Graham Greene & Guadalupe
Graham Greene left London for Mexico on 29 January 1938 and returned in May of the same year. He was thirty-three years old at the time. His five months in Mexico produced the travel account The Lawless Roads (1939), and the novel The Power and the Glory one year later (a masterpiece).
In Articles of Faith: The Collected Tablet Journalism of Graham Greene, I have encountered an article entitled “The Dark Virgin.” It was written (or published) on 31 December 1938, and since I wouldn’t anticipate general familiarity with this article, I thought I would share some of Greene’s reflection.
What happened 480 years ago? Mary “appeared first at Amecameca, fifty miles away [from Mexico City], but no one paid her any attention: then on December 9th, 1531, an Indian peasant, Juan Diego, was climbing Tepeyac Hill, at the foot of which the shrine now stands. The Virgin appeared to him among the rocks — there was music, suddenly, and light — she called him ‘my son’ and told him to carry a message to Bishop Zumarraga that he was to build a shrine where she might watch and guard the Indians.”
Remember, Greene reminds, how revolutionary this vision must have seemed. Ten years prior Mexico City had fallen to Cortes and the country had not yet been subdued. One wonders, Greene asks, “what kind of greeting the average Spanish adventurer would have given an Indian who claimed to have been addressed as ‘my son’ by the Mother of God.”
“The legend, Mexican politicians say, was invented by the Church to enslave the Indian mind, but if indeed it had been invented at that period, the purpose would have been very different. The Virgin claimed a church from which she might guard her Indians — from the Spanish conquerors. The legend gave the Indians self-respect: it gave him a hold over his conqueror; it was a liberating legend.”
Why the boy Diego, however? Why not some Spaniard —Cortes perhaps — whom the Bishop would surely have believed? Well, what “would have been the future of that vision if it had been sent to the Conqueror instead of to the Conquered?” Eventually, he answers, it would have been closed like every other church in Mexico. Even at the height of persecution, the shrine of Guadalupe remained open: “No Government dared to rob the Indian of his Virgin, and it broke the career of the only man who ever threatened it. A few years ago, when Garrido Canabal, the dictator of Tabasco, arrived in the capital accompanied by his Red Shirts to take his seat as Minister of Agriculture in Cardenas’s cabinet, he gave secret orders to his men that the shrine be destroyed, as the Tabascan churches already had been. A bomb was flung and failed to damage the image, and Garrido was driven from Mexico to exile in Costa Rico.”
When Diego returned, the Bishop requested a sign, and for a third time the boy came to Mary. She told him to come back the next day, but Diego’s uncle was sick, and in fetching a priest, Diego took a path other than the one which would bring him into contact with Mary. Diego ”showed the same materialism as the sceptical Catholics today who discount the vision because this Virgin was dark-skinned — as if the Mother of God, released like her Son from the flesh, belongs to one continent or race more than another.”
But, according to Greene, Diego could not escape: “The Virgin blocked his path too, without reproach. No vision of the Mother of God has even been associated with the idea of punishment. She told him his uncle was already well and directed him to go to the top of the hill to gather roses from the rocks and take them to the Bishop. He wrapped the roses in his serape and when he opened it before the Bishop, the image of the Virgin was there, stamped on the cloth, just as it hands above the altar today.”
K.
Kelly Wilson is a Seminarian for the Archdiocese of Winnipeg. Besides Vox Nova he writes at his blog Musings.
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That is really interesting Kelly!
In addition to the intrinsic interest of the post, if anybody reading it has never read “The Power and the Glory” let this be an inspiration for you to do so. As Kelly said, it’s a masterpiece.
Great piece, Kelly! I enjoyed it very much.
Oh, dear. Do people do that? I don’t disbelieve it, I’ve just never heard it before.
Great post!
That’s Greene writing that, Pachy, not Mr. Wilson, and, in Greene’s day, they did. The Catholic Church has learnt to oppose racism; I just wish it would learn to oppose some other things…
Thanks Kelly. As someone who finds Greene fascinating, and who always buys a copy of The Power and the Glory at a used book store, whether I need it or not, this was very interesting. And this year, for several reasons, this Feast has hit me more than before. This was the perfect cap to it all.
Yeah, I don’t know much about Guadalupe, but I have read most of what Graham Greene has published, and this isn’t usually a well referenced article…
This was a unique take on the Feast of Guadalupe. Great stuff.