Reassessing the Rise of Mexico's Virgin of Guadalupe, 1650s–1780s

By examining the cult of saints in Mexico City from the 1650s to the 1780s, the article reinterprets the rise of Mexico's Virgin of Guadalupe. Archival evidence from the city council and current-events chroniclers show that creole patriotism accounted for little of the growth in the cult of Guadalupe until the 1760s. Far more important were demands for supernatural wonders, shifts in the specialties of leading saints, and promotion by colonial officials. Judging from this revised history of the devotion to Guadalupe the origins of Mexican nationality more appropriately lie in the late colonial period.