Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas ISSN: 0185-1276
[email protected] Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas México GAMBONI, DARIO The Underground and the Virgin of Guadalupe: Contexts for the Virgen del Metro, Mexico City 1997-2007 Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, vol. XXXI, núm. 95, 2009, pp. 119-153 Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas Distrito Federal, México Available in: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=36913780005 How to cite Complete issue Scientific Information System More information about this article Network of Scientific Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal Journal's homepage in redalyc.org Non-profit academic project, developed under the open access initiative DARIO GAMBONI université de genève The Underground and the Virgin of Guadalupe: Contexts for the Virgen del Metro, Mexico City - he “Virgin of the Underground” is the most important unofficial “apparition” of the Virgin of Guadalupe in a series that culminated at T the end of the twentieth century. Its specific location and the circum- stances of its discovery and reception make it also particularly rich in meanings. After recounting the main facts known about the phenomenon, this article will attempt to shed light upon it and to tackle its heuristic potential by setting it within several contexts: the anthropological one of accidental and autopoietic images; the religious and historical one of the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe; the art-historical one of the suggestive use of coloured stone in architecture; and the sociopolitical one represented by Mexico City and its mass transpor- tation system. The “Virgin of the Underground” will be shown to cross or displace traditional lines separating the profane from the sacred, the modern from the archaic, the “elitist” from the popular, the “high” from the “low”— .