She balances her petite frame on a pedestal perched above the altar in a little sixteenth-century church set atop an ancient Mesoamerican pyramid-mountain known as the Tlachihualtepetl, or Mountain Made by Hand, in the city of Cholula, Mexico. Often sporting traditional blue, her dress color will change based on her calendar of events: the processions she will lead, the churches she will visit, the feast days she will celebrate, her birthday.
A FB photo of her posted at 6:35pm this past August 31, shows her wearing a cream-colored dress with a fringed crimson cloak overlaid in gold. Holding her similarly-clad infant son, with a crown on her head and a monstrance-like starburst behind her, she appears eager to begin her biggest night of the year. Encased in glass, she will be carried down in procession from the pyramid in what is known as “la bajada” or “the going down,” launching a month’s worth of festivities in her honor, including a special celebration on September 8 – her birthday. There will be another procession for “la subida,” or “the going up.” Indeed, she (or the designated Virgen peregrina [pilgrim Virgin]) participates in about forty pilgrimages each year.
Translation of FB post: You are the pride of this land.
The queen is ready to walk about and bless the streets of Cholula.
Who is she? This is La Virgen de los Remedios or the Virgin of the Remedies, patroness of Cholula, alternately known as La Conquistadora, or the female conqueror.
Elsewhere I’ve written about the religious complexities of the Procesión de los faroles (Procession of the Lanterns), as the annual bajada on August 31 is known, and describe how my participation in 2007 was akin to attending a colonial indigenous-Christian ritual. See “A Procession Through the Milpas: Indigenous-Christian Ritual in Cholula, Puebla, Mexico,” in the Winter/Spring 2019 issue of Fides et Historia (pdf available on my Academia.edu page).
Veneration of the Virgin of the Remedies is not limited to Cholula, nor even to Mexico. This global devotion can be found throughout the Old and New World, though its origins date to Spain in the 1490s. Here in Los Angeles, CA, the Filipino community will gather in 10 days at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels for a Mass Honoring the Virgen de Los Remedios – 68th Canonical Coronation Anniversary.
So how did La Virgen de los Remedios become Cholula’s special patron?
Morning Mass at the top of the pyramid earlier this week
Translation of FB post: San Andrés Cholula is at your feet.
María, all of Cholula is yours
Sources indicate that Hernando Cortés brought a wooden saddle-bag statue of la conquistadora with him (so called because it fit in one’s saddle bag) when he arrived to Mexico’s shores from Cuba in 1519. One can understand his desire to bring her from Iberia, given her association with the Reconquista (~800-year attempt to re-conquer the Iberian Peninsula after the Moors invaded in the 700 A.D.), to serve as co-conqueror, if you will, of the indios. Indeed, in a 1552 publication, Cortés’s biographer, secular priest Francisco López de Gómara, describes the Virgin Mary appearing during the thick of battle to throw dirt into the eyes of invading Mexica. Bernal Díaz del Castillo, himself a participant in these battles, wrote in the 1560s that he must have been a sinful and unworthy man, because he never saw the Virgin in battle. After Tenochtitlan fell in 1521, the statue is said to have passed to a local indigenous lord and then, so the story goes, a Franciscan friar confiscated the image, taking her to the friary of San Francisco in Puebla, where she remains displayed to this day.
Wooden statue of La Virgen de Remedios currently housed in the friary of St. Francis in Puebla.
Believed to be a medieval image made in a Flemish workshop and traded in Antwerp as a traveling statue destined for conquistadores.
The silver two-headed eagle sculpture housing the image symbolizes the House of Hapsburg,
a reference to Charles V, the ruling monarch when Puebla de los Ángeles was founded in 1531
More interesting is local legend: Remedios hitchhiked to the New World early in the sixteenth-century inside the sleeve of a Franciscan friar assigned to Cholula. Alarmed to find her hidden in his habit, the friar concealed the image for the duration of his journey, uncovering her only after reaching the Franciscan friary in Cholula. The friar guardian allowed him to place her in the church to be venerated, but one night while cleaning, the friar noticed the little statue had disappeared. Failing to find her, he and his superiors stepped outside. Noticing a mysterious light emanating from the top of the abandoned, overgrown indigenous pyramid, they followed it, discovering the little statue nestled in some shrubbery. Chiding the Virgin for her escapade, they carried her tenderly down (the first bajada!), replacing her in her niche in the church. When the friar was sent to Puebla de los Ángeles, he received permission to take the little statue with him. Mounting a mule with Remedios tucked away in his pack, he ambled along until the animal suddenly planted its hooves, refusing to move. Realizing that the Virgin did not want to leave Cholula, the friar returned. Coupled with the Virgin’s disappearance to the top of the pyramid, the friars decided that she was making her wishes clear. They completed construction on her little church in the 1590s, where she remains to this day.
This second story – which I found posted to a bulletin board in the Franciscan church in Cholula in August 2007 – is revealing. It’s not that Cortés himself — el conquistador – brought la conquistadora to Cholula that makes her beloved. It’s not even that a Franciscan (inadvertently) brought her to Cholula. What matters is that she herself chose to travel to Cholula. Rather sneakily, no less. A stowaway.
Even so, why would a conquered people celebrate a Virgin known as la conquistadora? That will have to be the topic for another day.
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