Colloquium on Latin America “Reinterpreting Guadalupe: Exploring Generational Transmission and Contemporary Guadalupan Devotion in Guadalajara, Mexico”

This lec­ture explores ques­tions of trans­for­ma­tion in Guadalu­pan devo­tion in the met­ro­pol­i­tan area of Guadala­jara, Mex­i­co, approached through lived reli­gion and inter­gen­er­a­tional trans­mis­sion. Since her alleged appari­tion in the six­teenth cen­tu­ry, the Vir­gin of Guadalupe has tra­versed five cen­turies of Mex­i­can his­to­ry as a reli­gious icon, nation­al sym­bol, and cul­tur­al myth – con­tin­u­al­ly rein­vent­ed, rein­ter­pret­ed, and con­test­ed. In Mex­i­co today, her mean­ing is increas­ing­ly nego­ti­at­ed amid reli­gious diver­si­fi­ca­tion, indi­vid­ual auton­o­my, shift­ing forms of
Catholic belong­ing, and pop­u­lar cul­ture. Draw­ing on ear­ly mate­r­i­al and emerg­ing obser­va­tions from ongo­ing doc­tor­al field­work, I con­sid­er how upper-mid­­dle-class emerg­ing adults (ages 24–30) in Guadala­jara nar­rate, prac­tice, and expe­ri­ence the impor­tance of the Vir­gin in their dai­ly lives. Using a qual­i­ta­tive ethno­graph­ic approach and a decolo­nial epis­te­mo­log­i­cal frame­work, their nar­ra­tives are sit­u­at­ed along­side those of their par­ents in order to devel­op an inter­gen­er­a­tional per­spec­tive on process­es of trans­mis­sion, pos­si­ble con­ti­nu­ity or rup­ture, and rein­ter­pre­ta­tion. Addi­tion­al­ly, the study takes into account reli­gious diver­si­fi­ca­tion in the area by includ­ing Catholic, Protestant/Evangelical, and non-affil­i­at­ed par­tic­i­pants. Rather than assum­ing that the sig­nif­i­cance of the Vir­gin of Guadalupe cor­re­sponds direct­ly to for­mal reli­gious
affil­i­a­tion, the research explores whether and how the Virgin’s sig­nif­i­cance may be main­tained, nego­ti­at­ed, or rede­fined across dif­fer­ent posi­tions. These emerg­ing obser­va­tions open broad­er ques­tions con­cern­ing con­tem­po­rary and gen­er­a­tional trans­for­ma­tions of Mar­i­an­ism in Latin Amer­i­ca.