The Virgin of Izamal

Father Bernardo de Lizana wrote in the pages of the “Dictionary of Our Lady of Izamal and the Spiritual Conquest of Yucatán”, in 1623-24, about the first miracles experienceded by various lucky beneficiaries.

His writings, in the first part of the 17th century, have become an essential resource for anthropology doctors Francisco J. Fernández Repetto and Genny M. Negroe Sierra, who have written “Festive Izamal.”

The anthropologists write that the gifts of the Virgin of Izamal were not only given to the indigenous population, as part of a strategy for evangelization, but that they spilled over into every socio-ethnic group who lived in Yucatán. Everyone needed the Virgin, even in opposite circumstances.

The Spanish conquerors had to evangelize the natives, as part of their method of resocialization.

The blacks and their mixed descendents were also objects of evangelization, although their numbers were much smaller than the natives, and the policies were different as they were more blended in to the white population.

The Spanish, in their role as immigrants, also suffered a fracture of their world, who had to confront a totally foreign landscape and culture.

There are so many miracles described in de Lizana’s book, that the anthropologists decided to select the most representative, including the following.

The story is of some Indians of Tihosuco (currently a town in the state of Quintana Roo), who had heard of the miracles and marvels of the Virgin. They arrived at the Convent of Izamal carrying their son, who had been born shrunken, paralyzed, and crippled.

The parents of the 12-year-old boy came with three reales to spend. Upon making the petition to the Virgin, they donated two reales to her, and kept the third for the moment of materialization of the miracle.

They kept watch for two days; but upon noticing that he was not cured, they picked him up and carried him from the church. When they reached the back of the convent, the boy told his father to put him down.

As the astounded family looked on, the boy stood up, healthy, normal, and in good spirits. Seeing this, they returned to the covent to give the Virgin the third real which they had kept aside.

The Festival of the Virgin of Izamal begins at the end of November and includes bullfights and masses of various “gremios”, or guilds. There are dances and parties in the street. On the night of December 7 there is a serenade to the Virgin, and on the morning of the 8th they sing Las mañanitas. Then the Virgin travels in a procession through the streets, and returns to the convent.

By: Yurina Fernández Noa
(yfn1990@hotmail.com)

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