Santos in Oaxaca's Ancient Churches

A study of santos in 16th-century and other churches in Oaxaca, Mexico


By Claire and Richard Stracke
Funded by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation

In Tlacolula:

Christ: Ecce Homo
Christ in a coffin
Christ in the pretorium (Pensive Christ)
Crucifix 1
Crucifix 2
Our Lady of Sorrows
Our Lady of the Assumption
Palm Sunday Christ
St. Anthony of Padua
St. John the Evangelist
St. Peter of Verona (Peter Martyr)
Trinity

Other santos not photographed
Church of the Assumption, Tlacolula
Tlacolula de Matamoros is a town of more than sixteen thousand people (as of 2005) in the Central Valley region of Oaxaca. It is famous for its Baroque chapel, known as the Capilla del Señor de Tlacolula, the "Chapel of the Lord of Tlacolula," seen on the right in the picture above. In the chapel is a large crucifix, the Señor de Tlacolula, which has been the object of local pilgrimages for centuries.
Interior of the Chapel of the Lord of Tlacolula
The Capilla del Señor de Tlacolula

In Tlacolula, our informant was the encargado Sr. Juan Santiago Jescas. Our tour will begin with the Señor de Tlacolula and some other santos in the Chapel, followed by two in the church itself.

Photos by AlejandroLinaresGarcia. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify these documents under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled GNU Free Documentation License.