On December 9, 2017 we were honored as the inaugral recipients of the "Keepers of Culture" award for our lifetime contributions to Mexican arts and culture. Initially I was to be the awardee however I requested that my late wife should be recognized too because she was the integral part of everything I accomplished just as I was the integral part of everything she did.

View this touching video, of our life, that was shown at the gala. 

  https://youtu.be/lGc0CP67PUY 

This site also serves as a vehicle to present my paper on Our Lady of Tepeyac (Guadalupe as she is universally known). View it in the PDF link below.

The Mexican dance repertoire includes, pre-Columbian religious dancing to honor the pantheon of gods. One is Tonantzin (Our Sacred mother . . . Venerable Mother . . . Earth Mother).

Her temple at the hill of Tepeyac was destroyed by the Spaniards. When Mary appeared to Saint Juan Diego and his uncle Juan Bernardino, a church was built at the site and the natives adopted her as the new Tonantzin because one of the things she told Saint Juan Diego was "Am I not your mother?"  

But the Spaniards, through a misinterpretation of Juan Bernardino's account of Mary's apparition, called her Guadalupe after their Santa Maria de Guadalupe in Spain. However many of the indigenous still refer to Mary as Tonantzin or Tequantlaxopeuh. The picture is one of several renditions of Tonantzin.

This is what Mary actually looked like on Saint Juan Diego's ayate blanket before changes and additions were made to the original image.

Spanish text below the picture says it. Text is enlarged on page 7 in the PDF link below.

And the image appeared horizontally on the ayate because it is too tall to have appeared vertically on the ayate.

This is explained in the PDF link, below, by Henry A. Roa

View the paper at the PDF link below.

I do not wish to disabuse the way Mary is venerated. That will never change.

I just want to inform of what I have learned since Padre Jose de la Luz Silva's 1984 strong homily on the subject.

The late Chicago Cardinal George and the present Cardinal Cupich both thanked me for the paper as have other clergies. Forward this information to your contacts.

Mary appeared horizontally on St. Juan Diego's ayate because the image is too tall to have appeared vertically.

It is explain in the PDF below.

This is the true Santa Maria de Guadalupe, holding the Christ child.

It is a wooden statue, less than two feet tall, housed at the 

Royal Monastery of Guadalupe in the

Franciscan Friary Santa Maria de Guadalupe

in the town of Guadalupe, Spain.

There is a replica in the Philippines.

I have inserted this picture of an information tablet at the excavation site of the Templo Mayor at the northeast corner of the Zocalo in Mexico City. I underlined "Mexica" (May Shee Kah) to show that it was the name that the people of Tenochtitlan called themselves, not Aztec as so many writings have called them. The origin of the word Aztec is debatable.

Another tablet picture is shown below.

I took these pictures on one of our trips to Coatzintla, Mexico 

when we visited Padre Jose de la Luz Silva.

I will include other information on other subjects so that it will help me when I correspond with anyone on other matters, I can guide them to this site.