Quien es Juquila?

At the end of the first week of school I went back to the cafe where Magaly and I had shared chai a few days before. I looked up from the pottery and tiled tables to see, on a small shelf on the wall, a stone statue looking back down at me. It was The Virgin of Juquila, the one I discovered two years before, the one I returned to Oaxaca for because of my dream. I sketched her quickly, on the back of my Solexico work book. I thought it interesting that she would appear, as I was leaving for the village of Santa Catarina Juquila to see the original Virgin of Juquila in the morning.

How did I fall inexplicably in love with a clearly very Catholic saint? The simple explanation is that love just happens. The rest of the story, is here...

Two years ago, I loved to wander and explore the city each day after class. It was during these wanderings that I discovered the breathtaking carvings, scrolling ornamentation, and high, domed tiled roofs of Oaxaca's cathedrals. It was there that I noticed it was the Virgin Mary who took center stage on the main altar in the cathedrals. In all the churches I had been to in my travels, both in the US and abroad, it was Jesus that held that position. In Oaxaca it was Mary, and she always wore an embroidered gown that spread out wide from its bottom edges, like a triangle, and a crown on her head.

Once I became aware of this version of Mary I saw her everywhere. She was in restaurants, markets, and propped up on the dashboards of taxis. On our last night in the city, before our class traveled on to meet curanderas that lived in the country, I sat in the Basilica, gazing quietly at the radiant Virgen de la Soledad. Later that evening, walking home under my umbrella, I discovered an antique store down an alley and behind a coffee shop. In it was a small frame, made of rusty pressed tin, and under the glass an image much like the Virgin of Solitude I'd just spent time with. But this Virgin wore a white dress, had dark skin, and appeared to be floating. Virgin Santisima de Juquila said the words under her image.

But who was she?

The next morning our course took us high into the mountains and out along the sea. The further away from Oaxaca City we drove, the more I saw this word, Juquila. There were Restaurants Juquila, Juquila markets, and trucks with large letters on the front windows spelling “Regalo de Juquila” (Gift of Juquila).

The final stage of our journey took us on a long winding dirt road past landslides, goats, and burros to a small coffee plantation deep in the jungle, where we were to meet the final curandera for our class, Elizabeth. As I hauled my suitcase into the old house, past the hammocks on the porch and up the creaky wooden steps, I saw an altar with glowing red candles and palm leaves, and in its center, the Virgin of Juquila. I was struck once again by her image, the shape of her dress, the radiance of her crown. She seemed familiar to me.

That night our group gathered in a circle on the front porch. It had rained for six days straight at the coffee plantation and they had lost electricity. The river near the house was swollen and crashing with fresh clear water. Elizabeth told us that so much rain was unusual for that time of year, that it was new energy coming into the world, down from the mountain.

It was dark, the porch lit only by a single candle in the center of our circle, a few fireflies, and the two red candles glowing at the altar of Juquila. I knew by then the Virgin was calling to me, asking for my attention, but the question remained, who was she? Before I could even ask, Elizabeth answered, "The Virgin of Juquila is Mother Earth.”