The 12 of December is the traditional Catholic feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Inextricably linked to the Mexican identity, is her story that of the Virgin Mary? Or is there someone much older at work here? This week I'm discussing Our Lady of Guadalupe and the history of her sacred site at Tepeyac Hill having belonged to the goddess Coatlicue long before the arrival of the Spanish colonizers. 

Perhaps Guadalupe was not Mary, but Coatlicue, coming to remind her people she was and is still with them, even in the darkest of times. The goddess and her people both survived brutalization, death, murder, theft, and abuse at the hands of the Spanish, but Coatlicue appeared at her holy site in the midst of the chaos and turmoil and uttered the now famous words - "Am I not here, I who am your Mother?"

A link to curandera Griselda Alvarez Sesma's page on Guadalupe-Coatlicue

https://www.curanderismo.org/about