By Dave Bellefeuille-Rice, guest writer

MIENTRAS HAY LUCHA, hay vida, y mientras hay vida hay lucha. (Where there’s life there’s struggle, where there’s struggle there’s life.)

Many Mexicans have said this.  They’ve endured and still endure oceans of struggle, under masters Spanish, local, and global.  Yet they also exude oceans of life.  How to explain this? 

I won’t tell you for sure because I don’t know. 

I will, though, offer you two pregnant Mexican images that have caught my eye.  From them I’ll spin the germ of a theory, one of the pleasures of foreign travel. You spin them and then you go home, no cost or obligation!

I’m writing this in a church pew, home of our first image.  Thursday morning mass just ended in the parish I’ve adopted for the week in Zamora, Michoacan, while visiting my son. The priest’s gone, his job done.  The group of women who actually run the mass every day are praying aloud together. 

A man has just passed me on his knees, sliding from rear to front on the smooth stone. Now, a gorgeous young woman passes in the same way. People come in devotion throughout the day, even going in and out during mass. 

They come to connect with the image of Christ suffering. The crucifix above the altar, a noted object of devotion in this city, looks more beaten and bloody than any I’ve ever seen in the U.S. 

In the back of the church, in glass cases, more statues beckon. In two, Jesus stands crowned with thorns and beaten, his life ebbing away. In a third statue, Jesus lies bloody and dead in an elaborate glass coffin. Finger smudges show on the glass where people have reached out to touch. Nearby, on a small bulletin board, people post thank you notes to God for miracles observed after prayer here.   

Keep reading! There’ll be no more blood! It’s time to consider what might underlie these passions. I submit that most Mexicans, even those not formally religious, share them in some way. 

These Mexicans, I submit, come inside the refuge of church walls to touch the core of their own suffering. They come, too, to touch the God of heaven who descends to Mexico’s earth and suffers with them in their struggles. Each touch supports the other, and in both people find strength.

Morbid?  To them, absolutely not, though morbid it might be without the Mexican soul’s second image.

She is Mexico’s most popular woman – you find her everywhere. See her in church but much more outside it, behind ice cream counters, above the driver’s seat on busses, on houses, along roadsides. An adored telanovela diva? No, though that’s not a bad guess.

It’s a virgin, Our Lady of Guadalupe. In this famous image, Mary is a brown Aztec princess in royal robes. Sun rays beam from her. She stands of a crescent moon held up by angels. You see no Christ child. Instead, Mary shows signs of pregnancy.

Briefly, here’s the story of this image. One December just soon after the Spanish conquest, an Aztec Christian renamed Juan Diego met an amazing woman on a hilltop outside of Mexico City. She sent Juan to the local bishop to tell him to build a chapel on the hill in her honor. 

The bishop, needless to say, required some credentials. Juan returned to the woman, who cut lush roses, which don’t bloom in December, from nearby bushes that had no business being there. She arranged them in Juan’s outstretched robe and folded the robe over them for safekeeping.

Later, before the bishop, Juan unfolded the robe to reveal the roses, and that revealed the now famous image, imprinted on the robe. The bishop, convinced, had the chapel built and the robe hung over the altar. The robe and image still hang in a huge church since erected on the same spot. 
Not everyone takes this literally, of course. In the interest of full disclosure, though, I’ll tell you I’m a believer. 

So, we have two images. The king of glory descends to suffer with the people of earth. A daughter of earth rises to glory. It’s a circle dance, an orbit around the two poles of struggle and life. It’s a circle in which one can live, and live to the full, in a tough country.

There’s my germ of a theory. Now I’m going to try sliding down the church aisle to the crucifix on my knees.  Then I’ll spend the rest of the day savoring life in this wonderful land. When in Mexico, do as the Mexicans do!

Dave Bellefeuille-Rice lives in Olympia, Washington. A life-long Catholic, he is one of America’s leading experts on communion wafers and their traditional ingredients. He visited Mexico from Sept. 23 – Oct. 3, 2008.