Also consider going to the following links. The second one, especially, will give evidence of 16th century documentation both written, but especially oral among the Indians regarding the relevance of Gudalupe and St. Juan Diego in their lives.
youtube.com/watch?v=esER6WqsmHg&feature=related
ewtn.com/library/MARY/LADYGUAD.HTM
Partial document. For the full source go to the ewtn link.
Among the indigenous sources, the oral ones deserve mention. These are important in popular cultural traditions, such as the Mexican, that were mainly oral. An attentive 16th-century observer, the Jesuit, Fr José de Acosta (in his correspondence with the Mexican Jesuit, Fr Juan de Tovar) asked about the value of traditions and their oral transmission. A century later, the Mexican linguist, Luis Becerra Tanco, returned to the subject. The validity and reliability of this type of transmission are confirmed by modern researchers of the Nahuatl culture such as Miguel León Portilla (Miguel León Portilla, El destino de la palabra. De la oralidad y los glifos mesoamericanos a la escritura alfabética, FCE, Mexico City 1996, pp. 19-71). Some of these ancient “oral archives”, in the “Guadalupan” case became archives: the writings were processed and authenticated in the so-called Informaciones Jurídicas of 1666. The “oral archives” extant today can be found in the oral tradition of certain Indian populations that inhabit Central Mexico, such as the “Totonacas” or the “Otomis”. This type of source is especially important in cultures in which writing did not exist, that passed on their historical memories in traditions, songs, and in oral and poetic accounts that constitute proper “oral archives”. Furthermore, in our case, since we are dealing with a religious event, we must include the forms of cultural expression. One criterion for the interpretation of the documents collected aims at understanding the significance of their attribution by the society to which they belong. In our case, its variants and its specific Indian, mestizo and Spanish components should be taken into account.
During the 20th century, various authors published collections of bibliographies on Guadalupe (cf. G. Grijales - E. J. Burrus, Bibliografia Guadalupana [1531-19841, Guadalupan Bibliography [1531-19841, Washington 1986; 1049 titles are included in chronological order; and the collections of Héctor Rogel H. - Francisco Organista -Guadalupe Marín; E. de la Torre Villar - R. Navarro de Anda [1982]; E. Chávez Sánchez has collected 2206 titles on the subject of Guadalupe). The historian, Burrus, catalogues 25 documents for the 16th century alone, up to 1590. In the introduction he writes: “The attentive reader will easily perceive, by means of this bibliography, the abundance and variety of Guadalupan writings produced in the course of more than four and a half centuries: manuscripts starting in 1531 and, from 1610, printed documents. The manuscripts mentioned show plainly that the eminent Mexican historian, Joaquín Garcia lcazbalceta, was mistaken when he thought that there were no 16th century documents extant proving the historical event of the apparitions and the subsequent devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe. Even if his assertion may have corresponded to the situation at the time when he was writing (1888), it cannot, of course, be reaffirmed today” (G. Grijales -E. J. Burrus, Bibliografia Guadalupana [1531-1984], Guadalupan Bibliography [1531-1984], Georgetown University Press, Washington 1986, p. VII. Burrus, E.J., discovered the oldest manuscript that has been passed down to us, El Nican Mopohua, in the Lennox Library, New York, USA. Manuscripts section, Guadalupan Monument
