Virgin of Guadalupe is a powerful icon to many Mexicans. There's hardly anywhere you can go in Mexico and not find a reproduction of her image. Its importance as a religious and cultural symbol cannot be understated, for it came from the very hands of The Most Holy Virgin Mary, Our Lady of Guadalupe, Queen of Mexico and Empress of the Americas.

Virgin of Guadelupe

An indigenous peasant, Juan Diego, was walking in what's now Mexico City when he saw the glowing figure of a teenage girl on a hill called Tepeyac. She identified herself as the Virgin Mary, and asked him to build her a church on that spot. Diego recounted this to the Archbishop of Mexico, Juan de Zumárraga. He was skeptical and told Diego to return and ask her to prove her identity with a miracle. Diego did return, and encountered the apparition again. She told him to climb to the top of the hill and pick some flowers to present to the Bishop. Although it was winter and no flowers should have been in bloom, Juan Diego found an abundance of flowers of a type he'd never seen before. The Virgin Mary bundled the flowers into Diego's cloak, woven from common cactus fiber and called a tilma. When Juan Diego presented the tilma to Zumárraga, the flowers fell out and he recognized them as Castilian roses, not found in Mexico; but more significantly, the tilma had been miraculously imprinted with a colorful image of the Virgin herself. This actual tilma, preserved since that date and showing the familiar image of the Virgin Mary with her head bowed and hands together in prayer, is the Virgin of Guadalupe. It remains perhaps the most sacred object in all of Mexico. - get the full article here!

Here are a couple of the events going on in Playa del Carmen to honor Virgin Guadalupe. You may also see pilgrimages around town, and throughout Mexico.