Immemorial tradition
Tulpetlac is the place of the Fifth Guadalupana Apparition, that is, where the Virgin Mary appeared to Juan Bernardino, healed him and revealed to him the name “Guadalupe”, by which She wanted to be called. This is the place of the Fifth Apparition, according to an immemorial tradition, already old at the time of the information of 1666 (this is a testimonial and legal document to know and approved by the Guadelupana tradition).
Juan Diego, being a native (neighbor) of Cuautitlán, by 1531 lived in Tulpetlac (Tolpetlac), with his uncle Juan Bernardino. It is important to take into consideration the meaning of the word “neighbor”, which is equivalent to being originally from a certain place and therefore being a resident of a place one could live somewhere else, as stated by Antonio Valeriano, who was a resident of Azcapotzalco, stating that he was in Tlatelolco, according to Bernardino de Sahagún in the plogue to the second book of his General History of the Things of New Spain. However, this word caused confusion among the oral informants, except for the one who gave his written testimony, Becerra Tanco.
Luis Becerra Tanco and the confirmation of his testimony
Fr. Luis Becerra Tanco
The erudite priest of the Oratory of San Felipe Neri, Luis Becerra Tanco, the best qualified witness of the Information of 1666, the only one to leave his testimony in writing, where he points out Tulpetlac by location, as the place where Juan Diego lived in December 1531 with his Uncle Juan Bernardino, that is, points out Tulpetlac as the place of the Fifth Apparition, with the following words: “by the traces that have been found” he came “from the town of Tulpetlac, which falls on the side of the highest hill, and is far from there one league to the northeastern part”
Happiness book from Mexico.
Tulpetlac as the place of the Fifth Apparition is a fact confirmed by Guadalupana historians: the priest Doctor Francisco de Siles, producer of the Information of 1666, who published the written statement of Father Becerra Tanco, titled Paper or also Miraculous Origin of the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a publication that Father Becerra Tanco corrected and increased, writing its new title: Felicidad de México (which remained unpublished). Father Antonio de Gama, a native of Cuautitlán, who was appointed to take the statements of the witnesses of the information of 1666, published on his own account and prefaced the book Felicidad de México in 1675. Calling it the “better founded” news, contrary to those that he himself received in the information regarding the Fifth Apparition. Father Francisco de Florencia SJ in his work Star of the North of Mexico from 1688, states: “while the blessed Juan Diego was going up and down the hill with the roses, the most Holy Virgin Mary appeared in the town of Tolpetlac, two leagues distant from the siege of Guadalupe, to his uncle Juan Bernardino, who was already struggling with the bitterness of death, was suddenly healed by the mother of sweetness and life.”
Topography according to the Uppsala Map of 1555
The road made by Juan Diego, on December 12, 1531, was from Tulpetlac to Tlatelolco, passing through Tepeyac. It is implausible to think that he left Cuautitlán, since the usual route from Cuautitlán to Tlatelolco does not pass through Tepeyac (both in Juan Diego's time and in our days). If Juan Diego goes from Tulpetlac to Tlatelolco, he will pass through Tepeyac, which was one of the access roads to reach the Church of Santiago in Tlatelolco. Now, if he had come from Cuautitlán it was not necessary for him to pass through Tepeyac, because the road that came from Cuautitlán to Tlatelolco did not pass through Tepeyac. Even more, if Juan Diego was in a hurry on the day of the fourth apparition and naively wanted to avoid meeting the Virgin, the most logical thing would be for him to advance in a straight line along the road that comes from Cuautitlán and that reached Tlatelolco without passing through Tepeyac.
Si Juan Diego va de Tulpetlac a Tlatelolco le queda de paso el Tepeyac, que era uno de las calsadas acceso para llegar a la Igleisa de Santiago en Tlatelolco. Ahora bien, si hubiera venido de Cuautitlán no es necesario que pasara por el Tepeyac, porque la calzada que venía de Cuautitlán a Tlatelolco no pasaba por el Tepeyac. Aun más, si Juan diego el día de la cuarta aparición llevaba prisa y quería evitar ingenuamente encontrarse con la Virgen, lo más lógico es que avanzara en linea recta por la calzada que viene de Cuautitlán y que llegaba aTlatelolco sin pasar por el Tepeyac.
These same routes have existed since the time of Juan Diego as we know from the Map of Uppsala, a plan of the survey of the Valley of Mexico made in 1555. This map was made just a few years after the apparitions, by a Royal Cartographer of Emperor Carlos V, Don Alfonso de Santa Cruz. It is currently located in the Uppsala University Library, Sweden. It was made known through a copy made in the lithographic workshops of the Swedish army and hand-colored in Madrid in 1982 at the Colombian Exhibition. We see that the route that Juan Diego took going from Tulpetlac (Ecatepec) towards Tlatelolco was necessary to pass through Tepeyac, while the map also shows us that going from Cuautitlán to Tlatelolco one does not pass through Tepeyac, since there is a direct route (to this day).
Presence of Franciscan priests in Cuautitlán.
In 1531 there was already a presence of Franciscans, since this place was one of those that received early evangelization as stated by Fray Toribio de Benevente, Fray Gerónimo de Mendieta, and Fray Agustín de Betancourt. Fortino Hipólito Vera, quoting Orosco and Berra, says that “there is a stone cross in the cemetery of the town of Cuautitlán, whose paena indicates that it was made in 1525, the same year the convent was founded.” Alonzo Nuñez de Haro accepts the construction of the Hermitage in honor of the Fifth Guadalupana Apparition in Tulpetlac
Alonzo Nuñez de Haro acepta la construcción de la Ermita en honor a la Quinta Aparición Guadalupana en Tulpetlac
Alonzo Núñez de Haro, Archbishop of Mexico.
The Archbishop of Mexico, Don Alonzo Núñez de Haro y Peralta, authorized the construction of the Hermitage of the Fifth Guadalupana Apparition on March 10, 1789, at the request of Viceroy D. Manuel Antonio de Flores, to whom he responded as follows:
“I have seen the file promoted by the priest and Republic of the Town of Santa María Tolpetlac, belonging to the Curate and Mayor's Office of San Cristobal Ecatepec, in which they request a license to erect a chapel on the site where, according to the common tradition of other curates and town, the Blessed Virgin of Guadalupe appeared to the Indian Juan Bernardino, Juan Diego's uncle, healed him of his illness, and expressed the title with which he wanted us to invoke her [...] the tradition is constant in the aforementioned parish and town and in others of the contour, and for the same reason his request seems pure and fixed to me”.
This statement is important, because it comes from the highest ecclesiastical authority in Mexico at that time and confirms the popular tradition, supporting it and therefore accepting that this was the place of the Fifth Guadalupana Apparition.
Painting of the “Juan Diego Hut” in Tulpetlac 1803
Although the date of blessing of the Chapel of the Fifth Guadalupana Apparition of Tulpetlac is unknown, in 1803, the Blessed Virgin Santa María de Guadalupe was already receiving worship in her chapel in Tulpetlac called “Hut of Juan Diego”.
On the other hand, it is important to remember that the Guadalupana Chapel of Juan Diego in Cuautitlán, promoted by Doña María Loreto de Revueltas, was approved ten years later (November 27, 1799) and was erected with the purpose of worshiping the Holy Virgin María de Guadalupe and preserve Juan Diego in good memory, in the place where his house was, no reference is ever made to the Fifth Apparition of the Virgin to Juan Diego's uncle, Juan Bernardino, nor is it erected with the purpose of honoring the appearance of the Virgin to visionary Juan Bernardino, as it is in Tulpetlac.
Before the Cuautitlán chapel was built, New Guadalupana Information of 1789 was promoted, where the former parish priest of Cuautitlán, Don Cristobal de Mendoza, is interviewed, who in his testimony expresses that Juan Diego:
“He was married to María Lucía, an Indian from the town of Tolpetlac, with whom he lived in the house of Juan Bernardino, his uncle…”. This points to the fact that the fifth Apparition of the Virgin to Juan Bernardino was in Tulpetlac, as well as the lack of tradition until that moment in Cuautitlán that the Virgin appeared to Juan Diego's uncle.
Some of the most important specialists in Guadalupanism who are inclined to affirm that the place of the Fifth Apparition was Tulpetlac, are the following: Becerra Tanco, Florencia, Cayetano Cabrera, Quintero, J. Patricio Fernández de Uribe, Mariano Fernández de Echeverría and Veytia , Esteban Anticoli, Primo Feliciano Velázquez, Angel María Garibay, Garibi Tortolero, Father Lauro López Beltrán in the first issues of the magazine Juan Diego, R. M. Ana María Sada Lambretón, Father Fidel González Fernández, Father Eduardo Chávez, among others