Guadalupe Quotes

something about giving himself over to a woman was worse than having lunch with the devil...

Prefería mantenerme el mayor tiempo posible en esa zona de incertidumbre en la que caben todas las posibilidades, a obtener una respuesta rotunda y negativa.

Los peces son quizás los únicos animales domésticos que no hacen ruido. Pero estos me enseñaron que los gritos también pueden ser silenciosos.

And the pomegranates,/ like memories, are bittersweet/ as we huddle together,/ remembering just how good/ life used to be

«¿De qué estrellas caímos para encontrarnos aquí?»

I smile and say, thank you,' because the rudest thing you can do to a Mexican lady is refuse her food—might as well spit on a picture of La Virgen de Guadalupe or turn the TV off during Sábado Gigante.

There is a word to describe someone who loses their spouse, and a word for children who are left without parents. There is no word, however, for a parent who loses their child.

You must remain pure of heart on this journey... Be courageous but remember to also be noble and everything will be all right.

Sometimes it's best to take things down and start all over again. It's the way of the world.

Never let negativity derail your journey as a writer. Use the energy for your own betterment.

There was a twofold awkwardness attached to Juan Diego’s attempts to have sex with the life-size Guadalupe doll—better said, the awkwardness of Juan Diego’s imagining he was having sex with the plastic virgin.

If you want to worry about something, you ought to worry about how Guadalupe was looking at you. Like she’s still making up her mind about you. Guadalupe hasn’t decided about you,” the clairvoyant child had told him.

yo pienso que llega un punto donde todas las madres nos damos cuenta de esto: tenemos a los hijos que tenemos, no a los que nos imaginábamos o a los que nos hubiera gustado tener, y es con ellos con quienes nos toca lidiar.

¡Y yo me llamé la Diosa!

Vivir en el presente me resultaba ya una proeza, pensar en el futuro bastaba para que me sintiera asfixiada.

It is easy, when we are young, to have ideals and to live according to them. What is more complicated is acting consistently over time, and in spite of the challenges life puts in our way.

When our mother is seen only as the one-dimensional Mary of modern times, instead of the great dual force of life and death, She is relegated to the same second-class status of most women in the world. She is without desires of Her own, selfless and sexless except for Her womb. She is the cook, the mistress, bearer and caretaker of children and men. Men call upon Her and carry Her love and magic to form a formidable fortress, a team of cannons to protect them against their enemies. But for a long, long time the wars that women have been left to wage on behalf of men, on behalf of the human race, have started much sooner, in the home, in front of the hearth, in the womb. We do what we must to protect and provide for our young our families, our tribes

But Lupe both genuinely worshiped Our Lady of Guadalupe and fiercely doubted her; Lupe’s doubt was borne by the child’s judgmental sense that Guadalupe had submitted to the Virgin Mary—that Guadalupe was complicitous in allowing Mother Mary to be in control.

As a self-described Guadalupe girl, Lupe was sensitive to Guadalupe being overshadowed by the “Mary Monster.” Lupe not only meant that Mary was the most dominant of the Catholic Church’s “stable” of virgins; Lupe believed that the Virgin Mary was also “a domineering virgin.

No sé si estoy cumpliendo el objetivo de apegarme a los hechos pero ya no me importa. Las interpretaciones son del todo inevitables y, para serle franca, me niego a renunicar al inmenso placer que me produce hacerlas.

La quiero de una manera que no me deja alternativa: o asumo ese amor o la pierdo y me quedo por el resto de mis días reinventándola con otros nombres, otros rostros, otras latitudes, cambiando misterio por «sabiduría».

The shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe is the most visited religious site in the Christian world, surpassing Lourdes, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and St. Peter’s itself. People still go there by the millions every year in order to commune with La Virgen Morena, many journeying to her over many miles on their knees.

Con ella aprendí que un obsesivo no es forzosamente alguien con las uñas pulcras y un peinado impecable, cuya casa se asemeja a una vitrina sino un ser tenso y casi siempre temeroso de que el caos tome por completo el control de su vida y la de sus seres queridos.

Carecer de un motivo para vivir no justifica que un hombre se abandone.

Being Mexican... means being there for each other. It's togetherness, like a familia. We should be helping one another, cheering our friends on.

Consideraba que las personas inteligentes, aquellas con el valor necesario para enfrentarse a la realidad, no podían sino vivir apesadumbradas.

Death is democratic. At the end, regardless of whether you are white, dark, rich or poor, we all end up as skeletons.

E' vero che esiste il destino, ma c’è anche il libero arbitrio, e consiste nel modo in cui prendiamo le cose che ci tocca vivere

La convivencia es una de las aventuras más difíciles de sobrellevar.

soy Guadalupe Amor que antes de ser polvo será una hoguera de palabras.

Mexico surrendered. There were calls among Americans to take all of Mexico. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed February 1848, just took half. The Texas boundary was set at the Rio Grande; New Mexico and California were ceded. The United States paid Mexico $15 million, which led the Whig Intelligencer to conclude that “we take nothing by conquest. . . . Thank God.

Se me hace muy chistoso que el mesero, que se ve a leguas que es mexicano, sin embargo nos hable en inglés. Luego va y le pasa la orden obviamente en español a otro, también mexicano. Pero ambos, él y nosotros, seguimos la farsa y nos negamos a reconocernos. No sé ya quién esnobea a quién.

One of the great creations of Mexican Catholicism was the appearance of the Virgin of Guadalupe to a Mexican Indian, on the same hill where, before the Conquest, a pre-Hispanic goddess had been worshiped. Catholicism was able to take root in Mexico by transforming the ancient gods into the saints, virgins, and devils of the new religion. Nothing similar could occur in India with Muslim monotheism or Protestant Christianity, both of which saw the cult of images, of saints and virgins, as idolatry. The Christianity imported by the British was poor in rites and ceremonies, but full of moral and sexual rigidity. In other words: the exact opposite of popular Hinduism. Similarly, in Christian asceticism, the central concept is redemption; in India, it is liberation. These two words encompass opposite ideas of this world and the next, of the body and the soul.

Lupe was upset that the Japanese honeymooners were wearing surgical masks over their mouths and noses; she imagined the young Japanese couples were dying of some dread disease—she thought they’d come to Of the Roses to beg Our Lady of Guadalupe to save them. “But aren’t they contagious?” Lupe asked. “How many people have they infected between here and Japan?” How much of Juan Diego’s translation and Edward Bonshaw’s explanation to Lupe was lost in the crowd noise? The proclivity of the Japanese to be “precautionary,” to wear surgical masks to protect themselves from bad air or disease—well, it was unclear if Lupe ever understood what that was about.

Esa tendencia que tenemos las hijas a ver en los errores de nuestras madres el origen de todos nuestros problemas, y esa tendencia que tienen las madres a considerar nuestros defectos como la prueba de un posible fracaso.

The Solitude Virgin, Lupe said, was “a white-faced pinhead in a fancy gown.” It further irked Lupe that Guadalupe got second-class treatment in the Basílica de Nuestra Señora de la Soledad; the Guadalupe altar was off to the left side of the center aisle—an unlit portrait of the dark-skinned virgin (not even a statue) was her sole recognition. And Our Lady of Guadalupe was indigenous; she was a native, an Indian; she was what Lupe meant by “one of us.

All, whether believers or not, find something to love, and to love intensely, in the Virgin of Guadalupe. Against her in this land, no man blasphemes. She is the ideal, the light that shines above our strife and our incredulity.

By the waters of baptism, the active European was entirely absorbed within the contemplation of the Indian. The faith that Europe imposed in the sixteenth century was, by virtue of the Guadalupe, embraced by the Indian. Catholicism has become an Indian religion. By the twenty-first century, the locus of the Catholic Church, by virtue of numbers, will be Latin America, by which time Catholicism itself will have assumed the aspect of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Brown skin.

Estar vivos es nuestro mayor miedo. No es la muerte nuestro mayor miedo, es arriesgarnos a vivir: correr el riesgo de estar vivos y de expresar realmente lo que somos. Hemos aprendido a vivir intentando satisfacer las exigencias de otras personas. Hemos aprendido a vivir según los puntos de vista de los demás por miedo a no ser aceptados y de no ser lo suficientemente bueno para otras personas.

[Giant northern elephant seals] were presumed extinct as late as 1912 when a group of eight seals was spotted on Guadalupe Island in the South Pacific by a Smithsonian expedition, which shot seven of them! Fortunately they missed one and failed to spot a few others.

Esperar a alguien, al menos de esa manera, equivale a cancelar la existencia de uno mismo, a hipotecarla por un tiempo condicional, a cambiarla por un absurdo subjuntivo. Obsesionarse con alguien que ha decidido no estar es regalar minutos, horas y días de nuestra vida a quien ni los ha pedido ni quiere tenerlos; es condenar esos mismos minutos, horas y días a la dimensión del tiempo perdido, de lo inservible; es desaprovechar la infinidad de posibilidades que ese tiempo nos ofrece y canjearla por la peor de las opciones: la frustración, el sufrimiento.

baptized her into Christianity as Our Lady of Guadalupe. What they didn’t realize was that Tonantzin was a goddess who could take away sins through secret rituals performed by her priestesses—the brujería. The missionaries, basically, made it perfectly fine for Catholic Indians to go to Mass, but also visit a witch. My mother was a

The Blessed Mother, bearer of the Logos Incarnate, had brought the logos to the warring, disillusioned, and defeated tribes of Mexico and had created out of this warring diversity one nation with a Messianic mission. Mexico was the "cosmic race." Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared as a mestiza, the mixture of European and Native American races. She was the cosmic symbol of the race mixing which the English had feared since the moment they had set foot on the soil of the New World. She was the symbol of Mexican identity. She was the symbol of Catholic race-mixing and the antithesis of England's (and later) America's and (still later) Germany's short-lived ideology of racial superiority.

With the Regional Office breathing down her neck... Corinne had wanted to keep the Drury case low-key, uncontroversial. since Craig's disappearance had set he alarm bells off, Anna was willing to be she'd change tactics, make a noisy show of taking command of the situation. For a while the name of the game at Guadalupe Mountains would be Cover Your Ass.

El silencio, como la sal, es de una levedad sólo aparente: en realidad, si uno deja que el tiempo lo humedezca, empieza a pesar como una especie de yunque

Tom parecía cumplir la función de confidente para aquellos chicos que, a diferencia de él, sí contaban con una vida interesante.

«Seres imperfectos viviendo en un mundo imperfecto, estamos condenados a encontrar sólo migajas de felicidad.»

«Si no te vas de casa te sofocas, si te vas demasiado lejos te falta oxígeno», asegura Vivian Gornick con toda razón.

En vez de acogerme como a alguien merecedor de ella, la ciudad me hacía víctima de su contundente rechazo.

los libros acompañan. Encierran los pensamientos y las voces de otras personas que viven o han vivido en este mundo.

Como si al obsesivo capitán Ahab le anunciaran de pronto que la ballena ha encallado definitivamente y que no podrá perseguirla nunca más.

The world could be standing still, and we'd all be just as dizzy.

En las promesas se cree o no. Las promesas se cumplen o no. Pero con las evidencias no hay quien pueda.

We daughters have a tendency to see in our mother’s mistakes the source of all our problems, and our mothers tend to consider our defects as proof of a possible failure.

Being a mother means being worried about someone else all the time.

las almas, incluida la mía, se hacen débiles si uno deja de entrenarlas.

Ninguna mujer que vuelve a casa después de parir a su primer hijo retoma su vida anterior, mucho

La condición del enamoramiento es, según dicen, la incapacidad de ver,

The truth was they were both inept, but it is always easier to blame others for what we cannot tolerate in ourselves, what we cannot forgive ourselves for.

Thoughts are like clouds moving in the sky, you know? Before you know it, they change shape or they just aren't there anymore.

Leave it alone, mi amor. It's in the tree's nature to be stubborn. It's a survivor.

No hay nada como un secreto familiar para propiciar la unidad entre los miembros.

Cuanto más queremos a una persona, más frágiles y más inseguros nos sentimos a causa de esta.

el deseo es la emoción que más caracteriza a nuestra especie y es también el deseo lo que nos hace reencarnar como seres humanos.

Thoughts are like clouds moving in the sky, you know? Before you know it, they change shape or they just aren’t there anymore.

Cada nueva amistad, sobre todo cuando hay atracción de por medio, es un pasaje a una dimensión desconocida o por lo menos a parcelas de la realidad con las que no estamos familiarizados.

What is more, as I mentioned before, I do not believe in love as a kind of spell, but I do believe in a series of pacts and mutual understandings, of shared amusements and of preferences.

Concluí que con las emociones ocurre algo semejante: muy distintos tipos de sentimientos (a menudo simbióticos) se definen con la palabra «amor». Los enamoramientos muchas veces nacen también de forma imprevista, por generación espontánea. Una tarde sospechamos de su existencia por un escozor apenas perceptible, y al día siguiente nos damos cuenta de que ya se han instalado de una manera que, si no es definitiva, al menos lo parece.

Quizás en eso radique la verdadera conservación de la especie, en perpetuar hasta la última generación de humanos la neurosis de nuestros antepasados, las heridas que nos vamos heredando como una segunda carga genética.

Santo Tomás-Quetzalcóatl fue para los mexicanos el instrumento de ese vuelco del estatuto espiritual, sin el cual la conciencia criolla no hubiera encontrado, un siglo y medio más tarde, la energía necesaria para sacudir el yugo colonial

Watching a baby as it sleeps is to contemplate the fragility of all life. […] The death of a newborn is something so common it surprises no one and yet, how can we accept it when we have been so moved by its beauty? I watch this baby sleep, swaddled in its green sleepsuit, its head to one side on the little white pillow, and I wish fervently for it to carry on living, for nothing to disrupt its sleep or its life, for it to be shielded from all the dangers of the world, and for it to be overlooked by the destructive path of life's whirlwind of catastrophes, 'Nothing will happen to you while I'm here,' I promise, knowing, even as I say it, that I am lying, for deep down I am as helpless and vulnerable as this baby.

On December 9, 1531, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to an Indian named Juan Diego. A carpet of roses blossoming in the dead of winter and a Madonna with a coffee-colored face appearing on Juan Diego’s robe were enough further evidence to convince the local bishop to erect a shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe. There are those who say Guadalupe is Tonantzin, an Aztec goddess who existed years before Juan Diego came along. The Spanish missionaries, knowing that she had quite a local following,

But I’m scared. And I need company. This morning I drove past the Santa Teresa prison and I almost had a panic attack.” “Is it that bad?” “It’s like a dream,” said Guadalupe Roncal. “It looks like something alive.” “Alive?” “I don’t know how to explain it. More alive than an apartment building, for example. Much more alive. Don’t be shocked by what I’m about to say, but it looks like a woman who’s been hacked to pieces. Who’s been hacked to pieces but is still alive. And the prisoners are living inside this woman.

Ventana de un cuarto, abierta… ¡Cuánto aire por ella entraba! Y yo que en el cuarto estaba, a pesar que aire tenía, de asfixia casi moría; que este aire no me bastaba porque en mi mente llevaba la congoja y la aflicción de saber que me faltaba, la ventana en mi razón.

In Charly Cruz’s garage there was a mural painted on one of the cement walls. The mural was six feet tall and maybe ten feet long and showed the Virgin of Guadalupe in the middle of a lush landscape of rivers and forests and gold mines and silver mines and oil rigs and giant cornfields and wheat fields and vast meadows where cattle grazed. The Virgin had her arms spread wide, as if offering all of these riches in exchange for nothing. But despite being drunk, Fate noticed right away there was something wrong about her face. One of the Virgin’s eyes was open and the other eye was closed.

My mother was a bruja, and I grew up watching her clients come for all sorts of spells—to guarantee healthy babies, to bless a new house, to keep a son from joining the armed forces. When she lit a red candle to Guadalupe and recited an Ave, Doña Tarano’s liver tumor miraculously shrank. When she prayed to Saint Catalina de Alejandría, a family on the brink of debt came into a windfall. Of course, brujas are also specialists in justice when someone’s wronged you. A curse from a bruja might punish a cheating husband, or unleash a rash on someone spreading gossip. People at the receiving end of a bruja’s curse understand that they have done something to deserve it; a hex only works on the guilty. My mother

He strove for the diapason, the great song that should embrace in itself a whole epoch, a complete era, the voice of an entire people, wherein all people should be included—they and their legends, their folk lore, their fightings, their loves and their lusts, their blunt, grim humour, their stoicism under stress, their adventures, their treasures found in a day and gambled in a night, their direct, crude speech, their generosity and cruelty, their heroism and bestiality, their religion and profanity, their self-sacrifice and obscenity—a true and fearless setting forth of a passing phase of history, un-compromising, sincere; each group in its proper environment; the valley, the plain, and the mountain; the ranch, the range, and the mine—all this, all the traits and types of every community from the Dakotas to the Mexicos, from Winnipeg to Guadalupe, gathered together, swept together, welded and riven together in one single, mighty song, the Song of the West.

The Virgin Mary is a girl gang leader in Heaven. She is a Hell’s Angel and she rides a Harley. This I know for I come from people who think axle grease is holy water. They hold Mass out in the driveway under the hood on Saturdays. The engine is their altar. They genuflect and say prayers all day, and baptize themselves in crankcase oil. The soles of their shoes always smell like gasoline. I come from people who think Confession a necessity only the moment before a head-on collision.

He shouts so loudly and so desperately that it forces me to leave the house in a hurry. I have to admit, I have never really got along well with children. If they approach me, I dodge out of the way, and if interacting with them is unavoidable, I don’t have the slightest idea of how to do so. I count myself amongst those people who, when they hear a baby crying on a plane or in a doctor’s waiting room, tense up completely, and are driven mad if the sound goes on for longer than ten minutes.

¿Qué diablos esperaba de la vida? La pregunta empezó a deslizarse como una sombra amenazante y a minar el frágil equilibrio de mis días. Me acosaba por las mañanas justo a la hora de despertar, estropeando cualquier comienzo. Aparecía de nuevo en el desayuno o más tarde, cuando me daba una ducha para aclararme las ideas. Se presentaba también en el autobús camino del instituto o al abrir la puerta del salón de clases. De haber tenido una respuesta convincente, quizás habría concentrado mis esfuerzos en la búsqueda de aquel objetivo. Pero no tenía ningún indicio, ni siquiera una intuición. La verdad, ahora lo veo claro, es que no esperaba nada.

En enero de ese año, en las proximidades del molino de un granjero suizo a orillas del Río Americano, un individuo de apellido Marshall había encontrado en el agua una escama de oro. Esa partícula amarilla, que desató la locura, fue descubierta nueve días después que terminó la guerra entre México y Estados Unidos con la firma del Tratado de Guadalupe Hidalgo. Cuando se regó la noticia, California ya no pertenecía a México. Antes que se supiera que ese territorio estaba sentado sobre un tesoro de nunca acabar, a nadie le importaba demasiado; para los americanos era región de indios y los pioneros preferían conquistar Oregón, donde creían que se daba mejor la agricultura. México lo consideraba un peladero de ladrones y no se dignó enviar sus tropas para defenderlo durante la guerra. Poco después Sam Brannan, editor de un periódico y predicador mormón enviado a propagar su fe, recorría las calles de San Francisco anunciando la nueva. Tal vez no le habrían creído, pues su fama era algo turbia —se rumoreaba que había dado mal uso al dinero de Dios y cuando la Iglesia mormona le exigió devolverlo, replicó que lo haría... contra un recibo firmado por Dios— pero respaldaba sus palabras con un frasco lleno de polvo de oro, que pasó de mano en mano enardeciendo a la gente. Al grito de ¡oro! ¡oro! tres de cada cuatro hombres abandonaron todo y partieron a los placeres. Hubo que cerrar la única escuela, porque no quedaron ni los niños.

I admit I found this hard to understand. Why did she want to get to know her daughter if she was going to die straight away? Wasn't she running the risk of getting even more attached to her? Then I thought that love is frequently illogical, incomprehensible. Many of us do the same when we fall in love with someone who is very ill, or who lives far away, or with someone involved in another love story that has no room for us. Who has not plunged headlong into an irreconcilable love affair knowing it has no future, and clinging to a glimmer of hope as flimsy as a blade of grass? ‘Pourquoi durer est-il mieux que brûler?’ wondered Roland Barthes, sceptically. Love and common sense are not always compatible. In general, one tends to choose intensity no matter how little time it lasts, and in spite of all that it puts at risk.

that happen in school, it turned into this whole big deal that can never be undone. I should state for the record, that I am not an egg. I am a boy. I’m 10 years old and in the 5th grade at St. Guadalupe’s. Every day, I have to wake up and put a tie on to come to school. This stinks because St. Guadalupe’s shares the same bus routes as the public schools. I wait at the stop and ride along with the pubbies (that's what we call the public school kids).

I thank the dark Virgin, morena like me... There are many who will tell you that the dark-skinned girls, las morenitas, have got no chance. But when Iwas a girl, I noted the Virgen de Guadalupe, her with the important job of taking care of all the pueblitos, and standing in every home with candles and all the respect, and her own day of Guadalupe with people crawling across zócalo and up the cathedral steps on raw knees and singing themselves ronca all night long

A fines de agosto nuestra delegación, junto con la portorriqueña, que era más numerosa, subió a bordo de un carguero cubano en el que habríamos de cubrir la primera etapa de nuestro regreso, hasta las Antillas francesas, adonde el barco llevaba una carga de cemento. Al atardecer zarpamos de la bahía de Santiago. Cuando nos alejamos de la isla era ya noche cerrada, y no se veía la tierra ni el mar, pues no había luna. Nos instalamos y empezamos a orientarnos en el barco y, al igual que los portorriqueños que venían con nosotros, trabamos conversación con la tripulación. El capitán era un antiguo estudiante de Filosofía de veintiséis años, con quien me apresuré a hablar de nuestro común tema de estudio. Era su primer viaje al mando de aquel barco y, como nosotros, debía familiarizarse con él y con la tripulación. De pronto, cuando estábamos en alta mar, en plena oscuridad, un avión sobrevoló el barco a muy baja altitud y a gran velocidad. Antes de enterarme de lo que ocurría, el avión cruzó otra vez por encima de nosotros. Cuando Kendra y yo corríamos al puente para preguntar al capitán qué pasaba, un miembro de la tripulación nos explicó tranquilamente que se trataba de un acto hostil por parte de un portaaviones norteamericano de los que controlaban el bloqueo económico. Con sus luces, el portaaviones empezó a hacer señales a nuestro barco pidiéndole que se identificara y explicase su misión. Naturalmente, podían ver la bandera cubana; todo aquello no era más que el rutinario hostigamiento que habían de soportar los barcos cubanos cada vez que salían de sus aguas territoriales. Mediante señales, el barco cubano comunicó que, antes de identificarse, quería saber el nombre y la misión de quienes deseaban aquella información. Durante aquellos momentos una cierta diversión había acompañado al nerviosismo. Pero después, de pronto, no lejos del barco, un extraño y silencioso estallido de luz rompió la oscuridad de la noche. Al principio semejaba una nubecilla en forma de hongo, pero un segundo después pareció desplazarse directamente hacia nosotros. Yo me asusté tanto que no pregunté lo que ocurría; pensé que, si aquello era gas letal, no podríamos escapar. La nube de luz inundó el barco e iluminó toda la zona circundante como un sol de mediodía. Un miembro de la tripulación dijo entonces que seguramente se trataba de un nuevo proyectil luminoso que estaba siendo experimentado por Estados Unidos aprovechando el bloqueo. Por fin nos libramos de los militares norteamericanos y pudimos disfrutar durante unos días de la legendaria belleza del Caribe. Pasamos junto a Haití y Santo Domingo, países no tan hermosos desde el punto de vista político, y después el barco recibió instrucciones de atracar en Guadalupe. Aunque no me gustaba la idea de encargarme de las relaciones con los nativos de la isla, yo era la única persona a bordo que sabía francés, de modo que no tuve alternativa. Nuestra delegación llevaba muy poco equipaje, pero los portorriqueños traían varias cajas de libros que les habían regalado los cubanos para su librería de San Juan. Tuve la precaución de preguntar a los funcionarios de la aduana si se proponían inspeccionar todos los equipajes

Fetele ne-au explicat că „greşeala” din mijlocul coşului sau dintr-un colţ al acestuia era special făcută, o uşă, o întrerupere a modelului care elibera spiritul coşului, la fel cum şi spiritul omului trebuie să fie liber şi neînfrânat de prejudecăţi. - Labirintul acesta simbolizează experienţele şi alegerile pe care le facem în călătoria prin viaţă. În mijlocul labirintului ne împlinim visele şi menirea. Când ajungem acolo, în centru, avem o ultimă ocazie de a privi în urmă la toate alegerile pe care le-am făcut şi la calea pe care am urmat-o, înainte ca Soarele să ne învăluie în lumina Lui şi în dreapta Sa judecată. Ori Dumnezeu, fiindcă Sfânta Fecioară din Guadalupe a venit pe pământ să anunţe triumful Său asupra vechilor zei, care însă nu au dispărut, ci stau undeva, prosternaţi în adoraţie la picioarele Ei. Doña Remedios preluă explicația Maruchei. - În viaţa de zi cu zi, când te uiţi la labirint trebuie să începi din vârf şi să te adânceşti în el, labirintul fiind însăşi viaţa ta. La un moment dat, ajungi într-un loc de unde trebuie să faci calea întoarsă, că ţi se înfundă cărarea. Cauţi altă rută mai bună. Poate ai un eşec în viaţă, probleme acasă, tristeţe. Poate jeleşti un mort sau te opreşti fiindcă ţi-e grea răspunderea care atârnă pe umerii tăi. Atunci te ridici, că Dumnezeu nu te încarcă niciodată mai mult decât poţi duce, te întorci înspre centru şi cauţi drumul bun, până îl găseşti şi străbaţi labirintul, spre centru. Călătoria vieţii se sfârşeşte în centrul labirintului.

Arizona and Tucson, to Wyn’s way of thinking, sort of embodied the changing nature of the country in recent years as it had grown. Traders and explorers such as Kit Carson, Pauline Weaver and Bill Williams had wandered through Arizona in the early part of the century. New Mexico, which had included all of Arizona north of the Gila, had been ceded to the United States in ’48, at the bitter end of the Mexican War, with the treaty of Guadalupe Hildago. One of the articles of the treaty, however, made the United States responsible for preventing Apache raids into northern Mexico. The raids had increased after the treaty was signed, keeping tensions high.

En 2003, el entonces jefe de gobierno del Distrito Federal, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, regaló a la Basílica de Guadalupe cinco predios —en total 30 000 metros cuadrados— para la construcción de la Plaza Mariana,

The only one I ever liked was Jesus, the baby, the boy. I was always impatient with the crucifixion bit, and I was always mad at his so-called father. God, [...] You know, my grandmother mainly prayed to the Virgin, and, in fact, she told me the Virgin appeared to her in dreams, and once, she said, in a vision. I think she secretly didn't like that God guy either. In fact, if anything, it was as though she emotionally lumped God and the Devil together. Distant, threatening - one threatened if you did, one threatened if you didn't. Both masculine, isolated entities. [...] That God guy has us in a bind. Too isolated, not enough joy. He needs a lover, that's what I think. [...] Yeah, I think God needs some pussy.

In the early 1900s, an artist named José Guadalupe Posada created the Catrinas. They were skeletons dressed in upper-class Spanish clothes and meant as satire of the Mexican Indians, who were trying to copy the European aristocracy. THE

Often they are mentioned in the same breath as drugs that are smuggled across, or terrorists that might try to be. What crosses the border is dangerous; the Southwest is our 'exposed flank.' There is a nagging fear that we've gone to sleep with the back door unlocked. "In Mexico the migration is less imagined and more concrete. It's something people from the poorest and most remote corners of the republic have participated in for years -- at least as far back as 1848, when the United States, through the Mexican War and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, acquired nearly half of their country, stranding many Mexican nationals in a foreign land. Then, as now, migration has been recognized to be a two-way street, of people leaving home for a while, working, and then mainly returning home. The relatively fast pace of American industrialization, coupled with Mexico's economic and demographic crises, has accelerated the movement north. Today, if you are among the majority of Mexicans -- those with very little money -- working in the United States is not merely something you hear about, but something you might consider. It is one of life's few options.

Pídele a casi cualquier chicana o chicano fuera de la academia que nombre a una mujer famosa de origen mexicano y probablemente vas a escuchar "Dolores Huerta". Si la persona conoce a nuestras escritoras contemporáneas, quizá mencione a "Sandra Cisneros" o "Ana Castillo". Si preguntas por un nombre de los primeros tiempos, te podrán decir Sor Juana, la monja rebelde de los mil seiscientos. Cuando trates de profundizar, la persona a tu lado tal vez va a decir, "iMe doy por vencido!, pero, bueno... ahí está la Virgen de Guadalupe, que creo, está en muchísimas camisetas. Era inevitable entonces, que la necesidad de un libro como este sea finalmente reconocida. Ask almost anyone outside of academia to name famous US women of Mexican origin and you will probably hear ‘Dolores Huerta.’ If the person knows our contemporary writers, maybe ‘Sandra Cisneros’ and ‘Ana Castillo.’ If you ask for a name from earlier times, you might get ‘Sor Juana’-the rebel nun of the 1600’s. When you try to dig deeper, your companion may whimper, ‘I give up! Well…there’s the Virgin of Guadalupe, she’s on a lot of T-shirts. It was inevitable, then, that the need for a book like this would be recognized.

la de un locutor anciano que narra una radionovela antigua, la vida cotidiana de personajes cada vez más borrosos y perdidos en el olvido.

El cuerpo en que nacimos no es el mismo en el que dejamos el mundo.

Se llamaba Ximena. La conocía de vista y me caía bien. En varias ocasiones la había observado atravesar la calle con ese aire un poco ausente que la caracterizaba.

Ximena había resuelto escapar de una vez por todas al cautiverio de su vida.

Concentrar nuestra habilidad en lo que mejor podamos hacer y nuestra lucidez en lo que mejor podamos entender: one thing at a time. One life at a time. Vivir

En aquella época viajar era muy importante para mí. Aterrizar en países lejanos de los cuales no sabia gran cosa y recorrerlos por tierra, a pie o en autobuses destartalados, descubrir su cultura y su gastronomía estaba entre los placeres de este mundo a los que de ninguna manera se me habría ocurrido renunciar.

... se necesita realmente un trabajo de mucha conciencia para cambiar. Es una lucha ideológica, pero esa lucha la tenemos que hacer con nosotros mismos para sacarnos al opresor y al oprimido que tenemos dentro.

By late 1847, it was clear that Mexico had lost the war. With the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in February 1848, everything to the west, including all of California, became a part of the United States. The terms of surrender called for an American payment of $15 million for the territory, the same price tag applied to the Louisiana Purchase forty-five years prior. With it, the project for the continental United States had been completed. Destiny had unfolded in Polk’s first term, just as the campaign rhetoric of 1844 had prophesied.