The Day of Our Lady of the Angels (Virgen de los Angeles) is a public holiday in Costa Rica observed on August 2nd each year. This important religious holiday honors the patron saint of Costa Rica, the Virgin Mary. It is not unusual for a country to venerate Mary, what is different in Costa Rica is that the holiday specifically honors a small statue of Mary.
The ‘La Negrita’ is a small statue of the Virgin Mary carved from dark wood, that was found on August 2nd 1635 by a native woman called Juana Pereira.
When Juana naturally picked up this statue to take it home. It then vanished, only to reappear at the same spot she originally found it. This happened again before the townspeople saw this as a sign of divine intervention and built a shrine around it.
The Basilica Virgen de Los Angeles in Cartago was built over the shrine in 1639, but this was partially destroyed in an earthquake. A restored structure was completed in 1722.
In 1824, the Virgin was declared Costa Rica’s patron saint.
La Negrita is kept in the Basílica de Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles in Cartago. Each year, the anniversary of the statue’s discovery is a popular pilgrimage, with thousands making the 22 km journey from San José to the basilica. Some will make the walk barefoot and many will complete the last few hundred meters to see La Negrita on their knees.
When you skip anatomy class but still go to marketing class…
Today is the birthday, in 1937, of Canadian multi-instrumentalist and a master of the Lowrey organ, Garth Hudson, The The Hawks (Ronnie Hawkins’s backing group), who then became known as The Band and also backed Bob Dylan on his US tour in 1965 and world tour in 1966. The Band had the 1969 US No.25 single ‘Up On Cripple Creek’, 1970 UK No.16 single ‘Rag Mama Rag’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-w9OclUnns
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