Guadalupe Monastery

Christian:

Very clearly a Christian site, which we knew going in, but the exterior architecture reminded me very strongly of the Seville Cathedral. This place has a long history of pilgrimages to the monastery, so cool that the economy was built around pilgrims coming to visit this place. Even though there aren’t really any people making pilgrimages anymore the town is still sustained by visitors to the monastery, they’re just tourists now. I was amazed at the incredibly ornate artifacts kept here. The room where the statue of Mary is kept was beautifully decorated, and the spinning alter piece itself was highly ornate. I thought it was incredibly interesting that the Mary displayed here is black. This figure is especially important in Catholicism, and it seemed unusual to have her be a POC when the official canon depicts Mary and Christ as white.

Indigenous:

There was discussion of Native Americans being baptized here and I wondered how many were baptized here, and if they were by choice. The way events were depicted seemed rather romanticized and sanitized. There is quite an accumulation of wealth in the monastery, was this tied to Spain’s trading throughout the Americas? Dan mentioned that the imagery of baptisms felt rather like propaganda, and I absolutely agree here. There was a good amount of ignoring the pain Catholicism brought the Native Americans.