Artist's statement about the work:

"Totlazonantzin translates to "our beloved mother" in Nahuatl, and can be seen in the Nican Mopohua ("Here It Is Told"), the first recorded account of the appearance of Our Lady of Guadalupe, written in the mid-1500s and first published in 1649. In my own experience growing up in the southwestern US, the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe was very familiar and seemingly ever-present. She could be seen at home and in the homes of friends, inside churches and on the outside of liquor stores, sometimes accompanied by tough-looking Old English letters or flowery script on clothing, blankets, lowriders, etc. One of my favorite t-shirts I wore in the late '90s had an image of Our Lady carrying an injured or dying cholo underneath the phrase "mi vida está en tus manos(my life is in your hands)". Almost a century earlier she'd adorned the banners of Zapata's revolutionary peasant armies, and a century before that was on Hidalgo's banners fighting for independence from Spain. In the words of Octavio Paz, she is "the consolation of the poor, the shield of the weak, the help of the oppressed"...