Thursday, December 3, 2009

DEC. 12: DIA DE LA VIRGEN DE GUADALUPE

By Juan Montoya

Perhaps no other day is more celebrated in Mexico and in the Rio Grande Valley than December 12, the Day of the Virgen of Guadalupe.

Whether one believes or not, it is impressive to see local believers march though the streets carrying a painting of the virgin on a small platform as matchines dance, the jingle of their seashell leggings keeping beat to the makeshift instruments played by others.

Wikipedia says that according to the traditional account, the image appeared miraculously on the front of a simple peasant's cloak.

That image still exists; it is on display in the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City. It is perhaps Mexico's most popular religious and cultural image, and the focus of an extensive pilgrimage. The feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe is December 12.

She is said to have appeared to Saint Juan Diego on the hill of Tepeyac near Mexico City between December 9 and December 12, 1531.

That is neither here nor there to believers like Natividad "Nati" Arzola, a Southmost residents who is a matachin dancer every Dec. 12.

"La virgencita ha sido muy buena conmigo," she says earnestly. "Ella me ha concedido muchos favores y yo la quiero mucho."

Nati is well into her 60s but doesn't hesitate to don her matachin outfit and dance through the streets alongside the virgin for blocks on end.

Brownsville has its own place of apparition, according to those who believe. It is formed from the bark of a tree and was discovered when a watchman at the house on 1004 St. Charles trimmed the tree in July 1993.

The 3-foot-tall image that attracted crowds the is about nine feet from the base of the tree in the yard of the boarding house. Although parts of the bark have fallen off and the tree is dying, the figure is still intact.

A resident there told the Brownsville Herald's Patricia Gonzales that the watchman hadn't noticed the resemblance to the Mexican icon, but that people in the bank across the street (now municipal court), did.

"He cleared away some of the branches to clean the property," William Clements said then. "He didn't think anything of it until the people in the bank saw it clearly."

You can scoff, ridicule, or pass it off as ignorance and superstition. But there is no doubt in the sincerity of the believers. We ran into one such believer in the person of Doña Mari. She said she made a promise to the virgin over a sick grandson and that she performed a miracle on him.

"The doctors couldn't find out que tenia," she said. "But she did and he's well now. That's why I come to place flowers here every chance I get."

Doña Mari wouldn't let us take her picture as she placed the flowers on the base of the tree.

She crossed herself and knelt slightly, then ambled down the sidewalk and out of sight.

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