page_title: Juan Diego
section_title: Indigenous rights
hierarchical_section_title: Juan Diego / Pastoral significance of St. Juan Diego in the Catholic Church in Mexico and beyond / Indigenous rights
caption_attribution_description: English: Basílica de Nuestra Señora de Zapopan (Jalisco, Mexico) - statue, St. Juan Diego
context_page_description: Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, also known as Juan Diego, a native of Mexico, is the first Catholic indigenous saint from the Americas. He is said to have been granted an apparition of the Virgin Mary on four separate occasions in December 1531 at the hill of Tepeyac, then a rural area but now within the borders of Mexico City. The Basilica of Guadalupe, located at the foot of Tepeyac, claims to possess Juan Diego's mantle or cloak on which an image of the Virgin is said to have been impressed by a miracle as a pledge of the authenticity of the apparitions.
  These apparitions and the imparting of the miraculous image are together known as the Guadalupe event, and are the basis of the veneration of Our Lady of Guadalupe. This veneration is ubiquitous in Mexico, prevalent throughout the Spanish-speaking Americas, and increasingly widespread beyond. As a result, the Basilica of Guadalupe is now one of the world's major centre of pilgrimage for Catholics, receiving 22 million visitors in 2010.
  Juan Diego was beatified in 1990 and canonized in 2002.
context_section_description: To the spiritual and social significance of Juan Diego within the Guadalupe event, there can be added a third aspect which has only recently begun to receive explicit recognition, although it is implicit in the two aspects already discussed: namely, the rights of indigenous people to have their cultural traditions and way of life honoured and protected against encroachment. All three themes were fully present in the homily of Pope John Paul II at the canonization of Juan Diego on July 31, 2002, but it was the third which found its most striking expression in his rallying call: "¡México necesita a sus indígenas y los indígenas necesitan a México!" (Mexico needs their indigenous people, and the indigenous people need Mexico). In this regard, Juan Diego had previously been acclaimed at the beatification ceremony in 1990 as the representative of an entire people – all the indigenous who accepted the Christian Gospel in New Spain – and, indeed, as the "protector and advocate of the indigenous people".
  In the process of industrial and economic development that was observable in many regions of the world after the Second World War, the rights of indigenous peoples to their land and to the unobstructed expression of their language, culture and traditions came under pressure or were, at best, ignored. Industrialization (led by the petroleum industry) made the problem as acute in Mexico as elsewhere. The Church had begun to warn about the erosion of indigenous cultures in the 1960s, but this was generally in the context of "the poor", "the under-privileged", and "ethnic minorities", often being tied to land reform. The Latin American episcopate, at its Second and Third General Conferences held at Medellin, Colombia, (November 1968) and at Puebla, Mexico, (January 1979) respectively made the transition from treating indigenous populations as people in need of special care and attention, to recognising a duty to promote, and defend the dignity of, indigenous cultures. Against this background, it was Pope John Paul II, starting with an address to the indigenous peoples of Mexico in 1979, who raised the recognition of indigenous rights to the level of a major theme distinct from poverty and land reform. The first time he linked Juan Diego to this theme, however, was not on his first Apostolic journey to Mexico in 1979, but in a homily at a Mass in Popayán, Colombia, on July 4, 1986. Numerous Papal journeys to Latin America in this period were marked by meetings with indigenous peoples at which this theme was presented and developed.
  Also at about this time, the attention of the world community (as manifested in the UN) began to focus on the same theme, similarly re-calibrating its concern for minorities into concern for the rights of indigenous peoples. In 1982 the Working Group on Indigenous Populations of the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights (then called Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities) was established by a decision of the United Nations Economic and Social Council, and in 1985 work began on drafting a declaration of rights (a process which lasted 22 years). In due course, 1993 was proclaimed the International Year of the World's Indigenous People. The following year, the United Nations General Assembly launched the International Decade of the World's Indigenous Peoples (1995–2004) and then, on September 13, 2007, it adopted a Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
caption: Statue of Saint Juan Diego in Mexico
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