Virgin of Guadalupe to draw more than 1,000 for procession from Santa Rosa to Windsor

If you ask Google Maps, tonight’s pilgrimage in honor of the Virgin of Guadalupe, an 8.7-mile procession from Santa Rosa to Windsor, should take 2 hours and 52 minutes to complete at a steady pace of about 3 miles an hour.

In practice, however, more than 1,000 “Guadalupanos” expected to make the trek before dawn Saturday will be walking at a much slower pace. After all, they are carrying a statue of the mother of Jesus Christ, a brown-skinned madonna that is for many Mexicans a holy representation of their identity.

In the many years that she’s been leading the local pilgrimage, the Virgin has held up fairly well, with the exception of a broken pinky on her left hand and a few scuff marks here and there that need touch-up paint. She’s been housed for the past 10 years in a modest trailer at the Rancho Santa Rosa mobile home park on Santa Rosa Avenue.

For most of the year, the Virgin remains perched on a waist-high wooden china cabinet, with Nativity figurines and Christmas decorations all around her. But on Dec. 11, her caretakers place her on a wooden platform, bolt her down and begin decorating her for the trip from St. Rose Church in downtown Santa Rosa to Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Windsor.

Four poles extend from the platform, and pilgrims take turns at each pole during the trek, which starts at midnight and ends about 5 a.m.

“Thanks to her, we are healthy and we have work,” said Hilda Alba, who lives in the mobile home with the Virgin and has helped care for her.

“Many people think she’s kept in a church,” Alba said, speaking in Spanish.

The Sonoma County pilgrimage started 16 or 17 years ago, in 1998 or 1999, and was made up of about 15 friends and their families, recalls Edith Morales. The following year, she purchased the 4-foot statue at a shop in Mexico City near the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe and transported the revered figurine back to Santa Rosa, strapped atop the roof of her van, along with a similar statue of St. Juan Diego.

Morales stopped attending the annual Dec. 12 processions about two years ago and says she hasn’t seen her “virjencita” since then. But she says the Virgin now belongs to those who revere her.

“I do miss her, but it was wonderful, the idea that we could share her with the community,” Morales said.

In Mexican folklore, the Virgin appeared in December 1531 before an indigenous farmer and laborer named Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, who was canonized in 2002. The mestizo apparition told Juan Diego that she was the mother of Jesus and that she wanted a church constructed in her name on Tepeyac Hill, the site of a former Aztec temple dedicated to the goddess Tonantzin.

Both St. Juan Diego and the Virgin are passionately revered as holy incarnations of Mexican identity. Recognizing their evangelical significance, Pope John Paul II declared the Virgin of Guadalupe “Queen of the Americas.”

Pilgrimages are made in her name every December all over Mexico and in parts of the United States. Sometimes the procession crosses the border, as it did in 2008, when devoted Guadalupanos traveled from the Basilica in Mexico City to St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City.

Father Ramon Pons of St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church in Petaluma recalls how momentum quickly grew around the Santa Rosa-to-Windsor procession. Pons said the Virgin’s image is filled with powerful symbolism.

For example, the sun’s rays behind at her back and the black crescent moon at her feet symbolize her dominion over indigenous deities. He said some have theorized that a fold in her garment, which looks like a swaddled infant, represents all who revere her.

“That child at her feet represents each one of us,” he said.

But most striking is her dark skin color, which Pons said is likely closer to that of a resident of Nazareth than the lighter-skinned depictions in western art and modern movies.

Pons said those who make the pilgrimage every year do so to fulfill a “manda,” an informal religious contract or promise made to the Virgin. It was a manda that sparked the first local pilgrimage, said Norma Vargas, a Santa Rosa home caregiver who made the first walk.

Vargas said a friend whose daughter was undergoing back surgery promised the Virgin that she would walk from Santa Rosa to the Guadalupe church in Windsor if the Virgin watched over her daughter. Vargas accompanied the friend, along with 15 others.

“The operation was in November, and by Christmas the girl was walking,” Vargas said

The first pilgrimage started at 11 p.m. and ended around 4 a.m. When they arrived at the Windsor church, already packed with parishioners celebrating the early morning Mass of the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the priest allowed the tired pilgrims to sit near the altar, Vargas said.

After the mass, the faithful peppered the pilgrims with questions about their walk, many of them expressing their desire to participate the next year. The following year, more than 60 people participated, Vargas said. Morales put the number at up to 250.

Edith Castro, a dancer with Coyolxauhqui, a Santa Rosa-based Aztec dance group that has been taking part in the procession for several years, said the pilgrimage is now a Sonoma County tradition that essentially organizes itself.

“People simply arrive with flashlights, ready to walk,” she said.

You can reach Staff Writer ?Martin Espinoza at 521-5213 or ?martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @renofish.