The Miracle at Tepeyac.

The Miracle at Tepeyac
Michael Sedano

Foto taken on December 12, 2011

The man lies at the edge of a deep pool, his arms motionless in the water despite the icy chill. He stares intently at his day's meal floating tantalizingly out of reach. Just as the large axolotl drifts into his grasp, the indio sees the reflection of the priest lean over him. The axolotl struggles weakly as Amoxcallín squeezes its life out.

“Mi’jo, what is your name?” The indio uses his baptismal name. “Juan Diego, did you thank God for delivering that meat into your hands, mi’jo?”

The Indian’s head shivers involuntarily, which the priest accepts as denial. “Mi’jo, God’s gifts are many. To be blessed with such a fat bounty and not thank our Almighty Father is a sin." The monk reaches a hand as if to slap the indian but stops short. "I will take this meat as your penance.” With a sharp uña, the priest guts the water dog and throws the offal at the hungry indio. Amoxcallín sighs. Today’s meal will be tripas.

“¡Amoxcallín! Tonantzín’s cactus are covered with buds, how beautiful they'll be.”
“Ay, Amaranta. If I could eat the blossoms I'd find the true beauty of them.”
“You know, with the land so barren now, I’m sure the Archbishop would pay us for these flowers to decorate his chapel." The young husband fails to notice the urgency of her voice when she adds, "We could go to the mercado and bring home some fresh meat.”
“Pay! That fat priest seized the axolotl I caught, saying it was a penance for my sins.” The skinny boy spit on the ground. “If I take that gachupín these blossoms he will pay nothing. He will invent another sin to forgive me, taking the flowers as my penance.”
“Mi amor, the Archbishop is our only hope. Please. I need to eat meat, to build strength for two.”

“Two?”
“Yes, two. La curandera tells me I am pregnant. Our little one-- if it survives--will come when Tonanzín’s flowers bloom again next Spring.”

Pregnant, Juan Diego thinks. Why does Tonantzín give me such joy and such beauty—my Amaranta, our  child, these annual winter blossoms—yet trouble me so? Our Mother's flowers will burst forth in three days, and after three or four days, they will wither and die. If I cannot feed my wife every day, our baby will be dead before she--or he--sees light. These people tell us their God works in mysterious ways and we must abandon our gods and pay for our sins in order to be saved. Who will save us from them?

Gently, the boy man strokes the girl woman’s cheek. He lifts her downturned face by her brown chin and looks into her hopeful glistening eyes. “I wish I knew why we must we pay these church men when it is God’s mercy we seek. Tonantzín has no church, yet she blesses us every year with these beautiful flowers. And now our child. Tomorrow, I will go see the Archbishop.”

The empty hope in his wife’s voice echoes in his ears, “if it survives.” No. Not ‘it’, he thinks, our child, our future. A spark ignites in his eyes. If Tonantzín had a church, she would protect us against that other church. She would.

He places a stone on the earth to mark each step of the plan. The Archbishop believes in mysteries. He converts pulque into the blood of Jesús, and tortilla into His flesh. Tonantzín's blossoms--with the right mystery--will be converted into roasted axolotl and dried rabbit. Perhaps even fresh horsemeat.

Amoxcallín runs steadily through the pedregal. His path twists around clusters of spiked agave and vast stretches of the vicious leaping cholla. He leaps over stands of the inedible purple nopal whose tiny espinas reward a touch with a lifetime of irritation. He stops. He realizes he has forgotten his mother’s name for those plants. So much he had forgotten. Such was the price of being Saved. He runs steadily. The Archbishop’s chapel emerges from the morning fog into view.

The indio feigns breathlessness as he kneels at the Archbishop's feet. The first step of his plan begins with a story of mystery. An apparition had appeared. Jesus’ mother la Virgen Mary herself told him to run without stopping to tell the Archbishop to build a chapel in a miraculous place!

The Archbishop slaps the Indian for his impudence. How dare this swine claim to have spoken to Our Lady! He slaps the indio again. “You lie! You blaspheme” Slap. “You bring The Church no offering, instead bringing me lies.” That felt good, so he slaps the impudent boy again with a gusto that knocks the indio backward. “Go! Never return to this place empty-handed again.” The Archbishop has the burly Sexton drag the indio to the street. “Beat him for his penance!”

Juan Diego laughed at the pain of salvation. The first part of his plan has worked as he’d predicted. The Archbishop’s jealousy fueled the priest’s anger, leaving him more red-faced than usual. Juan Diego had taken the slaps and his beating quietly, mostly, other than a muffled grunt when the Sexton's boot found a rib.

Two days later, the sun has not yet risen over the eastern rim of the valley when Juan Diego rattles the Archbishop’s gate. The Sexton angrily pulls it open. When the red-faced Sexton sees it is the same filthy Indian he’d savagely beaten two days before, the monk discovers empathy and tells the indio to go away. Juan Diego had expected not kindness but another kick in the ribs. He is surprised when the monk quietly ushers him through the door of the chapel and rings the Archbishop’s bell.

The Archbishop screams for his whip as he strides darkly across the center aisle of his chapel, discerning that indio again. He raises his fist to punch the indio’s smiling face when the Archbishop notices the man holds up his tilma between his penitent’s hands, some unseen bulk bulging behind the woven hilo de maguey.

“So, Juan Diego. Have you learned to respect The Holy Mother Church? Have you returned this early hour with some bounty from the land for our breakfast?”

“Forgive me, my lord and master,” Diego begins his speech. “The Mother of God has appeared again to me,” Diego speaks clearly but quickly to get out the words before the Archbishop slaps him into silence. “She commands me to bring this miracle to you to show my sincerity.” And with the word “sin-“ he releases the tilma and dozens of spectacular colors spill onto the stone floor, glistening in the dim fitful light of burning tallow.

“Rosas! Rosas? Where did you find these? In December? How? What? Rosas! A miracle, a miracle!” The Archbishop falls to his knees. He shakes off the arms of his Sexton, instead prostrating himself, rubbing his face into the blossoms.  For minutes the old priest lay there, trembling, squeezing the blossoms, staining his face and the tilma with their juice.

“Help me up, mugrosos.” Archbishop fixes the indio with reddened eyes. “Explain!” he commands the indio he calls Juan Diego.

Amoxcallín and Amaranta had practiced the revelation story. He began as they’d rehearsed. “Our Lady commands me to bring these blossoms to your Lordship, so you will know I do not lie. ‘Build my church at this place, the place of roses,’ she commanded, padre.” Amoxcallín holds out his hands in supplication, points his face to the ceiling, wonder filling his rising volume.

“Her light grew brighter than the sun, yet all about me was darkness, señor. I was blinded by the light, and despite the biting cold, I was warm as a summer’s day.” Here Juan Diego squeezes his eyes tightly and continues speaking in dramatic intonation that echoes through the rafters and walls of the empty chapel.

“And as the brilliance of her light began to fade away, oh my father…” Amoxcallín particularly hated this part of the speech, the words fill his mouth with bile. This evil man is not Tepeyac, Amoxcallín’s father, but as Amaranta had coached, the indio called Juan Diego speaks the words with sweet sincerity. “…my father.” Amoxcallín swallowed and his stomach grumbles loudly.

“I looked where she had stood. And there" he points toward the flower-covered tilma, "where her gentle feet have touched our barren earth,” another of Amaranta’s suggestions, “these..." Amoxcallín Juan Diego pauses, forgetting if Tonantzín's flowers were supposed to be 'celestial roses' or 'miracles.' "...Where these divine gifts remained as a sign of Our Lady's commands and her love for you!”

Then the Archbishop surprises Juan Diego. He orders breakfast. As they sit in front of a blazing fire eating, the Archbishop faints. With light he sees the tilma.

The Archbishop’s party of priests and soldiers follow Juan Diego up the path leading to the miraculous place the community knows as Tepeyac. That same day, the Archbishop orders all the indios in the region to come work at Tepeyac to build the shrine Our Lady of Guadalupe has commanded.

The days were long, the work hard, but that was nothing new. The labor crews broke rock into gravel, leveled the land, laid out and dug foundations. They built walls using stones hauled from the city’s ancient temples and lumber from el monte. The Church paid the laborers by feeding them and allowing them a day's rest on Sunday, after three Masses. The iron tools the soldiers supply especially please the indios, given the contrast with iron spurs, swords and pikes that had been their sole contact with iron. The Church’s engineers taught blacksmithing to some, surveying and geometry to others. Selected children learn to copy and write, to read and recite prayers to la Virgen. Over the years as the Tepeyac shrine grew, the community prospered like never before.

Amaranta and Amoxcallín had three daughters and two sons. These were their flowers now, and for the rest of their happy lives, those epiphyllum cacti kept blooming in the dead of winter. But the community kept this annual miracle private from the succession of administrators who did the new Archbishop’s bidding.

Amaranta, she of the skillful hand, taught her children to weave canvas from hilo de maguey, fashion paint brushes, find and mix colors, and to paint images of Tonantzín de Tepeyac, riding a black moon, surrounded by flames.

© michael v. sedano, 2011