Our Lady of the Mountain
Columbia in general, and the region of the Cauca's Valley in particular, where the city of Guadalajara de Buga is located, has another well known Acheiropoita that is a figure, officially recognized by the Roman Catholic Church, it is linked to the advocation of Our Lady of the Remedies ( Nuestra Senora de los Remedios in Spanish).
This natural statue of St. Mary that was venerated by the aborigines before to be discovered by the Spaniards, who called her simply as The Queen of the Mountain or Our Lady of Queremal, appeared miraculously next to a water fall, today called the mantle of the Virgin, in the middle of the peaks of the western Andes, surrounded by dense tropical vegetation, in the traditional way from the harbor of Buenaventura in the Pacific ocean and the city of Santiago de Cali in the Inter Andean valley of the Cauca's river.
The image of this Virgin with a baby Jesus is about 1 m tall and is holding in one of her hands a fruit that looks like a pomegranate, which is a symbol of the name originally given by the Spaniards to the country, New Kingdom of Grenada. Nevetheless other people believe it is not really a pomegranate but a blossom of a flower of Quereme, that is only typical of those mountains.
It is claimed that appeared miracoulosly in the 1570s carved as a natural formation in white Quartz stone at the most Western Colombian Andes, called The Choco mountain range, close to the Pacific. Today the original white solid rock material is in its front covered by colonial paint artisanal work that was applied by artists trying to give to the image a more Spanish colonial look.
This Virgin was brought around 1580 from its original apparition place, the Queremal valley, Where she was venerated as the Queen of the Mountain, to Santiago de Cali by the Priest Miguel de Soto who decided to travel to the area to confirm the miracle but also alarmed by the possibility that the native aborigines would be taken part in a pagan cult praising to an idol. The colonial chronicles say that amazingly the image disappeared from the Church twice and appeared again back in the same original place in the middle of the mountains where it was originally found, about more than 35 miles distant to the west, for the perplexity of the people, causing great confusion among the monks.
Finally, the Superior nun of the convent was hosting the image had a vision in dreams where she got that the Lady wanted to have its own chapel in the temple decorated with figures of Aborigines and native plants in order to remain in Cali. As soon as the chapel was finished the Virgin was again moved to there from the mountains and she never return to them.
She is since those colonial times in permanent place of exhibition and adoration, in an altar inside the traditional La Merced Church at the downtown of the city, the very foundational site of the city. The image has been called with different names since then by the Hispanic people, initially known as Our lady of the Rosary, and even also as Our lady of the favor ( Nuestra Senora de la Merced), but just for the will of the priests to link this Virgin of the Native Andean people with well known Spanish Marian images. At present is venerated with the name of Our lady of the Remedies, a name given by the Mercedarian friars after a Virgin of the Cantabric region in Spain.
The original region where this Marian apparition took place known as El Queremal ( the Love me field, from the name of endemic flowers called Quereme (love me)) is still considered as a sanctuary by the peasants and overthere she is still known as The lady of The mountain.
This figure of Virgin in Maternity was crowned as Queen of the Columbian Pacific in solemn ceremony carried out by H.H. Pope John Paul II in his visit to Santiago de Cali of 1986 at the 1971 Panamerican Games Stadium, next to the official temple erected in the 1950s to commemorate the Bolivarian countries Eucharistic congress.