Part 50: Symbols of Faith in Santa Ana – Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Meaning of Devotion
Published December 11, 2023.
Photo of Luis Cantabrana's public shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe in Santa Ana, California by author (GoPro Hero 11 Black).
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By Zachary Ellison, Independent Journalist
Last month during the search for formerly missing person Ramón Balderrama (more on that story to come) I visited Ernest E. Debs Park in Highland Park to try and narrow down the search area as we awaited new tips and information. During my visit to the park, named after the late Assemblymember, Councilman and Supervisor, Ernest Eugene Debs, of no relation to American socialist former Presidential candidate Eugene Victor Debs, I spotted a very interesting piece of art that should have rang some very important warning bells before making it to the Internet.
The painting of the Our Lady of Guadalupe, an apparition of the Virgin Mary sits at the top of the park along the roadway on concrete in front of the bench with a commanding view of the Arroyo Seco and Los Angeles. My girlfriend insisted that it was the Virgin Mary herself, even as I tried to explain that I didn’t think it was quite that simple. The following day offloading the footage, I found the clip of myself slowing walking across the image GoPro camera in hand and put some gospel music on it and uploaded it to YouTube as the “Virgin Mary of Debs Park, LA.”
My YouTube video quickly amassed 90 likes and 2,500 plus views and counting. Like a gringo though, my first instincts were right, it wasn’t the Virgin Mary but Our Lady of Guadalupe. Finally, a poster corrected me noting the misidentification and writing “Where these folks come up with these pictures” with a sweaty emoji. Now I should have known better, after all I’ve read enough Gustavo Arellano columnas to know better, and I’ve seen the photograph he took that Meta infamously removed from both his Instagram and another Instagram user Joe Bautista.
Now I happen to not be Catholic, rather I’m of Polish Jewish ancestry on my mother’s side, and English Presbyterian’s on the paternal end of things. That’s not an excuse though, and so I decided to make some penance this year and make things right in person, in Santa Ana where the most special display of the Our Lady of Guadalupe takes place complete with services at West Camille Street and South Broadway at the home of Luis Cantabrana where he has hosted it for now 12 years running. Even the local Bishop Kevin Vann of the diocese of Orange, CA comes to pay his respects as he did during my visit.
After visiting the Alta Baja Market owned and operated by Gustavo’s wife Delilah Snell on a Sunday afternoon along with legendary cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz, I made my way to see the “VIRGEN OF GUADALUPE” as the sign on Cantabrana’s house exclaims. Gustavo cautioned me, “Zach, you are going to see the most faithful of the faithful, the devoted.” I had watched some YouTube videos found in English after a few searches online for the drive down, but like so many others I don’t know the full miraculous story of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
You don’t have to be religious to appreciate the message of healing and devotion to faith based on the quadruple appearance of the Virgin Mary to Juan Diego at the Tepeyac Hill from December 9 to December 12, 1531 in Mexico City, Mexico. Nor am I religious scholar capable to telling the full story in such detail to be flawless and pay it all due respect, but I do like to believe that there are things bigger than ourselves in this world. So I will attempt to relay it in brief. Juan Diego was a young Chichimec peasant was on his way to visit his uncle Juan Bernardino who had fallen ill when the Virgin appeared. Mary spoke to Juan Diego in Nahuatl the language of the Aztecs and asked for a church to be erected at the site. The Aztec Empire had fallen only just short of a decade prior after the violent conquest of Hernán Cortés from 1519-1921.
Being a respectful man of faith, Juan Diego quickly went to the Archbishop of Mexico City, Juan de Zumárraga to tell him the story. The bishop though didn’t believe Juan. Later that same day December 9, 1531, Juan travels around Tepeyac Hill again in a different direction hoping to avoid the Marian apparition when she appears again to reassure him of the request and ask him to continue insisting with the bishop to build the church on the Hill. The next day was Sunday December 10, and Juan Diego went to speak with Archbishop Zumárraga again, and this time he was asked to return with proof of her identity, with a miracle itself.
So back to Tepeyac went Juan Diego, and again the woman appeared, and as he explained the situation she consented to providing him with proof the following day, Monday December 11. However, his uncle Juan Bernardino had fallen even more ill and was on his deathbed. Juan missed his meeting with the Marian apparition to get the proof. As Juan Bernardino’s condition worsened overnight, young Juan set out in the early hours of December 12 to nearby Tlatelolco in search of a priest to hear Juan Bernardino’s confession and administer his last rites.
Juan Diego was ashamed to miss the promised meeting with the apparition of the Virgin Mary, and so for a third time he took a different route around Tepeyac Hill to avoid the encounter. Still yet the Virgin intercepted him asking "Am I not here, I who am your mother?" in Nahuatl. The apparition assured him that his Uncle had been healed and told him to gather flowers from the summit of the hill, which was normally barren in the cold weather of December finding Spanish Castilian roses. Juan gathered the flowers in his tilmàtli, or cloak and returned to the Virgin who then arranged them for him to take to the Archbishop.
Returning to show his collection, the flowers impressed upon the agave cactus fabric and fell to the floor forming a perfect image of the Virgin Mary on the church floor before Archbishop Zumárraga. The next day Juan Diego found his uncle Juan Bernardino healed and he too had seen the Marian apparition after praying whereupon she informed him that she wished to be known as “Guadalupe,” a Spanish name. The Archbishop kept Juan Diego’s cloak and just under two weeks later he formed a procession to transfer the miraculous image back to the Hill.
During this march, stylized displays of Aztec martial arts were performed in the Virgin’s honor, one wounding a member of the procession in the neck with an arrow by accident. The Virgin appeared again and before her the procession pleaded with her to heal him, and so she did, removing the arrow from his neck whereupon the victim of the accident immediately recovered. The agave cloak was hastily installed in a small chapel where it remained unprotected by glass or modern technology, and reportedly despite the centuries and multiple rebuilds of the building around it, the fabric remains in excellent condition even when nitric acid was spilled on it.
The Virgin of Guadalupe remained controversial in the Church for several centuries more even as the healing waters of the church steadily drew pilgrims. It was not until May 6, 1990 that John David was beatified for veneration and not until July 31, 2002 that Pope John Paul II canonized him to become a full Saint. The Virgin was immensely popular in mid-16th century Mexico and helped to lead to the conversion of millions to the Catholic faith further cementing Spanish rule.
So what can the story of the Virgin of Guadalupe tell us about devotion and faith in modern day Southern California? Much less why should we care about religion at all in our electronic reality devoid of most regulators of truthiness in so many regards. Does social media seriously need an Archbishop to do the verifications? As I sat there in Luis Cantabrana’s lawn on Sunday night in an open air tent along with the other parishioners and they did their cantos, it no longer mattered that I was illegally parked in an area of SanTana as Gustavo Arellano had reminded me the locals pronounce it before the service in response to my Davy Crockett-like “Santa Anna” refrain.
Our voices blended together, and even though I don’t speak Spanish, it took no translation to understand the meaning and character of their devotion. Gustavo was right, these were the truest of the true, the faithful. As a young child played about, no rules were needed about their presence at such a meeting as the Board of Los Angeles Police Commissioners now requires in response to activist Jason Reedy bringing his child to meetings. The Star of David that I had seen on the neck of Kevin de León’s bodyguard the prior December to consternation about seeing my own holy symbol toted at a meeting of Los Angeles City Hall.
I don’t know if the story of Our Lady of Guadalupe is true, that’s not what matters. Luis and his family served the parishioners and myself hot horchata and cinnamon scones at the end of the service. Reminding us that the story of Our Lady of Guadalupe is about healing and caring for each other. I drank the horchata and felt the same warmth flow into my body at the same time as I ate the scone eagerly crumbs falling over my yellow jacket. It’s what we believe about ourselves that matters, and our community, and to each other, the person next to us.
The Archbishop might not have believed Juan Diego immediately when he reported his miraculous chance encounter with the Virgin Mary, and he may have missed his meeting to get the proof. It’s not that miracles happen, or not, or what language it comes in that moves a society like mid-16th century Central Mexico. Not even a conquistador like Hernán Cortes vanquishing his opponent Montezuma like Nury Martinez in a rage on audio tape. I listened to the interview the same as you, and while I will never condone her outrageous, bigoted rants, I’m still not sure that the change miraculous symbols can bring to our digital reality is worth the YouTube likes.
I haven’t removed the YouTube video. Nor would I expect the Catholic Church to suddenly turn around and remove the artifact of Our Lady of Guadalupe were the religious climate to somehow change and the Church were to slide backwards 50 years. No one needed to make the Catholic Church great again with the beatification and canonization of Juan Diego as Pope John Paul II did were there to be a Donald Trump running for Pope. Yes, at Reed College, my alma mater in Portland, Oregon we really did elect a campus Pope to tend to the study body. Hat included!
The story of Our Lady of Guadalupe teaches us a universal value of perseverance and trust. The meaning of our faith is in each other, in our community leaders and in our families. When Meta removed Gustavo Arellano and Joe Bautista’s pictures from Instagram of the “VIRGEN DE GUADALUPE” they crossed a line. Our Lady of Guadalupe is no cause for offense. The response given from Meta as explained by Arellano that it was “because it violated their community guidelines that prohibits the promotion of ‘violence or dangerous organizations’" is unbelievable. I’ve heard and experienced overeager moderation online, but that’s a new one.
Meta did not immediately respond for request for comment on this story, but if they do, you can be sure that I’ll report it just as a Reddit moderator blocked the LA Fed Tapes initially and Juan Diego didn’t take no for an answer from either Archbishop Zumárraga or yes from the apparition of the Virgin Mary. Sometimes we need to be patient, because in time good things can happen. As was said about the 2008 Presidential campaign, sometimes “Tsunamis happen.” That 8 years of steady leadership was a turnaround from the George W. Bush years with 9/11 and its following bloody foreign entanglements in Iraq and Afghanistan to no sure ending.
Donald Trump wasn’t a miracle to say the least, even as he raves and rants to his adulating audience as if he has access to some apparition that we all just can’t see sometimes. In the next year 2024, were he to win re-election it would be like a Reconquista. Trump has already gone around vowing vengeance against his opponents, human sacrifices likes Montezuma. With his never-ending promise to build a wall between the United States of America and Mexico, and to make Mexico pay for it, his canto’s of fascism caught on in ways that will be difficult to uproot.
Closer to home, we have to start looking for simple answers. How to make the change that we want to see in the Los Angeles City Council, how to expand it to make it more representative. If the only thing standing between political reform in Los Angeles in a single year versus another decade is an antiquated building with a 15-member horseshoe, well then we might just need to build a new governmental headquarters because that’s no excuse. In a City that can afford to add $400 million dollars to the Los Angeles Police Department budget before 2027 don’t tell me it can’t be done, because I’m a person after all who believes sometimes miracles do happen.
Please support my work with your subscription or for direct aid use Venmo
Zachary Ellison is an Independent Journalist and Whistleblower in the Los Angeles area. Zach was most recently employed by the University of Southern California, Office of the Provost from October 2015 to August 2022 as an Executive Secretary and Administrative Assistant supporting the Vice Provost for Academic Operations and the Vice Provost and Senior Advisor to the Provost among others. Zach holds a Master’s in Public Administration and a Graduate Certificate in Sustainable Policy and Planning from the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy. While a student at USC, he worked for the USC Good Neighbors Campaign including on their newsletter distributed university-wide. Zach completed his B.A. in History at Reed College, in Portland, Oregon and was a writer, editor, and photographer for the Pasadena High School Chronicle. He was Barack Obama’s one-millionth online campaign contributor in 2008. Zach is a former AmeriCorps intern for Hawaii State Parks and worked for the City of Manhattan Beach Parks and Recreation. He is a trained civil process server, and enjoys weekends in the great outdoors.
