Mexican traditions

Día de la Virgen de Guadalupe (Day of the Virgin of Guadalupe)

The Virgin of Guadalupe is the most famous saint in Mexico - the patron saint of Mexico, in fact. Known as the “Virgen Morena” - the brown skin virgin- Guadalupe was supposedly first encountered on the Hill of Tepeyac in what is now Mexico City, only a few short years after the Spanish Conquest, by an Aztec Indian, Juan Diego, who was told to go and tell the bishop to build a temple on the spot where he first saw her. It happens that this spot is the same location where the temple of Tonantzin (“Our Lady” in the Aztec dialect, Nahuatl) was located. Tonantzin, on the other hand, was the recreation of an earlier Mother Goddess of the Indians who had been in the Valley of Mexico long before the arrival of the Aztecs.

Matachines dancers pose in front a Statue of the Virgin, called a Guadalupana, inside the Restaurant "Mi Jacalito" on Calle Allende in downtown Ojinaga
The Feast Day of the Virgin of Guadalupe is possibly the most important date in Mexico, having more importance than Christmas or Easter or any national holidays of a political or historical nature, such as Mexican Independence or Cinco de Mayo

There are 10 pilgrimages or "perigrinaciones" from the main church on the town square - the Zocalo - to another church more than a mile away, the Santuario de Guadalupe, in which people participate in a grand processional accompanied by matachines dancers. The first nine of the perigrinaciones consist of the "novena" - a prayer that is prayed over the course of nine days, while the last processional is the most elaborate, and the final event in the course of the ten day long festival.