Laura G. Gutiérrez
University of Iowa
Email: laura-g-gutierrez@uiowa.edu

Sexing Guadalupe in Transnational Double-Crossings

La imagen de la Virgen expresa la idea que cada época se forma de la mujer. Asimismo, no debemos extrañarnos de que la historia del culto a la Virgen de Guadalupe exprese la evolución de las concepciones que la cultura mexicana ha ido generando sobre el sexo femenino; esta historia está aún por escribirse, pero es posible advertir de entrada que la imagen virginal de Guadalupe es siempre flanqueada y asediada por su hermana gemela, Cihuacóatl.
Roger Bartra, La jaula de la melancolía

Towards the end of his extended essay on Mexican identity (last stop!) Roger Bartra takes us back to the founding myth, the Mother. Bartra points to the link between alternating and shifting conceptions of female sexuality in Mexican culture and the cult of the Virgen de Guadalupe. He states: "La madre de los mexicanos, la guadalupana, es la expresión nacional más evidente de uno de los arquetipos más extendidos a lo largo y ancho de la historia de la humanidad. Pero el culto a la Virgen sólo se explica si también nos fijamos en la sombra que la acompaña: la madre india, las diosas indígenas [as Cihuacóatl above], la Malinche" (Bartra, 171). By positing that the Virgen de Guadalupe and La Malinche embody the same original myth and fuse themselves in the archetype of Mexican womanhood, Bartra is complicating the existing notion that these two cultural and national symbols are contrary and/or antithesis of one another. With this gesture, this anthropologist-sociologist is also suggesting that the Virgen de Guadalupe does, in fact, contain a sexual dimension, one that has been historically denied to her.
This essay deals with the "historia que está aún por escribirse" that Bartra alludes to in the opening epigraph; or, put differently, I suggest that Bartra's essay from 1987 reads as an intellectualized background narrative for the artistic and literary work produced by Mexicans and Chicanas/os during the last three decades. In what follow, I will examine the existing relationship between Mexican (trans-)national identity and guadalupismo. However, rather than delving into a critical analysis of the performance of Mexican-ness via a close-reading of the scripted cult of the Virgen de Guadalupe, a topic that has already been widely studied, I am interested in analyzing a number of visual images as discursive practices that dissent from the hegemonic and naturalized tie that exists between Mexicans (particularly women) and the Virgen de Guadalupe. To be more precise, I will be focusing on works in which visual artists-from both sides of the US-Mexico border-deploy the symbol of the Virgen de Guadalupe and rework her image by sexualizing her. Additionally, I will be discussing the public and transnational reactions to these counterdiscursive artistic works and issues of censorship and control surrounding artistic images that activate and rework by sexualizing this patron saint of all Mexicans, one of the most revered images-icons of the Americas. The overarching question of my analysis will be an examination of the anxiety-producing and "unsettling" effect of merging nation, Woman, and sexuality; that is, I will use a performance and cultural studies framework to critically intervene in the following equation: sexualizing the Virgen de Guadalupe is the same as de-Mexicanizing the artist.
Censorship & Artistic "Assaults Against Morality"
In a recent viewing of Carlos Carrera's film El crimen del Padre Amaro (2002), I was struck with the audience reaction to the scene in which the protagonist of the film, Father Amaro, wraps his lover's naked body with a mantle resembling the one that is draped over the Virgen de Guadalupe's head and shoulders. Sitting among a mostly-Latino audience in Chicago (and, I would guess, most of whom were of Mexican origin), I noticed the slowly increasing level of discomfort: the soft-spoken "oh nos!" that subsequently climaxed to an "Oh my God!" when the priest and his young lover kiss. After reading and hearing much about the scandal that this movie was causing both in Mexico and the US, I expected this (scandal-causing) scene to be sexually explicit. Instead, the visceral reaction that this scene caused Mexican audiences (on both sides of the border) to have, both Catholic and guadalupanos (which, as Carlos Monsiváis has written, are not necessarily the same) , was based on the metonymic symbolism and codes that surround the construction of this myth-icon-the starred-blue mantle. Within Mexican film history, El crimen del Padre Amaro by far represents the most-talked about and attacked example of cinematographic religious transgressions. The fact that this film by Carrera holds the honor of being the most scandalous religious-themed film in Mexican history is perhaps contingent on a set of factors: the production company's perceptive marketing and distribution strategies, the star status of its main actor Gael García Bernal, the country's (i.e. government's) move to the right-the PAN after all is unequivocally tied to the Catholic Church-and the relaxation of constitutional articles that stipulate the separation of Church and State. It is within this context that several pro-life and other religious right groups as well as priests and bishops across Mexico and the US carried their attack against this film for its "blasphemous" depiction of Mexico's sacred Mother figure.
In thinking through several issues surrounding this film, I was struck with the disjunction between the multiple warnings that were circulating-from mouth-to-mouth and flyers distributed during Catholic masses that explicitly prohibited one to see this film-and the people that had actually seen the film. Most of the people that were protesting the distribution of the film had actually not attended a screening. This was reminiscent of a scandal only one year prior to the release of Carrera's film, the digital piece, "Our Lady" (1999), by the Queer Chicana artist Alma López that was part of the "Cyberart: Tradition Vs Technology" exhibition in the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa, Fe, New Mexico. In comparison to the film, which only alludes to the link between the priest's love-object of desire and the Virgen de Guadalupe, López's image reworks the icon to create a defiant, sexy, and queer Virgin-Woman. These almost concurrent scandals, different in form and style-but which nonetheless represent a similar transgression as they manipulate the image of the Virgen de Guadalupe and/or tease the public's single-tiered level of affectivity to this sacred and untouchable icon-are the points of departure for my discussion of female sexuality across the US-Mexico border. That is, what interests me is not only the transnational and cross-border anxiety produced by the sexualized images of Mexican womanhood-epitomized by the Virgen de Guadalupe, but also the way in which these contemporary artistic examples are critical interventions that, as Alicia Arrizón has stated of Chicana and Latina feminist cultural production, and which I would extend beyond the borders of the US into Mexico, "counteract an oppressive system that has perpetuated the passive role of women in Christian values and colonial sites."
In Mexican history and culture, there is no other religious figure-icon that has caused more debate (regarding its narrative of apparition), anthropological inquiry and studies, and scandal, due to its manipulation. Bound to this is the lack of tolerance for dissenting opinions and/or (re-)creative imaginings and the political uses of the Virgen de Guadalupe, something not exclusive to the present. In "The Virgin of Guadalupe: Symbol of Conquest or Liberation?" Jeannete Favrot Peterson posits: "Guadalupe has been used alternatively, and sometimes simultaneously, as a symbol of liberation as well as one of accommodation and control." A primary pre-twentieth century example is the case of Fray Servando Teresa de Mier who was exiled due to his dissenting theory regarding the apparition of Virgin. But, as Jorge Alberto Manrique wrote for La Jornada, the proliferation of images and literature that center this image is in itself the "miracle" of the Virgen de Guadalupe. He writes:
Conformémonos con quizá el verdadero milagro: la importancia capital que para nuestra historia ha tenido la imagen del Tepeyac, el hecho innegable de la fe de muchos millones de mexicanos, la abundantísima cantidad de literatura y de obras de arte a que ha dado lugar.
I cannot help to read Manrique's statement on "conformity" as ironic as he himself was "victim" to the Virgen de Guadalupe's symbolic capital-power.
In 1987, while Manrique was director of the Museo de Arte Moderno (MAM), the museum, under the auspices of the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (INBA), opened a new gallery-space, Salón Espacios Alternativos, which was to feature contemporary experimental art. The exhibition that inaugurated the new space featured, among other pieces by Rolando de la Rosa, the artist's collage of the Virgen de Guadalupe with Marilyn Monroe's face and breasts, now stands as the most unforgettable example of "intolerance" and/or ridiculous fanaticism. Several groups, principally Provida and UNPF (Unión Nacional de Padres de Familia), classified the exhibition as "sacrilegious and irreverent." They protested and worked tirelessly to persuade the public into believing that the image was offensive-even if they had not seen it-and in early 1988 succeeded in having part of exhibition (De la Rosas' pieces) removed and Manrique fired-there was much at stake, it was an election year! More than ten years later, during the opening of an exhibition by the artist Nahum B. Zenil at the same museum in July 1999, Carlos Monsiváis remembered De la Rosa's infamous image and spoke of the "impossibility" of something similar happening again. In a panel discussion, Monsiváis mantained that the scandal eleven years prior had been beneficial for other artists who work with sexually-explicit images and nudity, as Zenil whose work integrates visual images of male (homo)sexuality.
Notwithstanding this pre-Fox positive assertion, which does not consider the multiple censorship scandals outside Mexico City during the decade of the 90s, Monsiváis DF-centered perspective fails to integrate an important factor that differentiates these two examples. While visual art that features nudity and sexuality, including here female and queer, might not be under attack as much-though this is highly questionable considering the climate of intolerance that continues to build in Mexico, in part thanks to the new ties with the Fox administration-the fact that De la Rosa's image provoked anxiety has to do with the manner in which, however unconsciouslly, De la Rosa centered sexuality on a religious and female icon. As Bartra's statement in the opening epigraph posits, if the image of the Virgen de Guadalupe is representative of the time period's conceptualization of female sexuality, what does the following example clarify of the historical present, yet unwritten?
In 2000, a touring exhibition entitled Homenaje al lápiz travels from Mexico City and then Oaxaca to the Museo del Periodismo y las Artes Gráficas in Guadalajara where the director, Yolanda Carvajal, orders that thirteen of the 200 featured works remain in their package because of their "erotic content." Carvajal stipulates that the majority of the public is composed adolescents who do not posses a high level of maturity to discern and assimilate the pieces' erotic depictions. The artistic community protests this censoring gesture and succeed in having the entire collection exhibited; however, a few days later two young men visiting the museum shred to pieces Manuel Ahumada's "La Patrona," which depicts Juan Diego extending before him his ayate or cloak with an image of a naked Marilyn Monroe. This act, in addition to the praise it received from the higher echelons of the Catholic Church in Guadalajara and the death threat that Carvajal received, ensued public debate around freedom of expression, the Church's power regarding the issue of censorship, and abortion, a debate that was taking place concurrently in Mexico City that would have made abortion legal. Thus, in spite of Monsiváis declarations, twelve years after De la Rosas' postmodern Virgen de Guadalupe-Marilyn Monroe collage, the control of the image of the Virgen de Guadalupe and, more importantly, female sexuality lies in the hands of the patriarchal structure in Mexico, embodied by the State and the Church.
In the work of the artists mentioned above, the use and reworking of the Virgen de Guadalupe icon function in part to make familiar what is considered celestial and untouchable. However, as I have also suggested, when the iconography that is manipulated is considered sacred, the emotional links developed between the artist and her/his publics-when enacting identity-based practices and producing images that contest a monolithic and/or rigid national and cultural system-are fractured and/or strained. This terrain of fracturing 'the ties that bind' through a performative sexualization-manipulation of the Virgen de Guadalupe image also belongs to Chicana artist who are considered to be from a "long line of vendidas" and who know first-hand what it is like to be the Virgin's "accompanying shadow."
Transnational Double-Crossings
In an essay on Latina/o affectivity and Ricardo Bracho's performance work, José E. Muñoz writes that "[c]itizenship is negotiated within a contested national sphere in which performances of affect counter each other in a contest that can be described as "official" national affect versus emergent immigrant." While Muñoz is arguing for a theory of "feeling brown" as a specific Latina/o set of cultural practices and modes of affectivity, to counter the "cultural logic of whiteness," I want to take his lead but to also complicate his notion of citizenship. The proliferating artistic images of the Virgen de Guadalupe produced by Chicanas in the last three decades, and the public reactions to them, push me to re-think citizenship beyond national boundaries. Thus, also following Renato Rosaldo's notion of cultural citizenship, I want to propose that to study the manipulation of iconography in Chicana/o cultural production, the concept of transnational citizenship is helpful in analyzing their back-and-forth movement, sometimes real and sometimes symbolic, across national borders. Moreover, the single-tiered level of affectivity alluded to previously, which all Mexicans and Chicanas/os alike are 'expected' to have of the Virgen de Guadalupe-that of high reverence-is jerked in the process of manipulation across borders, national and sexual. Thus, to return to Muñoz, Mexican citizenship is being constantly negotiated within an already contested transnational geographical setting and a transculturated female image, where "performances of affect counter each other," at times producing incendiary results.
In her essay on "Mythical Performativity," Arrizón briefly discusses Chicana visual artists' deployment of the Virgen icon and its transgressive and revolutionary characteristics in the context of reactionary politics and Chicano nationalist (and sexist) discourse. Moreover, as Arrizón posits, the visual work that results from the reworking of this image is performative as it complicates "the 'authentic' claim of Guadalupe to reproduce mimetic altered bodies" (39). As Zenil's iconic art, the cultural work of Chicana visual artists Ester Hernández and Yolanda López, Arrizón seems to suggest, is based on relationships of sameness. However, they become performative because in this ever-expanding repertoire of proliferating Virgen de Guadalupe images, the alternating and altered female bodies are not fixed, producing a plurazing and none-static effect of her identity. In the remainder of this essay, I want to expand on Arrizón's brief analysis of this performative images by including examples of double-crossings that cross national and sexual boundaries.
To a large extent, Chicanas (and Chicanos) have been de-Mexicanized by Mexican nationals and have been historically represented in Mexican literature and culture as betrayers (malinchistas) of the Mexican nation and its culture. In an effort to reclaim the Virgen de Guadalupe-as well as other Mexican icons and/or figures-and provide her with contemporary qualities, Chicana cultural workers have been working to disrupt the passive, desexualized, and one-dimensional representation of the Virgin by creating empowered active images. Their work is critically interventionist within various discourses, I would argue that it most specifically challenges the Mexican and masculinized Chicano one. The most salient example of a transnational double-crossing is the visual art of Chicana artist Yolanda López and, in particular, one of her pieces that was featured on the June-July 1984 cover of the Mexican feminist magazine fem. In this special issue dedicated to "Las Chicanas," López's "Virgen de Guadalupe Walking" presented an activated Virgin with shorten attire and wearing high-heels, as if walking away. The editors of the magazine received bomb threats from the groups Provida and the UNPF, the same ones that succeeded in having De la Rosas' pieces removed four years later. Yet another example from López's Virgin series is "Portrait of the Artist as the Virgen de Guadalupe" (1978), which places an image of the artist herself in the Virgin's radiating frame. The artist's represents herself with running shoes, running directly towards the spectator with a victorious gesture as she clenches a snake with her bare right hand.
As I am nearing the end of the essay, I want to now return to Alma López's "Our Lady." López digitally-manipulated image features a Chicana, wearing a bikini made of flowers, and adorned by other guadalupano elements. The piece, which was part of an exhibition in a New Mexican museum that brought together the art of Latinas who work with digital technologies and folk elements, was considered by the local Catholic Church as "blasphemous." As in the De la Rosa's case, the way in which controversy ensued was through the mobilization of one community leader and/or group. Of the people protesting in the televised rallies, few had actually gone to see the "offensive" digital print. In spite of the thousands of phone calls received by the museum and the growing controversy, the curator of the exhibition, Tey Marianna Nunn, did not remove the piece. Additionally, López's intelligent response by creating a web site and posting all emails-regardless of position-and support she received from across the US, mark this incident as different than De la Rosa's. The performance artist featured in "Our Lady," Raquel Salinas, stands in a defiant pose, refusing to look down and away from our gaze, as the traditional image of the Virgen de Guadalupe. In López's reworked icon, we, as spectators, are dared to look at this Virgin-influenced and empowered female image and to find her sexually desirable.
In doing so, with this image and in her digital work in general, López creates Chicana images with a positive female and queer sexuality through the digital manipulation of popular and Virgin iconography. Particularly illustrative of this are the prints from the Lupe & Sirena series, which rework not only the Virgen de Guadalupe icon, but also another icon from Mexican popular culture. In pairing these two icons-through a lesbianizing gesture-López is inserting her own queer desire. By bestowing a lesbian sexuality on these popular icons, López is also reclaiming her own queer sexuality and desire.
Rather than offering any concluding remarks, as this essay is to simply demonstrate that the evolution of Mexican female sexuality, as Bartra states, being written through the fragmented examples in this essay, which sexualize the Virgen de Guadalupe. Thus, this cultural production from across the US-Mexico border is in the process of documenting that history. In these flows enacted by Virgen de Guadalupe's (transnational) double-crossings, she is transformed and acquires a sexual agency. Notwithstanding, the reproduction of Virgin iconography that depicts her "outside" her passive frame is still contested territory, on both sides of the US Mexico border, where the public's emotional investment to the icon is fissured. This, however, creates a much-needed and pluralizing image, which in itself produces different perspectives on this image and Mexican female sexuality in general.