¿Dónde Anda Lupita?

In 2024, Analco Studios produced an award-winning, eight-episode documentary series for Mexico City public broadcast, Capital 21, about Our Lady of Guadalupe, one of the most important religious and cultural icons in Latin America and the Latinx world.

Our series ¿Dónde Anda Lupita? (Where's Lupita?) approached Guadalupe in the least conventional way; we're not discussing whether her apparitions are true or the divinity of the cloak she's painted on. Instead, we approached her figure through a multitude of lenses. We saw her as a representation of the Divine Feminine that's present in many cultures, places and spiritual practices.

Our first episode was about Lupita, Palestine and Islam. We were able to shoot in the West Bank earlier this year to produce the Palestine part of this episode. Then we took people to Mexico City to follow a Sufi tariqa that joins millions of Mexicans during the annual pilgrimage on the eve of Guadalupe's feast on Dec. 11. Other episodes include Queer spirituality, New Mexico (where Analco Studios is based), Lupita and indigeneity and others. 

This series was born out of an instagram project and personal journey Analco's founder Gustavo Martínez Contreras been on for almost a decade: @whereslupita. What started as a collection of photos has now become this living community with all these stories from people who live at the margins of "proper religion" but under the cloak of Guadalupe, the Divine Mother who promised unconditional love when she appeared.

Through her history, Guadalupe Tonantzin (the Divine Mother of the indigenous Nahuatl people) has been a symbol of resistance, even becoming the flag of many revolutionary causes, most prominently the Zapatista movements in the 1910s and the 1990s. Also, many Chicana feminists have used her image as a symbol of liberation. 

Watch the full series on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYF8rdELPwBWu9YoZF1lPyP3bANhRvwVJ