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Transformations of the Sacred in Contemporary Chicana Culture

M.E.Messmer{at}rug.nl

Focusing on the transformation of the sacred icon La Virgen de Guadalupe into a secularized and sexualized modern woman in illustrations by Yolanda M. López and Ester Hernández, the rearticulation of ex-votos in Sandra Cisneros's short story 'Little Miracles, Kept Promises', and the development of a lesbian form of spirituality in Ana Castillo's Massacre of the Dreamers, this essay argues that it is the tradition of syncretism and cultural hybridization within the folk version of Mexican Catholicism and its concomitant propensity toward the deconstruction of binary oppositions (such as colonizer versus colonized; male versus female; body versus soul; sexuality versus spirituality) that forms the basis for many of the feminist revisions, reinterpretations, and transformations of Catholic figures, motifs and texts in contemporary Chicana art.

Key Words: Castillo (Ana) • Chicana art • Cisneros (Sandra) • LÓpez (Yolanda) • Virgin of Guadalupe

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