless times, became accepted as a real fact.

“The myth of Juan Diego provided a very important vehicle for the Catholic Church to convince, especially the indigenous communities, to see that one of 'theirs' had been converted to Catholicism and that they had to accept it. This helped to process an evangelization much faster and above all more efficient.

The main cult center of the Guadalupe belief is precisely located on the slopes of the Tepeyac hill in the Basilica of Guadalupe in the north of Mexico City.