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.

«¿De qué estrellas caímos para encontrarnos aquí?»

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

¡Y yo me llamé la Diosa!

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A light burnt continually in front of the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. He remembered how he had overheard her at the age of four praying, ‘Hail Mary, quite contrary.

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.

But humanity's been given a gift in the idea of Mary, Our Lady of Guadalupe, who infinitely does not judge, who infinitely says just keep trying, who infinitely advises us to turn to her Son.

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.

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.

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.

It makes for a very interesting culture on the shared bus system. Take for instance, Josh Baker. He is pretty much the it guy in the St. Guadalupe’s 5th grade. I know of at least three girls in my class that would shave her head to go out with him (whatever "going out" means to a 5th-grader).

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.

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

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

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

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.»

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

We perpetuate unto the newest generation the neuroses of our forbearers, wounds we keep inflicting on ourselves like a second layer of genetic inscription.

Víctor Hugo, a ningún pueblo le gusta ser liberado por soldados, “a los pueblos no les gustan los misioneros armados”.

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.

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

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

Existe una palabra para designar a aquel que pierde a su cónyuge, y también una palabra para los hijos que se quedan sin padres. Sin embargo no existe una para los padres que pierden a sus hijos. A diferencia de otros siglos en que la mortandad infantil era muy alta, lo natural en nuestra época es que eso no suceda. Es algo tan temido, tan inaceptable, que hemos decidido no nombrarlo”.

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.

La infancia no acaba de una vez, como nosotros queríamos cuando éramos niños. Sigue ahí, agazapada y silenciosa en nuestros cuerpos maduros y luego marchitos, hasta que un buen día, después de muchos años, cuando creemos que la carga de amargura y desesperanza que llevamos a cuestas nos ha convertido irremediablemente en adultos, reaparece con la velocidad y la fuerza de un relámpago, hiriéndonos con su frescura, con su inocencia, con su dosis infalible de ingenuidad, pero sobre todo con la certeza de que éste sí fue, de verdad, el último atisbo que tuvimos de ella.

¿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.

Muchas veces, se observa que, si alguien ya tiene una postura sobre un tema, y esta postura está equivocada, tratar de corregirla dándole la información correcta no logra que cambie de opinión. Uno de los primeros trabajos en mostrar esto fue un experimento de 1994 en el que se les decía a las personas que en un depósito había habido un incendio causado por un cortocircuito que había ocurrido cerca de un armario que tenía latas de pintura. Poco después, se les informaba que, en realidad, el armario estaba vacío, corrigiendo así lo que se les había dicho antes. Al evaluarlos, los participantes recordaban y aceptaban la corrección —decían que al final no había latas de pintura—, pero si se les preguntaba por qué creían que había tanto humo, decían que era debido a que se estaba quemando la pintura. Respondían usando la información equivocada a pesar de recordar la correcta, posiblemente porque les permitía armar una narrativa en la que el humo era consecuencia de la pintura quemándose: preferimos tener explicaciones incorrectas antes que no tener explicaciones.

No one from St. Guadalupe’s ever sits next to me on the bus. Nobody ever helps when a milk carton hits me in the head. And everyone seems to join in the laughter that involves me licking the school bus floor. I guess I don’t

Browness is a liminal legal, political, and cultural space that US Latinas and Latinos have inhabited since the US-Mexico War and the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo of 1848. In exchange for the benefits of land (nearly half of a Mexico), the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo reluctantly granted US citizenship to former Mexicans, and with it, an implied "whiteness." At the same time however, through legal and social convention ever since, the United States has denied full and equal membership to Latinas/os within the American polity. We have been wanted for our land and labor, while at the same time rejected for our cultural and ethnic difference. When economic times get tough, we become the disposable "illegal alien," and are scapegoated and deported. We are wanted and unwanted. Necessary, yet despised. We are Brown.

posverdad: mala ciencia que da lugar a rumores, que más tarde se difunden por falta de chequeo de datos, apelación a las emociones, medias verdades y mentiras flagrantes que se repiten echando mano del argumento de autoridad y que, finalmente, llevan a muchos (¡incluso a médicos!) a tomar decisiones equivocadas

Stan Slade observa que esto ha entrado en las iglesias evangélicas aunque en sus enseñanzas están en contra de los rituales católicos. “A fin de cuentas, al llegar al templo, lo único que se espera es agradar al Dios lejano y estricto con asistir al culto”. Slade explica que la gente piensa que “Dios sólo responde a las necesidades de los que se sacrifican por él en los cultos, las vigilias y los ayunos”.31 Estas mismas personas criticarían a quienes van arrodillados a la Virgen de Guadalupe o sentirían lástima por ellos, pero ¿es muy diferente su actitud hacia Dios?

For a scientist, the only valid question is to decide whether the phenomenon can be studied by itself, or whether it is an instance of a deeper problem. This book attempts to illustrate, and only to illustrate, the latter approach. And my conclusion is that, through the UFO phenomenon, we have the unique opportunities to observe folklore in the making and to gather scientific material at the deepest source of human imagination. We will be the object of much contempt by future students of our civilization if we allow this material to be lost, for "tradition is a meteor which, once it falls, cannot be rekindled." If we decide to avoid extreme speculation, but make certain basic observations from the existing data, five principal facts stand out rather clearly from our analysis so far: Fact 1. There has been among the public, in all countries, since the middle of 1946, an extremely active generation of colorful rumors. They center on a considerable number of observations of unknown machines close to the ground in rural areas, the physical traces left by these machines, and their various effects on humans and animals. Fact 2. When the underlying archetypes are extracted from these rumors, the extraterrestrial myth is seen to coincide to a remarkable degree with the fairy-faith of Celtic countries, the observations of the scholars of past ages, and the widespread belief among all peoples concerning entities whose physical and psychological description place them in the same category as the present-day ufonauts. Fact 3. The entities human witnesses report to have seen, heard, and touched fall into various biological types. Among them are beings of giant stature, men indistinguishable from us, winged creatures, and various types of monsters. Most of the so-called pilots, however, are dwarfs and form two main groups: (1) dark, hairy beings – identical to the gnomes of medieval theory – with small, bright eyes and deep, rugged, "old" voices; and (2) beings – who answer the description of the sylphs of the Middle Ages or the elves of the fairy-faith – with human complexions, oversized heads, and silvery voices. All the beings have been described with and without breathing apparatus. Beings of various categories have been reported together. The overwhelming majority are humanoid. Fact 4. The entities' reported behavior is as consistently absurd as the appearance of their craft is ludicrous. In numerous instances of verbal communications with them, their assertions have been systematically misleading. This is true for all cases on record, from encounters with the Gentry in the British Isles to conversations with airship engineers during the 1897 Midwest flap and discussions with the alleged Martians in Europe, North and South America, and elsewhere. This absurd behavior has had the effect of keeping professional scientists away from the area where that activity was taking place. It has also served to give the saucer myth its religious and mystical overtones. Fact 5. The mechanism of the apparitions, in legendary, historical, and modern times, is standard and follows the model of religious miracles. Several cases, which bear the official stamp of the Catholic Church (such as those in Fatima and Guadalupe), are in fact – if one applies the deffinitions strictly – nothing more than UFO phenomena where the entity has delivered a message having to do with religious beliefs rather than with space or engineering.

The Stoic Marcus Aurelius said that life is the sum of all our acts, and that we should be judged by that totality and not by our worst performance.

12 de diciembre, fiesta de la Virgen de Guadalupe, se decide a escribir una carta a los jesuitas latinoamericanos para sacudir sus conciencias y alertarlos ante unas exiguas realizaciones en el campo de la justicia social. Allí, entre otras muchas cosas, dice: «La Compañía de hecho no está eficazmente orientada hacia el apostolado en favor de la justicia social; ha estado siempre más enfocada, conforme a una estrategia justificada fundamentalmente por condiciones históricas, a ejercer un impacto sobre las clases sociales dirigentes y la formación de sus líderes; y no precisamente sobre los factores de evolución, que hoy fuerzan la transformación social».

la del aborto es una de esas luchas que evidencian lo determinantes que las ideas resultan ser. En este caso, su determinación es nada menos que la asimilación de la muerte de un otro humano como derecho; el aniquilamiento del propio hijo como conquista política.

Camargo was a small, dusty town without railroad, electricity, or phone, and everyone there knew everyone else, either directly or indirectly. Julian first met Mercedes when they were both just fourteen. Mercedes had been born in Rocky Ford, Colorado, one of seven children, four boys and three girls. There was much love in the Munoz family, but little money. When World War II came to America, Mercedes’s mother, Guadalupe, made the decision to leave the United States and move to Camargo. She did not want her sons being drafted. She was against the war—all wars—and would not allow her boys’ blood to be spilled because of the whims of politicians. Governments were corrupt. Everyone knew that, and neither she nor anyone in her family would suffer because of their corruption. Julian’s sisters became friendly with Mercedes upon her arrival in Camargo, and through them he was first introduced to her.

Este libro esta narrado desde la perspectiva de Laura una mujer mexicana con unas reflexiones muy profundas e Interesantes. Durante toda la obra nuestra protagonista está escribiendo una tesis y mientras escribe va narrando principalmente dos historias además de la suya. La historia de su amiga Alina y de su vecina Doris. A mí parecer todas las historias están atravesadas por el duelo y distintas formas de reconstruirse. Disfrute muchísimo del libro, a pesar de que me hizo llorar como loca, pero debo decirles que como siempre me pasa con las historias cortas el final me dejo gusto a poco!! Igual creo que es una linda lectura que súper recomiendo!