Mexico City. -- For Mexico, 1994 was a year of living dangerously: armed insurrections in the south, political assassinations, continuing uncertainty over free trade and immigration. The question haunting many Mexicans as the year ends is what will keep Mexico from ripping apart.
The answer may well lie in a figure more powerful than the political party that's ruled Mexico for 70 years, more respected than the narco-lords of the north and more beloved than mom and her home-cooked rice and beans -- the Virgen de Guadalupe, also known as "la Reina de Mexico," the Queen of Mexico.
Earlier this month her feast day, a day that's bigger in the Mexican Catholic calendar than either Christmas or Easter, drew 4 million pilgrims to the Cerro del Tepeyac, a modest hill to the north of Mexico City, once home to the Aztec goddess Tonantzin, the mother of all life. It was here in 1531 that the Virgen de Guadalupe appeared to the Indian neophyte Juan Diego and told him to ask the bishop to build a chapel to venerate her.
The pilgrims started arriving the night before, by bus, car or motorcycle, and especially, bicycle. Others came jogging or walking from distances greater than the Greek marathon, carrying banners and picture frames and heavy ornate wooden altars, all with her image.
They came young, a brown nation of Indian and mixed-race, or mestizo, heritage, with their hair neo-hippie long or punk short. There were marathon runners from Hidalgo, Marian devotees from Morelos, Indian dancers from Oaxaca, young former drug addicts turned missionaries from Tijuana.
An Indian-looking rocker in a leather jacket carried a ghetto blaster bearing a sticker with the likeness of the Virgen right alongside Metallica and Nirvana.
As they laid out their blankets and huddled together, it was as if the country was in one huge embrace through the night.
The greatness of the mestizo culture, it occurred to me, is that everyone's welcome here, we can all get along. And it's because of her. Because she is both Indian and Spanish, a rocker and an Aztec dancer. She's olive-skinned, right in between indigenous copper-brown and Iberian white.
She's the woman who puts the Mexican macho in his place, no matter how much he beats his chest. She's the Savior's mother who sees her son's visage in the face of every Mexican son or daughter.
Perhaps that's why the pilgrims were so young. It is young Mexico that stares into a bleak and violent future. It is young Mexico that is looking for itself today, in the jungles of Chiapas and along the endless asphalt of Mexico City and in the cold cities of the United States. It is young Mexico that so desperately needs to believe.
On her feast day, thousands of Indian dancers pounded the lava stone of the plaza with their bare feet amid clouds of incense. Pilgrims painfully approached the cathedral on their knees, rosaries swinging from their hands, sweat streaming down their brows.
La Virgen is about faith, which is another word for hope. And on her feast day, all of Mexico's children come together to admit that the very pain of their history -- the racism against the Indian, the diaspora and conflict of immigration -- is what offers the path toward redemption. It is a hope that brings with it a tremendous responsibility: to live up to the Virgen's own faith in them.
To a post-187, Three-Strikes-You're-Out, Rodney King Californian, the Virgen's festival might seem claustrophobic, dirty, anarchic. More than ever, we Californians cling to our individual "space." Our generosity grows fickle. Yet what we fear most about Mexico may also be what we most need -- the capacity to embrace ourselves.
As the sun sank into the coppery hues of the smoggy horizon of the most populous city on earth, the Indian elders left the cathedral, chanting in the Spanish of the Virgen and in the dialects of Tonantzin: "Adios, Madre del Cielo," Goodbye, Mother of Heaven. They walked backward, their eyes never leaving the doorway to the cathedral.
Mexico will never turn her back on her faith.
Ruben Martinez, a writer and poet, wrote this commentary for Pacific News Service.