BIBA TEQUANTLAXOPEUH!

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December 12 is the Catholic feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. And while the feast is close on the calendar to our celebration of Our Lady of Kamalen (December 8), the two “Our Lady’s” are close in another way.

Most of us who live in Guam are familiar with the legends of how the statue named Santa Marian Kamalen came to our shores and its miraculous adventures since, but not so well known is what we might call a “prequel” to its arrival in Guam.

Legend has it that the statue came to be at the bottom of the sea between what is now the village of Malesso and Cocos Island due to its having survived the shipwreck of a Spanish galleon, most likely the Nuestra Senora del Pilar which sank off the coast of Cocos Island in 1690.

The statue was believed to be aboard the galleon because Spanish ships of that day usually carried the statue of a patron saint for protection, and in the time of the Spanish galleons sailing between Mexico and the Philippines, this particular image of the Virgin Mary was very popular.

The original statue had been widely venerated in Spain since it was discovered in 1326. In that year, as legend has it, an angel appeared to a cowherd and told him to dig in a certain spot. Upon doing so, the cowherd uncovered a statue of the likeness of the Virgin Mary.

In his book, “The Wonder of Guadalupe,” George Johnston describes how the image had come to be buried six centuries earlier when Christians, fleeing the invading Muslims in 711 A.D., hid the statue for safekeeping.

The statue was an important one because, as Johnston describes, it had been a gift to a local Spanish bishop from Pope St. Gregory the Great (d. 604 A.D.) who had venerated the statue in his private oratory.

The statue was special to the pope because it was said to have been sculpted by St. Luke. As tradition has it, St. Luke was personally close to the Blessed Mother in the years after Jesus ascended into Heaven and it is very likely that Mary herself was his model.

Following the legend, it goes like this: St. Luke, who beheld the very face of the Blessed Mother, sculpted her image. The statue came to be in possession of Pope St. Gregory the Great who gifted it to a Spanish bishop. (590 A.D. to 604 A.D.) Christians fleeing the Muslims buried it for safekeeping (711 A.D.) It was discovered by a cowherd (1326 A.D.).

Upon discovery, the image came to be an object of popular veneration, especially by seafarers. Christopher Columbus is said to have venerated the image prior to his voyages to what became “the New World.”

Given its popularity among seafarers, it is quite probable that a copy of the image was aboard the Nuestra Senora del Pilar when it sank off the coast of Cocos Island in 1690.

Assuming this history is true, and also assuming how well the copies of the image were made, it is quite possible that the face of our Santa Marian Kamalen is the same face St. Luke beheld 2000 years ago: Mary herself.

So what is the connection to Our Lady of Guadalupe?

When the Spanish cowherd discovered the statue in 1326, it was near a village in Spain named “Guadalupe.” And, by the time the Blessed Mother appeared to Juan Diego in Mexico in 1531, the shrine at Guadalupe, Spain, was already well known.

Scholars speculate that this is why the Spanish bishop in Mexico thought Juan Diego had said “Guadalupe” when the bishop asked Diego for the name of the lady who had appeared to him. Diego, an Aztec, had probably said the phonetically similar Aztec (Nahuatl) word “Tequantlaxopeuh” - pronounced “Tequetalope,” which means “she who saves us from the devourer.”

For Aztecs, there was a real “devourer,” the serpent god “Quetzalcoatl,” to whom was sacrificed tens of thousands of still-beating human hearts torn from their still-living hosts.

Of all the Marian apparitions, the apparition to Juan Diego is the only one in which Mary gives her name instead of a title (such as “Immaculate Conception”). And the name she gives Diego is “Tequantlaxopeuh - She who saves us from the Devourer.”

The name comports with Genesis 3:15 and nearly 2000 years of images of Mary standing on and crushing the serpent, Satan.

Biba Santa Marian Kamalen. Biba Tequantlaxopeuh.

Tim Rohr has resided in Guam since 1987. He has raised a family of 11 children, owned several businesses, and is active in local issues via his blog, JungleWatch.info, letters to local publications, and occasional public appearances. He may be contacted at timrohr.guam@gmail.com