MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's largest religious pilgrimage for its Day of the Virgin of Guadalupe returned Monday without restrictions for the first time since the covid-19 pandemic. For two years, the multi-day pilgrimage had been canceled or curtailed because the massive numbers of faithful presented a risk of contagion.
During the darkest days of the pandemic in 2020, the Mexico City Basilica where the Virgin's image is preserved was closed entirely for four days. It was open in 2021, but pilgrims coming from across the country were not allowed to maintain their tradition of sleeping outside it.
For this year's Dec. 12 ceremony, the basilica's patio was awash in a sea of tents and sleeping people.
People sleep at the basilica to show their devotion -- one of the high points is a midnight Mass at which the traditional birthday song "Las Mananitas" is sung to the Virgin -- but also because many pilgrims are poor.
Hundreds of thousands walk, ride bicycles or take buses on the pilgrimage. This year, the Mexico City government estimated a total of 11 million people visited the shrine over the last few days.
"Thanks to God, we have recovered normality," the Rector of the Basilica, Mons. Salvador Martinez, said in a statement inviting people to visit "if possible, avoiding large crowds."
Such good intentions, to avoid large crowds, were impossible amid a human sea of believers.
Ade Carbajal visited the Basilica with her two children Monday to give thanks to the Virgin for her family having been spared during the pandemic.
"What we went through with covid, there were very difficult situations, so we wanted to thank her," Carbajal said.
Nazario Bonilla, 23, came from the neighboring state of Morelos with a pilgrimage of fellow motorcyclists, his eighth visit.
"We always come to ask her for a little health, that we don't run out of work," Bonilla said.
Among the first-time pilgrims this year was Yamilleth Fuente, who entered the basilica wearing a yellow scarf decorated with an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Fuente, who traveled alone to Mexico City from her home in El Salvador, said that she was diagnosed with cancer in 2014 and recovered after praying to the Virgin Mary. When she suggested making the pilgrimage, her husband and two children encouraged her.
"I've loved the Virgin my whole life. I even used to dream about her," Fuente said. "My daughter's name is Alexandra Guadalupe because she's also a miracle that the Virgin granted me."
For the Catholic Church, the image of the Virgin is a miracle itself -- dating to a cold December dawn in 1531 when Juan Diego was walking near the Tepeyac Hill.
According to Catholic tradition, Juan Diego heard a female voice calling to him, climbed the hill and saw the Virgin Mary standing there, in a dress that shone like the sun. Speaking to him in his native language, Nahuatl, she asked for a temple to be built to honor her son, Jesus Christ.
As the church teaches, Juan Diego ran to notify the local bishop, who was skeptical, and then returned to the hill for more exchanges with the Virgin. At her suggestion, he left the hillside carrying flowers in his cloak, and when he later opened the cloak in the bishop's presence it displayed a detailed, colorful image of the Virgin.
That piece of cloth currently hangs in the center of the Basilica, protected by a frame.
In an annotated edition of the apparition story, Father Eduardo Chavez -- a leading expert on the topic -- said the Virgin's appearance occurred in a time of despair. By 1531, 10 years after the Spaniards' conquest of the Aztecs, smallpox had killed nearly half of Mexico's Indigenous population, wrecking their pre-conquest social and religious systems.
To many Mexicans, the Virgin's image became a symbol of unity because her face looks mixed-race -- neither fully Indigenous nor European, but a bit of both.
Some academics have said that the devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe entwines Indigenous and Catholic beliefs, though the Catholic Church rejects this theory. At the foot of the hill that today accommodates the basilica was a temple for the goddess Coatlicue Tonantzin, and the date of the apparition coincided with an Indigenous festival.
In 1990, Pope John II traveled to Mexico and presided over Juan Diego's beatification. In 2002, he returned for Juan Diego's canonization as a saint in the Catholic Church.
Two decades later, the church is led by a Spanish-speaking Argentinian who shares his predecessor's devotion to the Virgin.
At the Vatican on Monday, Pope Francis said Mary appeared then "to accompany the American people in this difficult path of poverty, exploitation and socioeconomic and cultural colonialism," and remains a mother figure to Latin Americans today.
"She's there, in the middle of the caravans that, seeking freedom and well-being, head north," the pope said, referring to the caravans of migrants seeking to cross into the United States.
Pilgrim Tania Esmeralda stands with her statue of the Guadalupe Virgin outside the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City, early Monday, Dec. 12, 2022. Devotees of the Virgin of Guadalupe make the pilgrimage for her Dec. 12 feast day, the anniversary of one of several apparitions of the Virgin Mary witnessed by an Indigenous Mexican man named Juan Diego in 1531. (AP Photo/Aurea Del Rosario)
Devotees of the Virgin of Guadalupe walk to the Basilica to give thanks or worship a day before her national celebration in Mexico City, on Sunday, Dec. 11, 2022. (AP Photo/Ginnette Riquelme)
Ana Rita Ruelas, from Jalisco state, poses for a portrait dressed as the Virgin of Guadalupe, outside the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City, early Monday, Dec.12, 2022. Devotees of the Virgin of Guadalupe make the pilgrimage for her Dec. 12 feast day, the anniversary of one of several apparitions of the Virgin Mary witnessed by an Indigenous Mexican man named Juan Diego in 1531. (AP Photo/Aurea Del Rosario)