Pilgrims flock to Mexico City basilica to celebrate the Virgin of Guadalupe

MEXICO CITY — Edivaldo Hernandez Villar crawled on his knees towards the Basilica of Guadalupe, wincing and whispering prayers.

It was the final leg of a grueling four-day pilgrimage to Mexico's most revered shrine, where Catholics say the Virgin Mary miraculously appeared nearly 500 years ago.

Hernandez, his wife and their teenage son walked 100 miles from their rural village to the nation's capital, walking all day with heavy backpacks and sleeping under the stars at night. As with the estimated 10 million other Mexicans who will travel to the basilica this month, their journey was an act of faith, repentance and gratitude.

“You endure the cold, you endure the hunger, you cross the mountains,” said Hernandez, a 34-year-old farmer. “Everything for her“

There is no figure more important to Mexican religious, cultural and national identity than the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Her serene gaze is everywhere, adorning T-shirts, trucks and the walls of most homes. People name their children after her and tattoo her image on their skin: a regal woman surrounded by the sun's rays, head bowed in prayer.

Ada Carrillo, one of the devouts who shouted at the basilica this week, said she unites all of Mexico across political, geographic and class divides. Even President Claudia Sheinbaum, who is Jewish, wore clothing with Guadalupe's image on it.

A few days before Friday's feast of Our Lady, Carrillo surveyed the vast plaza in front of a large church where indigenous dancers from the southern states mingled with cowboys from the north and cosmopolitans from Mexico City. Competing bands played loud, heavy songs. Teenagers and street dogs dozed in the sun. The priest gave a non-stop blessing as he splashed holy water from a pink plastic bucket.

“There are no colors or classes,” Carrillo said. “Just faith.”

It was the winter of 1531, a few years after the Spanish conquest, when the Virgin is said to have miraculously appeared at the foot of Tepeyac Hill, the site where the Aztecs worshiped the goddess Tonantzin. A local man named Juan Diego said she spoke to him in his native Nahuatl language and asked him to build a church in her honor.

The skeptical Catholic bishop initially ignored Juan Diego's story. It is said that to help Juan Diego, who was later canonized, prove his story, a virgin imprinted her image on his cloak. It was December 12th, and Mexicans have been celebrating this date ever since.

Now millions of people come to the basilica where the cloak is displayed every December, with most arriving in the days leading up to December 12th. At midnight on this day, the faithful sing Las Mañanitas, the traditional song for the Virgin's birthday, and set off fireworks.

Pilgrims come from all over Mexico on foot, by motorcycle, bicycle, bus, and even in a wheelchair. Many, like Hernandez, walk on their knees across the huge square of stones to the doors of the basilica.

Mexico City's working-class La Villa neighborhood, where the basilica is located, is filled with trucks decorated with wreaths and Christmas lights, and throngs of pilgrims camping in the streets.

People come with roses and ask for help – in matters of health, heart, business. They came to pray for peace for their deceased relatives.

Others come to express gratitude for the miracles they attribute to Our Lady.

Several years ago, doctors told Carrillo, 46, that she was infertile. She came to the basilica from her home in the state of Tabasco to ask Guadeloupe to grant her at least one child.

This week, Carrillo walked down the steps of the basilica with her daughter Jimena, a busy high school student who just celebrated her 15th birthday.

As Carrillo lit the candle for Guadalupe, tears welled up in his eyes. She pulled her daughter close and muttered a small prayer. “Thank you for the blessing,” she said.

The basilica is one of the most visited pilgrimage sites in the world, and tour groups from Vietnam, China and the United States came here on this day. Inside the huge church, priests celebrated Mass every hour, and an electronic gateway prevented visitors from lingering in front of Juan Diego's famous cloak.

Religious scholars say Guadeloupe's tradition, which mixes indigenous beliefs with Christian ones, has helped solidify Catholicism's dominance in Mexico. It also helped prevent the incursion of evangelical Christianity seen in many other parts of Latin America, and few here are willing to abandon their allegiance to the “Virgencita,” as Guadeloupe is popularly known.

It is noteworthy that Mexican virgins have brown skin, a detail that has not escaped the attention of the indigenous population, either today or centuries ago. Today some Mexicans call her Guadalupe Tonantzin.

Teresa Sanchez, 66, a retiree from Mexico City who arrived with the help of a cane, said she sees Guadalupe as a link to Mexico's indigenous past and sees her pilgrimage to the basilica as a way to “give back to Mother Earth for everything she has given us.”

She sees the cult of Guadalupe as an attempt by the Spaniards to promote the adoption of Catholicism in the New World and as an opportunity for indigenous Mexicans who “could not openly maintain their beliefs” to preserve traditions.

Many pilgrims arrived at the basilica with religious artifacts – mainly statues of Guadalupe from local churches. The safe delivery of blessed objects home was an important part of the journey. Many pilgrims take turns running hundreds of miles back to their pueblos, carrying a torch lit at the base of Tepayac.

Antonio and Jesus Zamora, brothers from Michoacan, were preparing to run 260 miles back to their hometown. Antonio, 70, was recently declared free of prostate cancer and said every step he took he would thank Guadalupe for his speedy recovery.

He and his younger brother lived in Missouri for decades, where he worked before retiring from the hotel business. During this time, he said, he returned to Mexico every December to visit the temple.

He asked Guadalupe for good health, a strong family and an end to the cartel violence plaguing his home state.

“I pray for peace,” he said. “For Michoacán. For Mexico. For the United States. For the whole world.”

This year, he said, he also thought about all the immigrants in America who were unable to visit the basilica because they lacked documents allowing them to travel between Mexico and the United States.

The immigrant community has been hit in recent months like never before, he said. He also asked Guadalupe to help with this.

“I prayed for my people,” Zamora said. “And I prayed for Donald Trump, too.”