Juanita Salazar Lamb describes the conversion of the indigenous Aztec natives before and after the supernatural gift of the Tilma of Juan Diego with the miraculous image Our Lady of Guadalupe on Truth of the Spirit with the episode Our Lady of Guadalupe Part 4 Conversions through the Sign of the Tilma. The Blessed Virgin Mary appeared in 1531 to an Aztec Christian peasant between December 9th and 12th and left behind a sign for all to see, even to this day. Included in this episode on Our Lady of Guadalupe will be Juanita Salazar Lamb’s personal testimony of her family’s special devotion to “La Virgen”. For audio and video links or to read the script please continue reading.

TOS099 Our Lady of Guadalupe (Part 4) Conversions through the Sign of the Tilma For audio only PPN 

Other episodes cover Introduction to Our Lady of Guadalupe’s encounters with Juan Diego, the Codex of the Image, and the Music of the Mantle on the Tilma. Host is Patti Brunner. Our Lady of Guadalupe is the patroness of the Americas and her feast day is December 12. This is the last episode of a 4 part series.

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“We are taught that God knows us before we are, before we are born. I also believe that La Virgen knows us before we are born. That is why I want to spread her story. To let as many people as possible know that you are not alone, that she carries each and every one of us in the hollow of her mantle. She will take us to her son, the one true God.”
Welcome to Truth of the Spirit, I’m Patti Brunner and today we will have our fourth and final episode of Our Lady of Guadalupe I’m so excited with the information that we have been able to share with you. And today we welcome back Juanita Salazar Lamb who has got even more for us to hear.

Welcome to this episode today I’m going to talk about conversions and the great impact that La Virgen had on the conversions, not only of the indigenous in Mexico but also the Spaniards. I’d like to take a few moments here to talk a little about my conversion story and to share a little bit about how I even came to study about her. I am Mexican-American, born and raised in a Mexican-American household in south Texas. I grew up with La Virgen Guadalupe in our home. I, in fact, I have the image in my own home that my mother had at home the whole time I was growing up. And so I was raised in a Catholic household. We prayed the rosary, went to Mass every Sunday. I grew up in what was called at the time CYO, Catholic Youth Organization. It is now teen ministry or youth group. And then there was a period of about 20 years when I was away from the Church. I wanted to live life my own way. And so I did. And, you know how that goes sometimes. But then, she started calling me back and I say “she” — Our Lady started calling me back. When I was away from the Church, I didn’t have time. I didn’t have the urge, the need, to follow the rules of the Church but I always felt close to Our Lady. And, thank heavens to Our Lady, she brought me back to Jesus and she even brought me to study, to write my thesis on her. In 2000, I started my master’s program at the University of Oklahoma. And my thesis advisor is the one who suggested that I research the image and the implication of Our Lady of Guadalupe in contemporary Chicano culture in images, art and literature. My thesis is a scholarly research paper. I interviewed artists, I interviewed authors. I did also research the history of Mexico, the history of the image and etc., etc. But even then, I had an inkling that all, that many of the threads of my life were coming together. It was shortly before then that I had learned that La Virgen was the patron saint of unborn children. And that made her even more dear to me.
When my mother was pregnant with me in 1950, she went to the doctor to confirm that she was pregnant. And he advised that she terminate the pregnancy. Now, of course, she would have none of it. She went to a second set of doctors in our home town. They were a couple who were both doctors, they practiced together and what they said to her, she went to them on a Friday, and what they said to her was, “On Monday, check into the hospital so we can terminate your pregnancy.” So, on Monday instead of going to the hospital, she went back to the first doctor. And you have to keep in mind that this was 1950. My mother was tiny; I am taller than my mother, for those of you who might know me. I’m not very tall. She spoke broken English. She was not an educated woman. She stood up to this white male doctor of medicine and said, “No! I will not have you terminate my pregnancy. I will do whatever you ask me to.” And he said, “Ok, but I want you to know that either you will survive or the baby will survive but not both of you.” And so, she did go through with the pregnancy. And she had a very difficult time. And I was born on May 31. My mother died on June 2, 48 years later! I have her to thank, from the bottom of my heart, for speaking for me when I could not speak.
That’s why I love her (Our Lady of Guadalupe) so much. We are taught that God knows us before we are, before we are born. I also believe that La Virgen knows us before we are born. That is why I want to spread her story. To let as many people as possible know that you are not alone, that she carries each and every one of us in the hollow of her mantle. She will take us to her son, the one true God.

So after I wrote my thesis, presented it, passed, thank you Jesus. I did start giving presentations, offering presentations on just the basic story of Our Lady. But I was always studying, always studying. And then I learned about a post-graduate course offered through the Basilica of Mexico City, through the Institute for the Advanced Guadeloupian studies. I am happy to say I completed the online course after three years of study. And honestly, I think I need to rewrite my Master’s Thesis. There is just so much more now that is available to scholars, it is available to anyone who wants to learn more about Our Lady.
The Institute for Advanced Guadeloupian Study was formed as the result of the compilation of over 3000 documents that came together as a result of the investigations for the Canonization for Saint Juan Diego. The documents include: Original letters, Copies of original documents, and Paintings; it is indescribable what is out there. And I have been fortunate enough; she has led me to further my studies, to go in deeper, and to have an even more fervent desire to spread her story to spread her messages and to keep learning what other messages she has for us.

Now let’s talk about the conversions that happened almost 500 years ago. In 1531 the indigenous of Mexico had been conquered for 10 years. Mexico City was a wasteland. The beautiful temples, the artifacts, the culture of the Aztecs had been decimated. The Europeans had brought diseases to the land. More than 1/3 of the indigenous population was dead because of the diseases. The population that survived; the warriors had been killed; the majority male survivors were either old or they were children or they were infirm. On a daily basis, the indigenous were reminded not only of their loss of culture but of their present impoverished condition. There were no more emperors, there were no more, and there was no more noble class. The artisans, the merchants, were reduced to nothing. They were Second Class, at the best, citizens. Now what was even lower than the indigenous were the children of mixed indigenous and European heritage, because these children were born as a result of war and the violence that comes from war. So they were neither accepted by the Europeans nor were they accepted by the indigenous. In fact those children were abandoned by the indigenous families. So this is what the culture, this is what the indigenous culture had everyday; just a constant reminder. Yes, there were no more wars; in that sense they were at peace. But one way to describe being at peace is that the arrows and the shields are on the ground. In the Aztec culture, that is an indication of defeat; it is not an indication of peace.
On the spiritual side after 10 years since the conquest, the priests (of the Aztec religion) were no longer performing their ritual ceremonies, their religious ceremonies that to them were absolutely necessary to keep the cosmos in balance. Religious ceremonies (the Aztecs believed) brought down the rain when it was necessary, it ensured that the sun would rise; it ensured that the moon would rise at the appropriate time with the appropriate phases, in the appropriate phases. It ensured that the crops would grow. It ensured, it ensured the stability of the entire cosmos—not only one household or one town or even just the Aztec civilization. These rituals balanced the entire cosmos and now suddenly it’s been ten years. And they haven’t been able to do these. Certainly the world is going to end soon! Then we had, not only did they have that loss to deal with, but then on a daily basis they had to deal with the way they were being treated by the Spaniards.
There were two groups Spaniards, and here I’m not talking about the priests, I talking about just non-clerical, of Spaniards. There were those who did try to be kind to them (the indigenous) to protect them, to treat them as human beings if you will. But there were those who mistreated the indigenous who actually sold them into slavery. They would, the Spaniards would hire the indigenous, or hire if you will, of course not remunerate them, in any way, just beat them into working harder and delivering even more. And then there were the clerical, the priests and even among the priests there were also two different factions. Those also who were kind who want, who really want to lead them to Jesus. All the clerics wanted to lead them to Jesus. They just had different methods of doing that. Before the appearance of our Lady the, there had been some conversions.
You remember Juan Diego and his entire family converted in 1524—that’s only 3 years after the conquest. But as of 1531 there were very few conversions that were really conversions of the heart as had been the case with Juan Diego’s family. Many of the conversions were the result of coercion. They were the result of a social custom of accepting the religion of the conqueror and then what the indigenous would do is that they would accept the religion, but then modify and adapt it to their own religious belief system. Now, of course they couldn’t practice their own religion publicly but to the extent that they could, so in other words, was still not a full conversion of the heart. The coercions included even kidnaping. There is a story that was reported in 1558 in a letter to King Philip II of Spain where the author reports that before the appearance of Our Lady, that the clerics had kidnapped and basically imprisoned up to a thousand young men, in the monastery, and they were basically holding these young men hostage until the young men agreed to convert.
Now in other instances, the clerics tried everything to get the indigenous to understand, to welcome Our Lord. But they couldn’t communicate; the indigenous didn’t speak Spanish the Spaniards didn’t speak the Nahua language. So the clerics thought, “we will try Latin. We will bring them to Jesus by preaching to them in Latin.” That didn’t work either! Another barrier that the clerics had to overcome, is that the indigenous, the Aztecs, were devout in their religious beliefs. As I said earlier, their religion was tied to the cosmos; practice of their religion was tied to the cosmos. They were not just going to give it up because some people speaking languages they had no idea and they did not understand was going to tell them to do that. Not only that but the few indigenous who had converted they might, the indigenous might see a priest once a year as he came around to the villages.
While the clergy worked very hard to convert the indigenous, life just was not easy for them either. The Spaniards who did not want the indigenous converted attempted to kill the clergy. Because, for two reasons, if the indigenous were converted, that means they were human beings. And if they were human beings, then the Spaniards could not beat them and extract them and etc., etc., because you don’t treat human beings that way. Another reason that the Spaniards attempted to kill the clergy is because the clergy were condemning what these Spaniards were doing. In fact, some of the Spaniards, a faction of Spaniards, even tried to assassinate the Bishop-elect Juan de Zumarraga in 1529.
And this, the whole situation, was so horrible, that in 1529 the Bishop wrote a letter to Spain and in fact he had to smuggle it on a ship, and that is a whole different episode. And in the letter to the King of Spain, the Bishop says, “If God himself does not provide relief this land is on the verge of self-destruction.” So in 1531, God himself provided this relief as we have seen. So what happened? So, we have: the indigenous haven’t practiced their religion (and believe) the cosmos is on the brink of imploding; the European attempt at civilizing the indigenous is not working; priests are being killed; the Bishop is attempted to be killed; the clerics are condemning what the Spaniards are doing. And then our Lady shows up and what happened then?
What happened is that within 40 days of her appearance, so she appeared on December 12th, 1531, within 40 days 400,000 indigenous had converted. Five years later by 1536 and this is really, and it is only five years, because she appeared toward the end of 1531. Five million indigenous had converted. Two years after that, by 1538, a total of nine million indigenous had been converted. Now, and this is something I find very interesting, along with these conversions, so maybe you’ll say “well, but remember, there were conversions before”, but not conversions of the heart. Yes, that is true. But this time these were conversions of the heart. Part of conversion, part of the Catholic religion is to go to confession and clean yourself, in order to be absolved from sins. So many people wanted and there were not enough priests. The priests would travel from village to village to minister to the people. Thousands of men and women, new converts would follow the priests for miles and beg to go to confession.
They were so devout! Now remember as I said, the indigenous were very devout in their previous Aztec religion. Now they had found the one true religion. If they couldn’t walk to follow the priest from village to village, the old and the frail would be carried either piggyback style or on litters. They would be carried 5-7 miles to follow the priest for confession. Another event or another indication of the conversion of heart was that immediately after Our Lady came to Juan Diego, hundreds of men immediately gave up the practice of polygamy and they took only one woman as their wife.
So what happened? Why is it suddenly she comes and we have all these conversions? When the priests had done everything including kidnapping and holding people hostage until their conversion? What happened is that Our Lady had a message for the indigenous on her vestments. It was a message, a codex that the indigenous could read. Not only that, but after Our Lady came to Juan Diego, and he delivered her image to the bishop, he dedicated his life to her, he asked and was given a very small room next door to the first tiny church constructed for our Lady. And he spent the rest of his life caring for her image. He swept out the chapel every day and in the Aztec culture only the highborn and the noble and the priests cared for the gods, sweep out the temples. Juan Diego was a common man. And he was held in such high honor and he held Our Lady in such high honor. That he spent the rest of his life caring for her temple. The other thing he did is that he spread the word, the message of Our Lady, to anyone who would listen. People would come from miles. They would bring their little children to come and hear Juan Diego’s message or Juan Diego’s story. And he would tell the story over and over again to whoever would listen. And the greatest message that Our Lady had, that she brought in her Tilma, was, “I am your mother you have nothing to fear. You are in the hollow of my mantle, I am your mother and I love you and I will bring you to Jesus.

You’ve been listening to Truth of the Spirit; I’m your host, Patti Brunner. And we invite you to subscribe, it makes it a lot easier to come back next time. Come back anytime. Because there’s more! With the Holy Spirit there’s always more. Amen?