Las Mañanitas
Dec. 17th, 2006 11:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dedalus_1947I
The winds buffet you constantly, and they seem to suck your breath away. You are out in the open, very alone, and exposed to all the elements. You look down at a sheer drop from a steep pinnacle with no obstruction on any side. The vista is like nothing you’ve ever experienced. It is like standing on the roof of the tallest skyscraper, without barriers or protection. You are at the tip of a city’s skyline, and can look down at the smaller buildings, churches, apartments, and homes that make up a major metropolitan city. Only you are not standing atop a modern skyscraper, you are on top of an ancient, monumental, pyramid, on the Avenue of the Dead, in the Valley of Teotihuacán.
II
This is how I remember the first time I climbed to the top of the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacán. I was seven or eight years old. My parents had picked that summer for a vacation to Mexico to visit family and introduce their 4 children to the wonders of their Mexican heritage and culture. There had been an orchestrated build up leading to our expedition to Teotihuacán. My uncles and aunts had recounted the stories of this legendary Indian city, which the Aztecs of Tenochtitlan (Mexico City) called “the birthplace of the gods”.
Teotihuacán [teotiwa'kan] is located in what is now the San Juan Teotihuacán municipality in the State of México, Mexico, approximately 25 miles northeast of Mexico City. The site covers a total surface area of 11 and a half square miles. It was called “place where the gods were born” by the Nahuatl-speaking Aztecs, hundreds of years after the city was destroyed and abandoned. Even then, only crumbling ruins and earth-covered mounds hinted of the greatness that existed in the dim past. But these monumental ruins inspired such awe in the Aztecs, that they incorporated the lost city, with their own pantheon of gods, into new creation myths.
Little is known of the actual name, or the founders, of the city. We do know that it was an agrarian-based, urban civilization which flourished in the first half of the 1st millennium. At that time, it was the largest city in all the Americas, with economic, religious, and cultural influence over all of Mesoamerica (central Mexico to Honduras). The city reached its zenith between 1 and 200 A.D., with about 60,000 to 80,000 inhabitants, and its power was comparable to that of ancient Rome. However, in 6th or 7th century A.D., this elaborate, urban center collapsed, and eventually disappeared. Theories abound as to reasons for its destruction: internal strife, military invasions, climatic changes, and drought, but by 800 A.D., the city was already lost to mystery and legend.
On that first occasion, when I climbed the five-staged pyramid of the Sun, it was the myths that fascinated me. Here was a physical place of emotional power. Teotihuacán, with its plazas, avenues, and pyramids, pulsated with elemental energy. On top of these wind-swept pyramids, humans were sacrificed in bloody and elaborate rituals to reenact the birth of the sun and moon, and ensure their predictable movement through the cosmos. Here thousands of people gathered to sing, dance, and pray for the more personal matter of life: birth, death, love, hope, and suffering. Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent, was another god, and culture hero, who held sway in the theology of that time. His smaller pyramid was located at the Southwest corner of the Avenue of the Dead. He was the avatar of humanity, the god who sought to bring light, knowledge, song, and poetry to earth.
This mythical, religious ceremonial center fascinated me, because of its isolated beauty, its mystery, and its ability to attract so many people after its demise. Day after day, year after year, people from Mexico and around the world come to see and experience Teotihuacán. They walk and gawk along the Avenue of the Dead, the North-South axis of the city, spying the platforms, courtyards, and pyramids that border it. They scale, both, the Pyramid of the Moon, which anchors the northern point of the avenue, and the Pyramid of the Sun, in the middle. The Sun Pyramid, which is 215 by 215 m at the base, and about 63 m high, is clearly the dominant point of the city. Recent excavations have added even more to the religious mystery of the structure, by revealing an ancient cave located directly beneath it.
Teotihuacán inspires mystery and awe in the people who come to marvel, but it provides no answers. Visitors come with different beliefs, perspectives and expectations, and they all leave moved and impressed by the monumental design and architecture of this ancient ceremonial site. Teotihuacán is a place of tremendous energy, but Mexico has another source of greater power: Tepeyac.
III
On December 12, Mexico celebrates its most significant religious feast day of the year. On that day, thousands and thousands of Mexicans, Catholics, and curious visitors and seekers, descend on a place called Tepeyac or the Hill of Tepeyac. It is located inside Gustavo A. Madero, the northernmost delegación or borough of Mexico City. It is the site where Saint Juan Diego is said to have met the Virgen de Guadalupe in1531, and where the Villa de Guadalupe is located today.
According to the first accounts of the event, during a walk from his village to the city on December 9, 1531, Juan Diego saw a vision of the Virgin Mary at the Hill of Tepeyac. Appearing as an Indian woman, and speaking in Nahuatl, she told him to build a church on the site. But when Juan Diego spoke to the Spanish bishop, Fray Juan de Zumárraga, the prelate did not believe him, asking for a miraculous sign. In another apparition, the Virgin told Juan Diego to gather flowers from the hill, even though it was winter, when normally nothing bloomed. He found Spanish roses, gathered them in his tilma, and presented these to the bishop. When the roses fell from his apron an icon of the Virgin remained imprinted on the cloth. It is this image, of a brown-skinned, Indian maiden, with hands clasped in prayer, wrapped in a long blue veil studded with gold stars, and standing on a half moon, that is housed in the Basilica, today.
The construction of the church dedicated to the Virgen began in 1531 and was finished in 1709. The tilma of Juan Diego was placed in this, original, church from 1709 to 1974.The church was granted basilica status by Pope Pius X in 1904. Over time, however, this old basilica began to sink, because the ground on which it was built, and the city, was constructed on a former lake. As a consequence, a new, more spacious, basilica was built between 1974 and 1976. It is a circular building, made in such a way as to allow maximum visibility for the image to those inside. The structure is supported by 350 pylons that prevent the basilica from sinking with the rest of the ground. The Basilica is considered the second most important sanctuary of Catholicism ( based on the number of pilgrims who visit) just after the Vatican City.
For many historians and priests, the ascendency of the Virgin Mary in Mexico, was viewed as the final conquest of the Spanish over the Indian population. However, to Mexicans, the apparition of the Indian Virgin, at that site, was the spiritual enactment of the mestizaje (blending, or mixture) of Christianity with Indian paganism. The hill of Tepeyac had once been a worship site for the indigenous mother goddess, Tonantzin.According to Aztec mythology, this was the location of a pyramid toTonantzin, the lunar goddess of the Earth. This was the goddess who brought the corn, “Mother of the Corn”. She was also refered to as"Woman of Precious Stone", "The Goddess of Sustenance", and "Honored Grandmother".
The vast plaza that introduces visitors to the Hill of Tepeyac and the Basilica of Guadalupe does not stagger the senses like Teotihuacán, or its pyramids. The spiritual and elemental power of this place is not in its monumental architecure or design, it is in the people who come to pray and worship.Where Teotihuacán has echoes of power, Tepeyac is alive with it. The ground it stands on throbs with vital energy.
I have been to the Villa de Guadalupe on every one of my visits to Mexico. It is a pilrimage site to millions of Catholics. The vision that always jolts me, upon my arrival to the plaza leading to the Basilica, is the masses of poor and humble people walking on their knees, stopping, praying, and resuming their migration toward the church. This slow moving, tidal wave of humanity leaves a bloody path on the coarse plaza ground. Instead of sharp obsidian knives ripping the pulsing hearts out of human chests, rough stones rub away the cloth and skin to expose bleeding knees, sinews, and bone. Poverty, suffering and penance is the antecedent to the icon of the Virgen, the mother of God. Yet, upon reaching their goal, and viewing the image of la vigen morena, there is an explosive sensation of hope, joy, and thanksgiving. This release is felt, physically, throughout the church and plaza. It is the source of the power to this ancient and modern place.
What I love best about this devotion to Mary on December 12, is the way it begins. At day break, men, women, and children gather together, in homes, at churches, and, at Tepeyac, to serenade their “little, brown mother”. They play and sing Las Mañanitas, a traditional Mexican song for birthdays, anniversaries, and serenades:
Estas son las mañanitas, que cantaba el Rey David. Hoy por ser día de tu santo, te las cantamos a ti.
David the King sang these little psalms. Since today is your Saint Day, we will sing them to you.
Despierta mi bien despierta, mira que ya amaneció. Ya los pajaritos cantan. La luna ya se metió
Awaken, my love, awaken, the sun is about to rise. As the moon leaves us this morning, the birds will begin to sing.
Que linda está la mañana en que vengo a saludarte. Venimos todos con gusto y placer a felicitarte.
How lovely is the morning, as I come to bring you greetings. We all come in celebration of this special day for you.
Ya viene amaneciendo. Ya la luz del día nos dio. Levántate de mañana. Mira que ya amaneció.
The day is now dawning, and the light of day has come. Awaken early this morning, to see all that we have done.
Las Mañanitas is not a prayer, nor an intersession. They are morning greetings of affection to a loved one. This is how Mexicans sing to their brown-skinned, Nahuatl-speaking, Indian mother: the Mother of Jesus who appeared on an ancient pyramid dedicated to the Indian goddess of life and sustenance, in Tepeyac.
The winds buffet you constantly, and they seem to suck your breath away. You are out in the open, very alone, and exposed to all the elements. You look down at a sheer drop from a steep pinnacle with no obstruction on any side. The vista is like nothing you’ve ever experienced. It is like standing on the roof of the tallest skyscraper, without barriers or protection. You are at the tip of a city’s skyline, and can look down at the smaller buildings, churches, apartments, and homes that make up a major metropolitan city. Only you are not standing atop a modern skyscraper, you are on top of an ancient, monumental, pyramid, on the Avenue of the Dead, in the Valley of Teotihuacán.
II
This is how I remember the first time I climbed to the top of the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacán. I was seven or eight years old. My parents had picked that summer for a vacation to Mexico to visit family and introduce their 4 children to the wonders of their Mexican heritage and culture. There had been an orchestrated build up leading to our expedition to Teotihuacán. My uncles and aunts had recounted the stories of this legendary Indian city, which the Aztecs of Tenochtitlan (Mexico City) called “the birthplace of the gods”.
Teotihuacán [teotiwa'kan] is located in what is now the San Juan Teotihuacán municipality in the State of México, Mexico, approximately 25 miles northeast of Mexico City. The site covers a total surface area of 11 and a half square miles. It was called “place where the gods were born” by the Nahuatl-speaking Aztecs, hundreds of years after the city was destroyed and abandoned. Even then, only crumbling ruins and earth-covered mounds hinted of the greatness that existed in the dim past. But these monumental ruins inspired such awe in the Aztecs, that they incorporated the lost city, with their own pantheon of gods, into new creation myths.
Little is known of the actual name, or the founders, of the city. We do know that it was an agrarian-based, urban civilization which flourished in the first half of the 1st millennium. At that time, it was the largest city in all the Americas, with economic, religious, and cultural influence over all of Mesoamerica (central Mexico to Honduras). The city reached its zenith between 1 and 200 A.D., with about 60,000 to 80,000 inhabitants, and its power was comparable to that of ancient Rome. However, in 6th or 7th century A.D., this elaborate, urban center collapsed, and eventually disappeared. Theories abound as to reasons for its destruction: internal strife, military invasions, climatic changes, and drought, but by 800 A.D., the city was already lost to mystery and legend.
On that first occasion, when I climbed the five-staged pyramid of the Sun, it was the myths that fascinated me. Here was a physical place of emotional power. Teotihuacán, with its plazas, avenues, and pyramids, pulsated with elemental energy. On top of these wind-swept pyramids, humans were sacrificed in bloody and elaborate rituals to reenact the birth of the sun and moon, and ensure their predictable movement through the cosmos. Here thousands of people gathered to sing, dance, and pray for the more personal matter of life: birth, death, love, hope, and suffering. Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent, was another god, and culture hero, who held sway in the theology of that time. His smaller pyramid was located at the Southwest corner of the Avenue of the Dead. He was the avatar of humanity, the god who sought to bring light, knowledge, song, and poetry to earth.
This mythical, religious ceremonial center fascinated me, because of its isolated beauty, its mystery, and its ability to attract so many people after its demise. Day after day, year after year, people from Mexico and around the world come to see and experience Teotihuacán. They walk and gawk along the Avenue of the Dead, the North-South axis of the city, spying the platforms, courtyards, and pyramids that border it. They scale, both, the Pyramid of the Moon, which anchors the northern point of the avenue, and the Pyramid of the Sun, in the middle. The Sun Pyramid, which is 215 by 215 m at the base, and about 63 m high, is clearly the dominant point of the city. Recent excavations have added even more to the religious mystery of the structure, by revealing an ancient cave located directly beneath it.
Teotihuacán inspires mystery and awe in the people who come to marvel, but it provides no answers. Visitors come with different beliefs, perspectives and expectations, and they all leave moved and impressed by the monumental design and architecture of this ancient ceremonial site. Teotihuacán is a place of tremendous energy, but Mexico has another source of greater power: Tepeyac.
III
On December 12, Mexico celebrates its most significant religious feast day of the year. On that day, thousands and thousands of Mexicans, Catholics, and curious visitors and seekers, descend on a place called Tepeyac or the Hill of Tepeyac. It is located inside Gustavo A. Madero, the northernmost delegación or borough of Mexico City. It is the site where Saint Juan Diego is said to have met the Virgen de Guadalupe in1531, and where the Villa de Guadalupe is located today.
According to the first accounts of the event, during a walk from his village to the city on December 9, 1531, Juan Diego saw a vision of the Virgin Mary at the Hill of Tepeyac. Appearing as an Indian woman, and speaking in Nahuatl, she told him to build a church on the site. But when Juan Diego spoke to the Spanish bishop, Fray Juan de Zumárraga, the prelate did not believe him, asking for a miraculous sign. In another apparition, the Virgin told Juan Diego to gather flowers from the hill, even though it was winter, when normally nothing bloomed. He found Spanish roses, gathered them in his tilma, and presented these to the bishop. When the roses fell from his apron an icon of the Virgin remained imprinted on the cloth. It is this image, of a brown-skinned, Indian maiden, with hands clasped in prayer, wrapped in a long blue veil studded with gold stars, and standing on a half moon, that is housed in the Basilica, today.
The construction of the church dedicated to the Virgen began in 1531 and was finished in 1709. The tilma of Juan Diego was placed in this, original, church from 1709 to 1974.The church was granted basilica status by Pope Pius X in 1904. Over time, however, this old basilica began to sink, because the ground on which it was built, and the city, was constructed on a former lake. As a consequence, a new, more spacious, basilica was built between 1974 and 1976. It is a circular building, made in such a way as to allow maximum visibility for the image to those inside. The structure is supported by 350 pylons that prevent the basilica from sinking with the rest of the ground. The Basilica is considered the second most important sanctuary of Catholicism ( based on the number of pilgrims who visit) just after the Vatican City.
For many historians and priests, the ascendency of the Virgin Mary in Mexico, was viewed as the final conquest of the Spanish over the Indian population. However, to Mexicans, the apparition of the Indian Virgin, at that site, was the spiritual enactment of the mestizaje (blending, or mixture) of Christianity with Indian paganism. The hill of Tepeyac had once been a worship site for the indigenous mother goddess, Tonantzin.According to Aztec mythology, this was the location of a pyramid toTonantzin, the lunar goddess of the Earth. This was the goddess who brought the corn, “Mother of the Corn”. She was also refered to as"Woman of Precious Stone", "The Goddess of Sustenance", and "Honored Grandmother".
The vast plaza that introduces visitors to the Hill of Tepeyac and the Basilica of Guadalupe does not stagger the senses like Teotihuacán, or its pyramids. The spiritual and elemental power of this place is not in its monumental architecure or design, it is in the people who come to pray and worship.Where Teotihuacán has echoes of power, Tepeyac is alive with it. The ground it stands on throbs with vital energy.
I have been to the Villa de Guadalupe on every one of my visits to Mexico. It is a pilrimage site to millions of Catholics. The vision that always jolts me, upon my arrival to the plaza leading to the Basilica, is the masses of poor and humble people walking on their knees, stopping, praying, and resuming their migration toward the church. This slow moving, tidal wave of humanity leaves a bloody path on the coarse plaza ground. Instead of sharp obsidian knives ripping the pulsing hearts out of human chests, rough stones rub away the cloth and skin to expose bleeding knees, sinews, and bone. Poverty, suffering and penance is the antecedent to the icon of the Virgen, the mother of God. Yet, upon reaching their goal, and viewing the image of la vigen morena, there is an explosive sensation of hope, joy, and thanksgiving. This release is felt, physically, throughout the church and plaza. It is the source of the power to this ancient and modern place.
What I love best about this devotion to Mary on December 12, is the way it begins. At day break, men, women, and children gather together, in homes, at churches, and, at Tepeyac, to serenade their “little, brown mother”. They play and sing Las Mañanitas, a traditional Mexican song for birthdays, anniversaries, and serenades:
Estas son las mañanitas, que cantaba el Rey David. Hoy por ser día de tu santo, te las cantamos a ti.
David the King sang these little psalms. Since today is your Saint Day, we will sing them to you.
Despierta mi bien despierta, mira que ya amaneció. Ya los pajaritos cantan. La luna ya se metió
Awaken, my love, awaken, the sun is about to rise. As the moon leaves us this morning, the birds will begin to sing.
Que linda está la mañana en que vengo a saludarte. Venimos todos con gusto y placer a felicitarte.
How lovely is the morning, as I come to bring you greetings. We all come in celebration of this special day for you.
Ya viene amaneciendo. Ya la luz del día nos dio. Levántate de mañana. Mira que ya amaneció.
The day is now dawning, and the light of day has come. Awaken early this morning, to see all that we have done.
Las Mañanitas is not a prayer, nor an intersession. They are morning greetings of affection to a loved one. This is how Mexicans sing to their brown-skinned, Nahuatl-speaking, Indian mother: the Mother of Jesus who appeared on an ancient pyramid dedicated to the Indian goddess of life and sustenance, in Tepeyac.
