“La Guadalupana” and Calling Out ICE in Ventura
Last Friday was the Feast of La Virgen de Guadalupe. At right is a retablo, a hybrid style of indigenous artistry, centuries of Catholic iconography, and Spanish culture. Retablos are small oil paintings on tin, zinc, wood, or copper which were used in home altars to honor saints.
This one has hung in our home for 30 years. I commissioned it from a traditional Northern New Mexican craftsman friend of my dear brother Fred Vigil. Every day this retablo reminds us first and foremost of Fred (who you may remember we “found” last summer after 5 years of disappearance, see last August’s Enews).
But also of:
— the female mysteries of God;
— the many ways to honor our ancestors in the faith; and
— the strong tradition of resistance to injustice that Latinx Catholics have carried, not least through this feast.
Poignantly, La Guadalupana appeared in 1517, the same year that Luther began a Reformation that changed the face of Christianity (for better and worse), and that the Spanish conquistador Francisco Hernández de Córdoba “discovered” Mexico, changing the fate of the Americas (same deal). You can read more about that here (from a devout Catholic perspective).
I strongly believe that embracing the Guadalupe tradition—including (and maybe especially) for non-Catholics—is crucial to finding our way through this dark season of autocratic white nationalism, because she has accompanied so many of our immigrant kin through so much hell. [See more on this 2020 BCM webinar, and in my “Gospel Nativities vs. Anti-Immigrant Nativism” chapter in Our God is Undocumented: Biblical Faith and Immigrant Justice (Orbis Books, 2012), chapter 9.]
This is a link to the Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE) Ventura website. It features a sign-on letter protesting how ICE has been targeting immigrants, but also those standing in solidarity with them. (Left: ICE raid of a local farm this summer; photo VC Star.)
BCM and Tim Nafziger has been working to persuade CLUE to host this letter, so please check it out and the accompanying background pieces. For La Guadalupana!
Advent and Christmas blessings from all of us at BCM to all of you who read our blog. Thank you!