La Veladora by Jesse Treviño: Experiencing the Sacred Divine

La Veladora by Jesse Treviño: Experiencing the Sacred Divine

Spanish

When La Virgen de Guadalupe first appeared to Juan Diego on the hill of Tepeyac, he understood, at that very moment, that the ground below his feet was sacred. As depicted in La Veladora by San Antonio based artist Jesse Treviño, streams of light radiated from the Blessed Mother who was wrapped with the night sky and carried by the moon. In his colorful mosaic, Treviño deploys the sacred image of Mary as a prayerful peacekeeper in a crime plagued neighborhood and as a cultural axis that emulates the hybrid identity of Mexican-Americans. In fact, both Catholic and indigenous traditions contribute to the completely whole but hybrid conception of La Virgen herself. Treviño simultaneously incorporates the ancient iconography of the founding of Tenochtitlan, the serpent and the eagle, which juxtaposes the unique power of a fleeting apparition, a flickering flame and the movability of a veladora with the permanence of the founding of the Aztec Empire. Not only has La Veladora served the pragmatic purpose of reducing local crime, a noble goal that Treviño has outlined explicitly in interviews, it has also amplified the complex relationship that many immigrants have with their homeland and their chosen home.