Beautiful Chicana

In It's Not About the Santa in My Fe, but the Santa Fe in My Santa by Alma Lopez, she discusses how the Virgin Mary has influenced her life and how this religious icon has played a huge role for many people of Mexico. In my home, we have a huge Virgin Mary portrait hanging near our living room. My father and mother love and adore the Virgin Mary. Lopez mentioned at the beginning of the story how the Virgin Mary was always present in her family's home and community (pg. 249) I use to live in South Central Los Angeles and remember always seeing paintings on the walls of the Virgin Mary and seeing them as key chains or wallets people had. Lopez discussed the same situation she encountered when she use to live in the different areas near Los Angeles.

She and her friend Raquel Salinas (a model hired by Alma) wanted to illustrate a contemporary Virgen Mary as real and strong, and as a beautiful Chicana/Latina answering Sandra Cisneros's question: When I see la Virgen de Guadalupe I want to lift her dress as I did my dolls' and look to see if she comes with chones, and does her panocha looks like mine, and does she have dark nipples too?" (pg. 268-269). I found this line to be a little funny. Alma wondered what the Virgin Mary looked like underneath her robe and dress. She began creating her vision of what the Virgin Mary should look like with the help of her friend Raquel. She would take pictures of Raquel and would use Photoshop to create her visionary Virgin Mary. She eventually created her ideal Virgin Mary, who was half naked and had her chest and lower body covered in roses. I loved this section of the story because I got to see how artistic and curious Alma Lopez was in trying to change the norm of what the standard Virgin Mary looked like. She did not care what other people thought even though she received many threats and criticism against her art. I found the hate mail from the children to be sad and depressing. It would have sucked to have been Alma and to have seen children writing you hate mail because of your art. Alma did not give up on her art and she was able to create her image of the Virgin Mary. She was able to display her art for people to see it in at her local museum she worked at. Overall, I found this article to be interesting. My family does worship the Virgin Mary and learning a little about her helps me understand her significance among the Mexican community. It also helps me see what the Virgin Mary may have meant and looked like to other people such as Alma