Annotations for Subject-headings: Catholic Church

Hundreds in Los Angeles attended the funeral service of a tireless champion for refugees and the poor. Father Luis Olivares fought church and government officials over his support of sanctuary. Olivares died of complications from, contracted from contaminated blood in El Salvador. Alberto Aguilar attended the service. He filed this report.

Hundreds in Los Angeles attended the funeral service of a tireless champion for refugees and the poor. Father Luis Olivares fought church and government officials over his support of sanctuary. Olivares died of complications from, contracted from contaminated blood in El Salvador. Alberto Aguilar attended the service. He filed this report.

[Transitional Music]

[Transitional Music]

Mariachi music punctuated a final farewell for the man who defied state in church by proclaiming his Lady Queen of Angels Parish as a safe sanctuary for the undocumented and the homeless. César Chávez who inspired the rebel priest to come to the defense of the poor said during the service that Father Olivares was simply committed to the poor and the weak. Olivares' defiance of authority sometimes even tested sympathetic views as county supervisor, Gloria Molina, recalls.

Mariachi music punctuated a final farewell for the man who defied state in church by proclaiming his Lady Queen of Angels Parish as a safe sanctuary for the undocumented and the homeless. César Chávez who inspired the rebel priest to come to the defense of the poor said during the service that Father Olivares was simply committed to the poor and the weak. Olivares' defiance of authority sometimes even tested sympathetic views as county supervisor, Gloria Molina, recalls.

Even though I couldn't fulfill what he wanted me to fulfill for him, for the most part, and with a lot of the immigrants, a lot of the undocumented in my community, I admired him so much. But he was very insistent in maintaining it all together because it wasn't complete for him to give in on one thing. He wanted the entire package, and rightly so.

Even though I couldn't fulfill what he wanted me to fulfill for him, for the most part, and with a lot of the immigrants, a lot of the undocumented in my community, I admired him so much. But he was very insistent in maintaining it all together because it wasn't complete for him to give in on one thing. He wanted the entire package, and rightly so.

Father Olivares left his post as pastor of our Lady Queen of Angels, shortly after he was diagnosed with AIDS and apparently fighting a losing battle to retain his job with Archbishop Cardinal Roger Mahoney and his own religious order. In Los Angeles for Latino US, this is Alberto Aguilar reporting.

Father Olivares left his post as pastor of our Lady Queen of Angels, shortly after he was diagnosed with AIDS and apparently fighting a losing battle to retain his job with Archbishop Cardinal Roger Mahoney and his own religious order. In Los Angeles for Latino US, this is Alberto Aguilar reporting.

They came by the thousands to the 40-acre ranch near Delano to pay their respects to the man who had fought an entire lifetime to give dignity and more opportunity to those who picked the food on America's tables. César Chávez, founder of the United Farm Workers Union, the first successful attempt to organize agricultural workers in this country, died April 23 at age 66. In Delano, the mass procession behind Chávez's simple pine coffin was at times over two miles long, as everyone, from farmworkers to the famous, came to pay their respects.

We shall miss…we shall miss César's powerful voice. His life and its example call each of us to a higher purpose, to greater resolve, to right the wrongs, to correct the injustices that continue to plague our communities, whether it's urban or rural, industrial or agricultural. It is an honor to remember his valiant life and to recommit myself and that of my colleagues as we go forward to try to bring for our children and our children's children the vision and the dream that we share. Entonces, con su permiso…hablo poquito en Español.

[Crowd cheering]

César Chávez es mi hermano, mi amigo, mi compañero. ¡Viva la raza! ¡Viva la causa! ¡Viva César Chávez!

[Crowd cheering]

A proclamation by the President of the United States of America upon the death of César Chávez. "César Chávez came from the humbled yet proud beginnings of a migrant worker to lead those same workers in a movement that irreversibly shaped our nation and brought justice and dignity to thousands. After the Depression ..."

In 1965, I believe, or '66, we marched with César here in Delano. On the efforts to do something about publicizing the boycott and the plight of farmworkers.

He moved us in a way that has come to be known as el movimiento y la causa.

Repeat after me. Boycott grapes! Boycott grapes! Boycott grapes!

In his loving…in his loving memory, please, boycott grapes. Make sure that our children do not have to suffer the pesticides anymore. What has happened to César will happen to all of us, and may we all be as lucky as César and be able to lay our heads down, close our eyes while reading a magazine on the Aztec nation and go to sleep and end our lives in that manner. We should all be that lucky.

¡Nosotros venceremos! ¡Nosotros venceremos ahora!

The life of César Chávez, his commitment to a cause, inspired many across the country, and as thousands gathered at the memorial service in Delano, California, Diana Martínez collected these thoughts from friends and supporters of César Chávez.

Nosotros venceremos.

Whether from a celebrity, politician, or average citizen, everyone who came to pay their respect seemed to have a story about how César Chávez touched their lives.

His life was an example to people, and millions of Hispanics and millions of Americans who will never live on a farm had their lives changed by him.

Mark Grossman first met Chávez in 1969 as a student. Grossman worked summers and vacations on the grape boycott from 40 Acres, United Farm headquarters in Delano. He learned firsthand how César was always able to get people to do a little more than what they first expected. Grossman wound up working for the union for 24 years and became his press secretary and personal aide. No one, he said, worked harder than the labor leader.

No one could tell César Chávez to slow down. The man was working 20-hour days, traveling constantly. I can't count the number of times that I'd meet him at his yard…you know, at 3 o’ clock in the morning, because…at La Paz near Bakersfield, because we had to be in Sacramento or San Francisco at 11:00, and we'd spend a full day of appearances and rallies and news conferences and protests or negotiations and be back dropping him off at 3 o’ clock the next morning.

Before becoming a politician, California State Senator Art Torres also worked for the UFW. As a young man, he was inspired by his unbending principles.

I remember, one time, we were driving from…Thermal, California in 1973 and the two dogs were in the back, Boycott and Huelga, and we stopped at a gas station…and we had just come from a rally. We had collected all this money, and I said, "Well, brother, we need to pay the gas bill." He says, "You're not going to touch that money until it's accounted for, back at La Paz." I said, "But we have no money to pay for the gas." "Then you go out there and you find the money from somebody else, but you're not going to touch that money because that has to be accounted for. It's the workers' money."

Senator Robert Kennedy, Jr., says his family became more aware of the power of the Latino vote because of Chávez.

I remember in the 1980 campaign when he came to Arizona, which he didn't have to do, during a primary, when Senator Kennedy was already in bad shape in the election, but he produced hundreds of lowriders who came with him because they were devoted to him to get out the vote for us on primary election day. He went into the field, sent organizers, had them register actually in the field, and we won the state of Arizona just because of César.

My first job that César gave me when we came to Delano was to go get the money from the workers at $3.50.

Dolores Huerta was with Chávez from the very beginning. She said he always knew gaining rights for farmworkers would mean tremendous sacrifice.

I went back to César, and I said, "César, they can't afford that much money." And he said, "If they don't give that $3.50, they will never get out of their poverty.”

Father William Wood, president of the National Catholic World Life Conference, and the Reverend Jesse Jackson, say Chávez will never be forgotten.

Because of our common faith, and especially with what I see here tonight, with the face of the people, I see that that it's really true when they say "Viva César Chávez." He really does live.

Chávez was a seed sower. He planted seeds of dignity, and those seeds will keep sprouting in the heart of people. As long as farmworkers fight for a decent wage, Chávez lives. As long as they fight against the horrors of the insecticides, Chávez lives. As long as they fight for the right to vote, Chávez lives. As long as they fight to build coalition, Chávez lives.

For Latino USA, I'm Diana Martínez.

The recent murder of a Roman Catholic cardinal in Guadalajara, Mexico is being linked to a gang in San Diego. Law enforcement officials say at least six members of the Calle Treinta gang were the hired killers for a Tijuana drug cartel led by the Ramon Arellano family. From San Diego, Marie Araña has more.

Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo and six other persons were accidentally killed when gunmen hired by a Tijuana drug cartel mistakenly opened fire on the cardinal's limousine. Law enforcement officials say that members of the Calle Treinta gang were hired by the Arellano brothers to kill a rival drug lord, Joaquin Chapo Guzman. Guzman was believed to be the target when Cardinal Posadas was shot last May 24th. For Latino USA, I'm Marie Araña in San Diego.

This is Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture.

[Opening Theme]

I'm Maria Hinojosa. Today on Latino USA, Hispanics and the Catholic Church.

People with a different culture and different values and a different way of expressing wonderful and beautiful Catholicism.

A standoff at the border over aid to Cuba.

We've told them that they will not be arrested, they will not be prosecuted. We will release the bus, that people can go freely. They refuse to budge.

Also, keeping the mariachi musical tradition alive.

It's the most addicting music of all. Once it's in your blood, you'll never get it out.

That's all coming up on Latino USA. But first Las Noticias.

Pope John Paul II made his first visit to the United States since 1987. The pontiff along with 170,000 Catholics from around the world came to celebrate World Youth Day. A commemoration of Catholicism and religious worship. American Catholic clergy are hoping that as a result of the fanfare, traditionally Catholic Latino communities will renew their interest in the church. But as Ancel Martinez reports from Denver, many Catholic parishes are confronted with apathy and a church parishioners feel is sometimes too conservative.

[Church Bells]

One parish that wants to avoid the image of state Catholicism in apathy among Catholics is our Lady of Guadalupe. It's Adobe and Brick colonial style church and courtyard is just across the railroad tracks from Denver’s sleek office buildings. The pastor just ended a three-week fast to protest gangs that dominate summer street life around here. Our Lady Guadalupe is housing, hundreds of pilgrims celebrating World Youth Day. Church Deacon Alfonso Sandoval says for Mexican Americans it should be a time for reflection.

If anything, like I say, part of their culture is their faith in going to church. I think that the presence of the Holy Father is going to be significant for the youth in the sense that they were starting to drift away, not attending mass and not attending sacraments wasn't important for them, it just was not a priority. There's a lot of other priorities going on in their lives, but with this visit, I think it'll help a lot of them just take stock of what their faith's really all about.

The Pope chose Denver as the biannual World Youth Day site because it's a relatively young city and its Hispanic population represents the fastest growing segment of the church in America. But the nearly all Anglo national conference of Catholic bishops only grasped in the 1980s how important Latinos are to the survival of the American church. Father Lorenzo Ruiz works these streets reaching out to Chicanos and Latin American immigrants.

This is an area where the American church, the Anglo-American church and the Hispanic church met. The American church took over this area and again, they were not sensitized or aware of the church already existing here, totally unaware of the fact that there was a church here and people with a different culture and different values and a different way of expressing wonderful and beautiful Catholicism.

When Mexican Americans were ignored, that's when the separations began with the traditional Catholic Church, such as the new Mexican set known as the Penitentes decades ago. And even today, evangelical churches are making inroads to a once all Catholic culture.

[Church music and signing]

The Church of Christ Elam holds thrice weekly services in the basement of the circa 1900s Methodist church in the center of Denver's Latino neighborhood. Furnishings are minimal, fold up chairs, linoleum floor, and a small stage, several teenagers sing, a few dozen followers wave their hands and clutch Bibles, Pastor Manuel Alvarez, explains Catholicism simply isn't spiritual enough for many, so they seek other faiths.

They found something that is not a religious but a new experience with God when they can talk to God and have a relationship with God, not with religious or not with that organization, but a special relationship with Jesus Christ.

The Vatican is now paying special attention to Latinos in the United States because in part of their support of conservative issues like the ban on women serving as priest and opposition to artificial birth control and abortion, but there are even schisms among Latinos. Sister Irene Muñoz works for the Denver Catholic Archdiocese Hispanic outreach program.

I know women are speaking out and saying we want a fuller role in the church in many ways, and I truly see that. I truly believe that women are called to do more than perhaps what we're doing. And I know there are many of our sisters, my sisters that are called even more into become ordained priest and they were saying, look at us, listen to us.

The challenges facing the church in its quest to resolve these issues as well as retain Catholic Hispanics will remain long after the excitement of the pope's visit to Colorado in this continent subsides. For Latino USA I'm Ancel Martinez in Denver.

For four days, recently, more than 150,000 young people gathered in Denver to see Pope John Paul II. Among them, many Latinos from across the country. Producer Betto Arcos, spoke to the young Hispanics about what was on their minds, issues ranging from the future of the Latino community to abortion, President Clinton's performance, and gays in the military.

The Hispanic community is not getting very well educated, okay? We need to push more for education.

We're working our way up, and I want to see us in power, not let everybody else walk all over us. We're going to be doing a lot of the walking, and we've got a lot to do.

President Clinton, up to this day, I feel that he takes in a lot of information from his public, from his staff, and he later he comes up with the plan out of that.

I think he's done a good job so far. I think he's the best president ever since John F Kennedy.

I'm sure he has good intentions. He can't please everybody all the time. He's looking out for the general welfare of the whole United States.

I do like the fact that he has let gays and lesbians in the army and stuff like that because I mean, that's their own private life, and nobody should get into that because it's theirs and it's personal. So I mean, we shouldn't hold that against them. Their preference is their business as long as they can do their work right. I mean, I think that's cool.

That's a tough situation. And the way it is right now there, we know that there are some gays in the military, but we don't know who they are, if they keep it quiet or ... Once you do know, I do know of one, a guy that was in my unit, and he seemed just like any other guy. So on a personal level, it's all right, but when you think about the overall picture, it's kind of an eerie feeling.

I don't know if you can say maybe the sixties, free love, everything like that was a part of it. And some of the people took that wrong as to what free love was, and they took it to the extremes with sex. And nowadays, you have a generation that holds nothing sacred.

Yeah, I believe that it's women's choice, even though in the case of rape, they should have an abortion, like incest and stuff like that. But I do believe it's women's choice.

Abortion is not a word for me. I don't believe in it.

Sex is not a game. It's not something we should play with. Responsible sex is knowing that you're going to have sex and knowing that the possibility of having a child is there and taking that responsibility if a child is in your womb.

I work in a neighborhood where the dropout rate is 75% of our high school and 75% of that, 45% of that is due to pregnancy. And I can't justify telling a kid for whatever reason, not to have abortion, not to have abortion, but I think it should be there to be addressed correctly.

For over 400 years since New Mexico was settled by Spain in the 16th century, Hispanic folk artists in that state have created wooden statues called Santos, representing figures of Catholic saints. They've also made retablos, images of the saints painted on wooden panels. The practitioners of these carving arts or santeros were exclusively men until the last 20 years or so, but today, women are some of the best-known santeros and their contribution is the focus of an exhibit at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Catalina Reyes reports.

Though documentation is hard to find, it may be that New Mexican men and women have always collaborated at Santo making just as they often do today. Helen Lucero curated the art of the Santera exhibit.

Women have said all along are the keepers of the faith in New Mexico, and so they will put up these images to decorate their homes to pray, to carry in processions, to dress, and so it makes sense that they would eventually start carving and painting them themselves.

[Natural sounds of Museum] 40 objects representing the work of 26 Santeras are on view in the small exhibit room. There's a bulto tableau of Noah's Arc by Marie Romero Cash and her tin Smith husband, complete with wooden animals, a tin arc and foot tall carvings of Noah and his wife With Hispanic features and early 20th century dress, popular saints are rendered in various media Santo Nino de Atocha, a Christ child who helps prisoners. Dona Sebastiana or La Muerte, a skeleton in a two-wheeled wooden cart who represents death and of course our Lady of Guadalupe and Indian Virgin Mary who's especially venerated throughout the Americas.

I haven't seen anything quite like this that the men have done.

We are looking at a carving by Monica Sosaya Halford, a crucified woman who looks strikingly cheerful, smiling in a bright blue and white Basque peasant dress. She's an apocryphal saint named Santa Librada. A legend says she wanted to devote herself to God, so she prayed he would make her ugly to prevent her marriage. When God granted her wish and gave her a mustache and beard. The brother's enraged father had her crucified, but he converted to Christianity as she prayed from the cross. In New Mexico, Santa Librada goes without the beard in mustache. She sent to intercede on behalf of women with troublesome husbands.

She is the only crucified woman that we know of. This is the saint that women would pray to, and I just find it real interesting that her name is Librada also, which is basically translates as liberated. She is the one who helped women before there was a women's movement.

It was during the civil rights movement of the 60s says Lucero, that Hispanic men in New Mexico began to revive the dying Spanish colonial Santero tradition. About 10 years later, women artists began to emerge from behind the dominance of men in public arenas, making saints images in such a variety of media that Lucero decided to include more than bultos and retablos in the exhibit broadening the definition of santera.

I chose to expand it to include other media as well. In other words, images of saints produced on straw applique on tin, on culture, embroidery, weaving, hide paintings, and even one woman's work, Rosa Maria Calles, whose work is all decorating ceramic face.

[Natural sounds of woodworking] What I'm doing now is the actual roughing out taking the excess wood away.

Marie Romero Cash began carving and painting saints in the seventies when she was in her mid-thirties, the daughter of two famed Santa Fe tinsmiths. She's gone on to become one of the region's most recognized Santeras. Today she's working on a favorite figure, La Senora de Guadalupe.

[Natural sounds of woodworking] After all the excess wood is gone, I'll be able to start working on the face and the hands and toning it down, and then it'll be ready for sanding and gesso and painting.

Romero Cash has traveled throughout northern New Mexico studying Santo carvings in villages like Chimayo, where people still venerate figures hundreds of years old, but she'd rather be called a wood carver than a santera, which to her mind means a holy person. She says her goal isn't religious.

Mine happens to be learning everything that I can about specific things, including the santeros and what they did and how they did it and trying to get all our traditions in one bundle and then saving them and perpetuating them.

But Helen Lucero believes that for most of the Santeras in the exhibit, honoring the spirit of tradition is connected inseparably to the life of the soul.

And I asked the women what this meant to them to be producing saints. And quite often the spiritual aspect of it was much more dominant than any I would've ever expected. If you are busy representing God, then you have a real direct link if you are a Hispanic, Catholic, new Mexican to what your work is so that these people really see themselves as a bridge almost between a holy place and a secular place.

The art of the Santera continues at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico until January of next year. The exhibit will then travel throughout the country for several years, starting in Dallas, Texas for Latino USA. This is Catalina Reyes in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

So people always ask, "Yo, when is Hispanic Heritage Month anyway?" And then you have to tell them that it's not really just one month but a four-week period of time that starts in the middle of September when El Salvador, Peru, Nicaragua, Mexico, and several other Latin American countries celebrate their independence from Spain. The month then runs through mid-October through Columbus Day or el día de la raza, as it's known in Latin America. For many Latinos, this is a time to look back at history and to look forward to see where we as a group fit into this country's future. Commentator Barbara Renaud Gonzalez says that in particular, the 16th of September, the equivalent of the 4th of July for Mexicans makes her realize she really is part of a community.

I'm not afraid to look in their eyes, me, the zippy Latina with the import car and the University of Michigan sticker. They, my Mexican hermanos breathless in the Texas sunrise, clinging to the back of a Ford Ranger, almost ashamed that they are the only ones riding like this on the open road of the LBJ carretera. Or maybe it's too obvious that they're on their way to make another garden out of Plano Prairie for a minimum wage. I smile. I am almost ashamed to not go with them. I love my Mexican people. On September 16th, my construction heroes, Plano gardeners, North Dallas maids, my café con leche waiters and I will come together to celebrate the 16th of September, el dies y seis de septiembre, which is the anniversary of Mexico's independence from almost 300 years of Spanish conquest. On the morning of September 16th in 1810, Father Miguel Hidalgo Y Costilla delivered his grito de dolores, his cry for independence in the city of Dolores, Mexico, the city of pain, to claim independence from Spanish rule.

Our celebrated Mexican independence is not like American democracy. The Puritans were free the day they left England on the Mayflower. The Spaniards, however, transformed the America they discovered with every touch and every torment. They came to evangelize their Catholic tradition and so redeemed the Spanish crown with pure Indian gold. While the Puritans established independent colonies from the beginning, the Spaniard established dependent missions.

So, when Mexican independence rang in 1810 and Father Hidalgo exhorted his campesinos to rebellion with “Mexicanos, ¡Viva México!” He must have cried for Mestizo courage and independence from Spain and for all the battles yet to come. As Mexicans and Mexican Americans, Hispanics, Chicanos, Latinos, Pochos, and the descendants of Tejanos like me, every battle, every cry makes us braver in our marches, the people we are and will become. While Mexico's battles may be more anguished than those of the United States, this quest for the Mexican soul is still in transition and hardly defeated. Thus, every September 16th, every dies y seis de septiembre, we celebrate this realization of the Mexican self. I love my Mexican people. Original beauty on Spanish bones. Look at the hands in the ecstasy of expression, rainbows of skin on the Indian profile. We are a jeweled people. I know that the Indian gods and goddesses live among us transformed into the Mexicans I see every day, especially on September 16th, el dies y seis de septiembre. I know. I look in their eyes.

Commentator Barbara Renaud Gonzalez writes and teaches in Dallas, Texas.

[festive mariachi music]

In Mexico and Mexican American communities from Los Angeles to Chicago, the night of September 15th is the night of el grito, (singing) literally the yell or the scream, which commemorates the occasion in 1810 when a parish priest named Father Miguel Hidalgo called his countrymen to rise up against the tyranny of Spain with the cry Mexicans que viva méxico.

Viva los [unintelligible] que nos dieron patria y metal .

¡Viva!

Viva Hidalgo.

¡Viva!.

Viva Morelos.

¡Viva!

Viva Guerrero.

¡Viva!

Viva México.

¡Viva!

Viva México.

¡Viva!

Viva México.

¡Viva!

In Austin, Texas, this event was celebrated with a nighttime block party outside the Mexican consulate.

[mariachi music]

I think it shows that we still care about our culture, that it hasn't died, and I hope it never does because that means part of us dies.

It's a really very nice...Event.

And we hope that the American people can come little bit more towards our costumes and our music and our hearts also.

We came here with intention to work and lent our force, labor force, I should say. And we want to be able to also participate in the intellectual development of the Mexico and the United States. So I believe that anybody that wants to disregard our ability to group together and do things like this is kind of not paying attention what the reality of our country formed with immigrants anyway is happening.

Nearly 500 years ago when the mighty Aztec empire was in trouble, early one December morning, so the story goes, a humble Indian named Juan Diego had a vision, a brown-skinned goddess appeared to him. Today, she is known as the Virgin of Guadalupe, La Virgen de Guadalupe. Her image is one of the best known Latino cultural icons, and she's venerated throughout the Americas. Maria Martin prepared this report.

Every people at certain historical moments that marks them, that allows them to be that people. Guadalupe stands at the very birth of Mexicanidad.

This music is from Eduard Garcia's opera, Our Lady of Guadalupe, performed at the Guadalupe Theater in San Antonio. Like countless other works of Hispanic music and literature, it tells the story of how on an early December morning in 1531, an Aztec Indian named Juan Diego saw an apparition on the very spot where a temple to an Aztec goddess, Tonantzin, once stood.

That night, I was awakened by voices, whirling clouds, rainbows. And finally, the apparition of the Holy Lady, she appeared dressed as an Aztec princess. When I asked her who she was, she told me she was the Mother of God. She also told me that she had come to protect her people, meaning us.

[Background--natural sound--performance] In every sense, you could say that the Indigenous people of Mexico needed protection. Only 12 years had passed since the Spaniards had conquered the Aztec empire, enslaving many Indians. Countless others had fallen victim to war, brutality, and disease. Father Jerome Martinez spoke about this historical period at a conference about the Virgin of Guadalupe in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

In a very real sense, one can say that the Aztec peoples lost any reason for existence. Their universe as they had seen it had just come apart. They felt their gods had abandoned them, the cosmic order was out of whack. There was no real reason to continue going on.

But the lady who appeared to Juan Diego said she would change all that. "I will be the hope for you and those like you," are the words she is said to have spoken. She addressed Juan Diego in his native language, so the story goes. "Juanito, my son, go to the Bishop," she said, "And tell him to build a church here on the hill of Tepeyac."

When I got to the Bishop, he relentlessly told me to be sane. "Juan Diego, before you utter a single word, let me remind you that lies directed against the church are considered blasphemy," and then he went on and on about rebellions, and inquisitions, things I knew nothing of. Then in my utter frustration, I threw open the cloak and showed him the roses, which they all acknowledge would be a miracle. And there, much to my surprise, was imprinted the image of Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe.

[Highlight--natural sound--performance]

The picture imprinted on Juan Diego's cloak showed a young brown-skinned woman standing on a moon, her back to the golden sun, her cloak covered with stars. Every detail of the image meant something to the Indians, and in a short time, a cult developed. Patrick Flores is the Catholic Archbishop of San Antonio, Texas.

Our Lady came on December 12, 1531 and within the next 10 years, over 10 million Indians had been baptized. No longer were the Franciscans trying to convince them into persuading, but they were coming trying to persuade the Franciscans to baptize him because they would say, "The Mother of God has appeared to one us," like one of us, And we want to belong to her son, and they wanted to be baptized.

[Highlight--natural sound--performance]

La Virgen no le hablo a ningun sacerdote, no le hablo al obispo, no le hablo al Virrey, no le hablo a ningun Español, le hablo a un Indio…

Mexican Indian Andre Segura, says the Virgin of Guadalupe did not appear first to a priest, bishop, or viceroy. She spoke to an Indian, he says, in the Indian language. Segura is a teacher of Indigenous religious traditions, an elder who keeps the old ways alive.

En el pensamiento Idigena Azteca, Nahuatl, Mexica, Tenhochca o de todo este continente…. [English dub]

According to the Aztecs and other Indigenous peoples of this continent, there exists before everything a primordial law of duality, which guides all the universe, the positive and the negative, the masculine and the feminine. Therefore, the feminine presence is very important. Our ancestors recognized this concept of a cosmic motherhood which coincides with many other philosophies, including Christianity.

Y pore so huyeron un concepto de la maternidad cosmica. Y que coincide con todos las tradiciones de todo el mundo incluso la Cristiana.

[Highlight--natural sound--performance]

As the ancient Mexican stands to honor the goddess, Tonantzin, or Coatlaxopeuh and later Guadalupe, so today in Mexican and Mexican American communities ritual dances are performed for the Brown Virgin. The dancers, called danzantes or matachines, wear colorful costumes reminiscent of the ancient Aztecs. Men, women, and sometimes children dance a simple two step to the sound of the drum, and the rattle.

The danzantes are inside the church now. They come in and say, "Thank you, God. Thank you, Virgencita." And then when the Virgen appeared, that's where the mestizaje heritage started, the beautiful confluences of the blood of Spain and the blood of the Indian. She came 450 years ago to Juan Diego, and they danced in the spirit of love and the spirit of thankfulness, and the spirit of gratitude, and faith. Sometimes they dance hours and hours, and hours. That's all they have of themselves and their beautiful, beautiful gifts of being alive, thanking them for getting them well, for getting Abuelita well, or getting any type of manda. Sometimes, they don't have anything to offer but themselves, so that's why the dance is very important. Muy importante.

Pues yo le pregunto a ellos, que si yo arreglaba para aca para Estados Unidos yo iba a bailar año por año y hacerles faltar a la Virgen de Guadalupe…

[Background--natural sound--drumming] Jose Antonio Morelos is the leader of a group of matachines, who dance and honor The Virgin in El Paso, Texas. He says he made a promise long ago that if he became a legal US resident, he'd dance to Guadalupe every single year. The Virgen also inspires musicians and poets like Juan Contreras.

[Background--natural sound--drumming] Yes, and we dance, and we dance a dance of universal love, of beauty, of honor, of forgiveness, of being. To you, Madrecita Querida (singing). If only for an eternity. Thank you. [Background--natural sound--applause]