CXXV. La Virgen de Guadalupe

The Virgin of Guadalupe

This is the center of the Seis Esquinas neighborhood. The shrine under the
tree is here year-round. The Virgen de Guadalupe es la patrona aquí.

Today is the Virgin of Guadalupe’s feast day. Nearly five centuries ago on this date an Aztec man named Juan Diego returned home from a hill near Mexico City where he had encountered a brown-skinned Virgin Mary. As proof of her appearance she gave him a bouquet of fresh roses, miraculously growing in winter. He carried this gift in his cloak to the bishop. Opening the cloak, the bishop not only found flowers, but the image of the Virgin imprinted upon it. The original garment with that now-famous image is still in Mexico City’s Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe—the terminus of a vast yearly pilgrimage that ends today.

Calle Ocampo, half a block west of previous shot. The orange structure in
center represents the hill on which the Virgin appeared to Juan Diego. The
Virgin is a small figure just below the center of photo, at the top of the orange,
with a touch of red.

We awoke at 4:30 this morning to the sound of rockets exploding in the Virgin’s honor, summoning the faithful to mass. Fortunately the local church that celebrates this beloved figure is located a kilometer from our casa, so the noise was more muted than the fireworks shot off last month in recognition of San Andrés, our village’s patron saint. His church, and rocket launching site, is only three blocks due west from our bedroom ears.

The fireworks are called cohetes. They consist of a fat cigar-sized packet of gun powder lashed to a meter long stick for ballast. The rockets are set off by hand and leave a smoking trail as they shoot straight up to fifty meters before exploding. If you see the fiery burst at the cohete’s apogee, you are forewarned that a bang will soon follow. After nine days leading up to today's commemoration of the Virgin’s appearance, this is the last blessed day we’ll hear these explosions until New Years. ¡Ojalá!

A split second before el encendedor lets go of the rocket and it shoots 150 feet in the air and explodes.