Our Lady of Coatlaxopeh

In 1519 when the Spaniards first arrived in what is known today as the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico, they encountered the native Mayan peoples. The first thing that the Spaniards did was to inquire the native Mayans about the name of their land (naturally asking in Spanish) . As the natives looked at each other in confusion asking “Uk Athan, Uk Athan” which means “What are they saying? What are they Saying?,” misunderstanding their language, the Spaniards declared that this must be the land of “Yucatán” which was a similar sounding word in Spanish.

In 1531, the Virgin Mary appeared to Juan Diego— a native Aztec. As the story goes, Mary conversed with Juan Diego in his native language of Nahuatl which is an Aztec dialect. When Juan Diego told the bishop of his conversations with the Blessed Mother, and what she called herself, the bishop believed that Juan Diego had said “Guadalupe”- a location in Spain, and thus common word in the language of the Spaniards… It appears that this could have been similar to the “Yucatán” incident as modern day studies have taken a second look at what Mary might have actually called herself in her visitation to Juan Diego. Many scholars now believe what Mary actually called herself in the Nahuatl language was “Coatlaxopeh” which means, “she who breaks, stamps out or crushes the serpent!”

Imagine this in light of the timing of her appearance—a time where hundreds of thousands of humans were being sacrificed on pyramids covered with symbols of serpents!