This article is indicative of exactly why I don’t have a devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe. I really abhor the notion that every illegal that has an Our Lady of Guadalupe sticker on the back of their truck is a great person. Perhaps that’s the cynicism of living in Houston speaking, but it’s the reality here in town.
It’s a fashion statement on the young women here and a car adornment for the men. I don’t see it as a devotion in many of the Hispanics here in town, so much as a “La Raza” statement.
Well, there's no way to gauge the individual devotion, but an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe might also be a way to say "Soy Catolico!" and ward off the Assemblias de Deos and the Jay Dubs.
I have no hostility toward Mexicans; I enjoy my Guadalupe-loving Latino fellow parishioners. I do have a amajor hostility toward the employers who use these people as low-paid field labor or swweatshop peons, and especially toward the $*&^*#^*% US government across the decades, both Democrat and Republican, which has neglected and/or protected this massive human dislocation and corruption until the situation got big enough to explode.