Featured Art: “La Virgen de Guadalupe Defendiendo Chicano Rights” (1976)

Article by Jessica Shakarian

La Virgen de Guadalupe Defendiendo Chicano Rights

This picture stands out among her other equally amazing works as a piece of art that takes a powerful religious figure in Mexican (and Latin American) culture, the Virgin Mary, and takes the conception of her from being a historically passive woman being placed on a pedestal, to being a modern woman and taking charge of her own life. Not only is she taking religion into a modern world, she is taking women in religion and saying that we play an integral role too, and we won’t be ignored.
As a solo artist and member of Las Mujeres Muralistas, an influential San

Ester Hernandez

Francisco Mission district Latina women’s mural group in the early seventies, her career has marked her as a pioneer in the Chicana/Chicano civil rights art movement.