The Virgin of Guadalupe appeared three times to San Juan Diego on the Cerro del Tepeyac, north of the current Mexico City, almost 500 years ago. As proof of this event, the image miraculously appeared in the tilma of the saint that is now preserved in the Basilica of Santa María de Guadalupe is preserved to this day.
And that image carries many symbols, messages and details, studied in depth by the Higher Institute for Guadalupanos Studies (ISEG), directed by Fr. Eduardo Chávez, Doctor of Church History and Postulator of the Cause of Canonization of San Juan Diego.
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Among those details is the small shoe or shoe that Santa María de Guadalupe uses.
Speaking to ACI Press, Fr. Chávez, considered the greatest expert in the appearances of the Virgin of Guadalupe, explained that “the knowledge of the Blessed Virgin of Guadalupe is given by three things, it is the primal source as I call him: one for the oral tradition, another for the signs of the times – the importance of his appearance of December 9 to 12, 1531 Portentosa de Santa María de Guadalupe that presents things that are really out of everything that could cause, do, realize the human being. ”
“It is something portentous, it is something that transcends times and spaces,” he said.
This, he said, can be seen when setting “in that detail of that shoe that with her the Virgin of Guadalupe is playing the center of the black moon.”
Fr. Chávez stressed that at the distance the Santa María shoe seems to have golden color, but in truth “it does not have any color type.”
“The shoe is seen in the distance as golden but it is simply the living tilma of Juan Diego,” he said, remembering that the mantle is made of Ixtle, the maguey fiber, the same plant from which the mezcal or tequila is obtained.
This strengthens the supernatural character of the image and discards that it is a painting. “There is one in front of an image that has no preparation,” says Fr. Chávez. “That is not possible. The painters had to always prepare the fabric where it was going to be painted, especially considering that the fabric would have so many holes, pores, tangrans, imperfections, seams, so it was essential to prepare it and prepare it well to receive the different types of color.”
According to the Website of the National Institute of Anthropology and History of Mexico (INAH)a study commissioned by the Cabildo of the Sanctuary of Guadalupe in the mid -eighteenth century to recognized painters of the time “revealed that the image was conducted in four techniques never practiced by anyone on a surface and even less on a fabric as gross as an ayate: oil, golden, eagle and carved to the temple.”
Fr. Chávez emphasizes precisely that “there are four different painting techniques” that are observed in the tilma “and the shoe we are analyzing does not even have color, nothing.”
“It would seem that this shoe out of gold, beige, cream; and yet it has no color. One is in front of the miracle of the Virgin of Guadalupe through its portentous image,” he said.
David Ramos
Graduate in Communication Sciences by the Private University of the North in Trujillo, Peru. With more than 12 years of experience in Catholic journalism working in ACI Press, I am based in Mexico since 2018. I have covered the trips of Pope Francis to Ecuador, Paraguay, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Peru and Panama.