Indigenous Community Formation
apparitions to convert local populations and harness non-Catholic devotion. She argues that in the Canary Islands and New Spain the spiritual conquest had a bifurcated attack that first delegitimized and marginalized pre-Contact devotions and then superimposed Catholic symbols over local deities. To establish this idea, Garciá Soormally builds on Stafford Poole’s discussion of the Iberian “apparition genre:” the trend of the Virgin Mary appearing to poor non-Catholics. She follows this phenomenon from the Canary Islands to Mexico City and proposes that the Mexican cult of Guadalupe developed during Archbishop Alonso de Montúfar’s tenure (1551–72). She argues that Montúfar approved of the Virgen de Guadalupe’s veneration, which faced reproach by notable Franciscan friars, so that he could appease the indigenous populations who had been banned from worshipping Tonantzin and curtail the importance of regular orders. With hopes of curbing “idolatry,” the cult of Guadalupe masked and encouraged heterodoxy.