The Underground And The Virgen Of Guadalupe: Contexts For The Virgen Del Metro, Mexico City

Abstract

The Virgen del Metro is the culmination of a series of unofficial “apparitions” of the Virgin of Guadalupe at the end of the twentieth century. Its location in Mexico City and the circumstances of its discovery in 1997 make it particularly rich in meanings. After recounting the facts, the article attempts to illuminate and interpret this phenomenon in the anthropological context of autopoietic images; in the religious context of the cult of the Guadalupe; in the art-historical context of the suggestive use of coloured stone in ancient and modern architecture; and in the sociopolitical context of Mexico City and its mass transportation system. The Virgen del Metro displaces traditional lines separating sacred and profane, ancient and modern, “elitist” and popular, “high” and “low”, as its echoes in contemporary art finally demonstrate.