around 1474, who was baptized in 1524 at Santiago de Tlatelolco. The various encounters which culminated in the "printing" of the Virgin 's "Iikeness" for the benefit of the skeptical Archbishop Zumárraga, suggest some intriguing lines of enquiry radiating from the question, Why Juan Diego? Faced with the repeated failure of Franciscan catechisation, Montúfar devised what would become the new Christian pedagogy for New Spain: the resort to traditional indigenous teaching methods, and the conversion, not so much of individuals as of the ancient pre-Hispanic cults themselves. To this end it was necessary to demonstrate to the Indian population that the One God was sovereign not only over the Spaniards, but over the whole of New Spain and its subjects. Thus Juan Diego, an Indian among Indians, constituted a suitable witness to the true faith befo re his people. For the Spaniards, the fact tha.t a native had been chosen as the catalyst for the Virgin's designs was the certification of the Indian's purity of soul, as well as the establishment of the ideological and religious autonomy of New Spain in opposition to the dependency generated by Franciscan operations. "You, Juan Diego, the youngest of my sons .. ." That is how the Virgin addressed
the Indian boy whom she had chosen to give voice to her will. The youthfulness of the Indian's social age-not actual-is a fundament component of Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas discourse. Before successive theological discussions as to the way in which to govern the indigenous peoples, he sought to implicitly consider
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the age ofthe Indian. supposed physical and mental weakness of the indigenous peoples .. ..~. . was the first step to justifying their social immaturity, as part of their defense and protection from the abuses of Spanish landowners and their successors. 2 Juan Diego 's amazing cloak represented " ... the miraculous image, the immediate, indeed instantaneous presence, which synthesized and fixed visionary memories and thaumaturgical capacities ... " 3 We cannot avoid referring to Walter Benjamin 4 and his notion of photography as a element which acts as a catalyst, not only for our memories but for the meaning of our symbols. Photography acquires functionality not only insofar as it is the repository of a fragment of reality, of our personal nostalgias, but also -once its function as "marker of what has passed" is superseded- by becoming indispensably integrated into our collective liturgy as human beings. Cultural, community and in-
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dividual symbols, materialized into the image, are instantly invested with cultural significance. While the ideas outlined above are grounded in a definition of the symbolic value of photography, such a definition can be extended to other images, including, in this case, that of the Virgin of Guadalupe. This emerges from the first Dominican arguments against the cult 's condemnation by the Franciscans as an idolatrous "Virgin Tonantzin": "It is not a matter of the support, nor of the paint, but of the image of Our Lady. And (... ) the veneration of this image does not stop there , but is prolonged into that which is represented by the image, and this is how (the Indians)