Big News
Today we have a story to tell you, but first, big news: Tepeyac Mountain Sanctuary is now under contract and scheduled to close on April 30th. On February 7th, our collective gathered at the land to unbox our new pots from East Fork and share our first meal at our kitchen table. After weeks of ice and snow, the skies were a wash of bright blue, and joy shone through all of our faces. We couldn’t stop smiling. Though we’d done our best to keep our hopes high through winter, many of our fundraising efforts had to come through at just the right moment to cross this critical threshold. And they did. We’re so excited to watch the land come alive this spring, and to listen and learn how it wants to be cared for.
Tepeyac’s new home is everything we could have dreamed of—22 acres of pasture roll up to the feet of a forested hillside. Water runs from two springs, the well is full and clean, and a pond is ready for fish. The newly renovated farmhouse has 3-bedrooms and two porches big enough for a flock of rocking chairs. It’s easy to imagine it filling up with our art, our altars, our books—and to see our community gathered around a fire in the field, telling stories, feeding each other, raking the coals. Though all of us must learn to weather transient clouds of despair, it steadies us to remember that only fifty years ago U.S. law still allowed lenders to deny women mortgages without a husband or male co-signer. Now, this land rests in the collective care of Black and Brown women and femmes.
We continue our fundraising efforts in this first year of stewardship to get the farmhouse furnished, cozy, and ready for group retreats, to build a platform for and purchase a 75-person capacity yurt for large gatherings, upgrade the septic system, lay down a gravel parking lot, and other infrastructure developments.
Thank you so much to everyone who has helped get us this far. Seguimos aquí.
What is Tepeyac?
Tepeyac (teh-peh-YAHK) is the name of the hill where the Aztecs worshiped and gave honor to the maternal earth goddess Tonantzin. In the Americas, we call her Our Lady of Guadalupe. This is a story of how colonization, religious oppression, and Indigenous resistance would all be held within one of the most loved goddesses of the Americas.
The 16th Century was a time of Spanish and Christian colonization and the deep oppression of Indigenous peoples. Every day, a Chichimec man named Cuauhtlatoatzin—The Talking Eagle—would walk by a hill called Tepeyac. On December 9, 1531, a woman appeared on the hill and called out to him in Nahuatl, an Indigenous language spoken by the Chichimec people. Right away he recognized her as Tonantzin. She asked for him to go to Mexico City and tell the bishop there to build her a temple on the hill at Tepeyac. The man who would one day be canonized as San Juan Diego attempted two times to convince the bishop to hear the message from the Holy Lady and each time, he was pushed away.
Cuauhtlatoatzin was sure no one would ever listen to “un Indio'' and would more than likely imprison him on sight if he tried again to speak on behalf of Tonantzin’s request. She insisted that it was his voice that had to speak truth to power. Finally, she offered him a miracle of winter roses from the bishop’s home, across the ocean in Spain, to carry in his poncho as evidence of his divine assignment. With his roses and his fierce love and trust for the Lady, Cuauhtlatoatzin fought his way in one last time to try and speak to the bishop. Reaching him, he spilled the miraculous roses across the vestibule and on the poncho where he had carried them appeared the image of the Holy Mother who had sent him. Stunned by the miracle, the bishop was finally moved to believe the man and his message.
But, on the hill where the Indigenous goddess was worshiped, a Christian basilica was built, shaped in the Christian practice. The goddess Tonantzin was absorbed into the Mother Mary— a fate of erasure shared by countless Black and Indigenous goddesses for millennia. She was renamed Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Still, we remember and fiercely love our Goddess of the Americas as the protector of our people, of our children, and of our movements for social justice. To this day, people travel by foot and on their knees for miles to make pilgrimage to Tepeyac and honor Tonantzin with their gratitudes and petitions. Countless lengths of braids, a million fistfuls of milagros, and an infinite parade of roses have been laid at her feet.
It is a complicated and beautiful story of power and oppression and resistance and rebellion and what it means to believe in the voices of our people. It is a testament to our ancestral memory, spiritual practices, and Indigenous heritage that live on in fierce devotion.
Tepeyac Mountain Sanctuary is offered in honor of all the Black and Indigenous goddesses who were erased on the altar of colonization. It is dedicated to the lineage of our peoples whose memories and medicine live like an ache for movement in our bones. Just as Tepeyac is a place where people have chanted for millennia, we too will remember, we too will renew, we too will honor, we too will speak our truth, we too will practice, and we too will support each other.
We invoke Tonantzin, expressing herself through the blessed Virgen de Guadalupe, who on that hill called up the power hidden underground to make roses bloom in the dead of winter.
Hasta la liberación.
Tlazocamati.
Ometeotl.
