A fair while ago near Mexico City, in 1531 if Google serves me correctly, the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared to Juan Diego. Juan was a young Indian boy and spoke Nahuatl, just like my Dad (see comments in the previous post). La Virgen told him to build a church on that there spot. He was on his own, and an Indian to boot, so the Catholic priests didn’t believe him. He went back to the place she’d appeared and she made a rose bush bloom (not common in the winter). He took the roses back to them as proof. The blanket he’d wrapped them in had a Turin-shroud-like perfect impression of said Virgin. Not long after, most natives converted to Catholicism. So the Virgin of Guadalupe is sort of representative of the mestizo (mixed) heritige of Mexico’s native and European roots. She incorporates all kinds of indigenous Nahuatl female deity imagery with her moon, stars and sun and is a more palatable version of Christianity for the local populations.

Apparently the celebrations kick off in a bigger way come 5pm, but I’ll be hungry by then and fixing to go and see films about wardrobes and allegorical big cats. So I left at around 12ish and asked our neighbour, Sra Teresa where the church with all the celebrations take place, she pointed me in the right direction and I started my pilgrimage. 24 blocks later I arrived at a church/fairground filled with kiddies in traditional Mexican garb being photographed with the virgin, blessed in the church and some were lucky enough to get tied to giant bungee cords and flung into the sky (I have pictures…).

All very nice. I also found a place in the city center that does courses on Flash and other stuff pretty cheaply so I may look into that soon too. That’s all for now, off now to eat and watch CGI lions. Cheers. Click HERE for a slideshow of all today’s photos.