Editing Tonantzin (section)

==Alleged syncretism==
[[Mexico City]]'s 17th-century [[Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe|Basilica of Guadalupe]]—built in honor of the [[Our Lady of Guadalupe|Blessed Virgin]] and perhaps Mexico's most important religious building—was constructed at the base of [[Tepeyac|the hill of Tepeyac]]. 16th century [[Franciscan friar]] [[Bernardino de Sahagún]] wrote in his [[Florentine Codex]] that Indians traveled to Tepeyac to worship Tonantzin. In her book ''Goddesses and the Divine Feminine: A Western Religious History'', [[Rosemary Radford Ruether]] wrote:

<blockquote>"Sahagún’s protests have been understood in modern times to mean that an Aztec Goddess named Tonantzin had a temple on the hill of Tepeyac, but this has been questioned. Tonantzin was a title for the maternal aspect of any Aztec goddess, not the name of a particular goddess. When it was used as a title for Mary, the maternal aspect of the Aztec Goddess could be read into the Spanish Marian cult by Nahua Christians. This seems to be what happened, rather than the cult of Guadalupe intentionally replacing an earlier temple or cult of an Aztec Mother Goddess at this particular site.” <ref name=":1">Ruether, Rosemary Radford. Goddesses and the Divine Feminine: A Western Religious History. University of California Press, 2005. Print. pp. 209</ref></blockquote>

It has been asserted that the word ''Guadalupe'' in this appellation may derive from [[Coatlaxopeuh]], meaning "the one who crushes the serpent",<ref name=":0">Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands =: La Frontera. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1999. Print. pp. 51</ref> and perhaps referring to [[Quetzalcoatl]] {{citation needed|date=November 2017}}. The name really came about because the Spanish remembered the Virgin of Guadalupe in Extremadura, Spain, and they realized that by giving this apparition the same name as the one from their homeland, the etymological slippage between their term and the Nahuatl term would further contribute toward their project of conquest through cultural colonization. Of note here is the historical fact that La Virgen de Guadalupe is of tremendous significance in Mexico, reflecting a pre-Columbian understanding on the part of colonized people that Guadalupe must be understood in relation to Coatlaxopeuh, despite ongoing effort by colonizing forces to erase this historical context.{{citation needed|date=May 2021}}

In her book, [[Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza]], [[Gloria E. Anzaldúa]] notes that "lopeuh" is a Nahuatl word meaning "the one who is at one with the beasts", and "coatl" is the Nahuatl word for serpent. In the story of the virgin's apparition to Juan Diego, Guadalupe tells Juan Diego that her name is "María Coatlalopeuh". Anzaldúa suggests this name equates to "the one who is at one with the beasts".<ref name=":0" />