This trafficked and enslaved African took care of the image of the Gaucho Virgin since 1630, when the first miracle occurred that the image of the Virgin, decided not to move and prevented the cart that transported it to Santiago del Estero from advancing.
At Estancia Rosendo, on the banks of the Luján River, it is protected by the Morocha Virgin as a witness to the first miracle, which is to stay in those inhospitable lands 200 years after the creation of the Argentine State began. Then the miracles would come. His first record was Pedro Montalbo, the sick priest who saves his life through the cures practiced by the Black Manuel. “The Virgin wants him to be her chaplain”, was the phrase that Manuel told him while anointing him on the chest with the oil from a lamp.
“Before they sent me on a mission to Argentina, my mother told me to stay calm because the Virgin was going to take care of me here as she did with Negro Manuel”, the priest of Rwanda affirmed to Telam, Jean Bosco Nsengimana Mittigo, who concelebrated the mass with the chaplain of the Government House, Francisco Roverano, in which the image created by the Discalced Carmelite nuns of Luján was placed.
The Rwandan priest is the parish priest of a small chapel in the 17 de Noviembre neighborhood of Villa Celina. Everyone knows him as Juan. “The history of Negro Manuel is not a myth, it is a reality. There is an act of sale that confirms it. So today we can ask God to reconcile us with our history and to be able to forgive us. So we can feel like brothers and sisters. Because when brotherhood is forgotten, slavery comes”, He pointed out during the religious celebration
At the mass there were two images of the Black Manuel. It happened that two weeks ago Gabriel “Duck” Dune, of the Missionaries of Francisco de Luján, together with Tamara Barbara, coordinator of the Afro-descendant Commission of the Legislative Personnel Association (APL), had brought the first image of the African at the feet of the Virgin.
Black Manuel Casa Rosada.jpg
The story goes back to October 25, at a mass celebrated by Chaplain Roverano in which the undersecretary of the “The State in your neighborhood” program participated. Juan Manuel Vila, and Lieutenant Colonel Guillermo Gomar, third in command of security in the Government House, who from that day, began to coordinate the preparations for the masses and the arrival of the statuettes of the Black Manuel.
Gomar was moved when he accompanied the President of the Nation Alberto Fernández on his surprise visit to the Casita de la Virgen in Luján. Hence the idea of enthronement of the “servant of God”, as Pope Francis called, the African protector of the Virgin.
“The Negro who came tied to the bottom of the ship, without eating or drinking, was vindicated when he traveled in first class and with a president”, recalled “Pato” Duna, the pilgrim and reference of the Missionaries of Francisco in Luján, about the first visit of President Alberto Fernández to the Pope, in which he brought as a gift an image of the Black Manuel, created by the Discalced Carmelite nuns.
“When on pilgrimages we carry the image of Negro Manuel on our shoulders, we are lifting up the humble and he is the last of the last due to his status as a Negro and a slave. That is the meaning. Hence the love that led us, five years ago, to place his image and all his history in the Basilica of Luján. And last year, a hermitage on the pilgrim route “, explained Duna, who on Monday made a pilgrimage with his companions of Missionaries of Francisco, from the headquarters of the Union of Workers of the Popular Economy to the Casa Rosada. I go with you Esteban “Gringo” Castro, Secretary General of the UTEP.
The image of the Black Manuel It had been vandalized on July 30, in a hermitage on Provincial Route 7. It was because of this unspeakable attack that Duna met Tamara Barbara, Afro-descendant and worker of the Library of Congress of the Nation, who considers that there is a connection between Manuel and María Remedios del Valle, for whom this Monday the Day of Afro-descendants was celebrated. “She was captain of the Army of the North and she was the only woman that Belgrano allowed to fight alongside him. Just Belgrano was very devoted to the Virgin of Luján and surely Remedios knew the life of Manuel. History shows that the Afro-descendants who were enslaved fought for the freedom of our country and other countries in the region ”, affirmed Barbará.
The mass in the chapel could not count on the participation of all the referents of the Afro community in Argentina. By virtue of this, for the first time a round of free exhibitions was held in the Hall of Original Peoples, where there were dances, music and reflections on the history of Africans in Argentina and their relationship with the Catholic faith. They were present, among others, Carlos Alvarez, of the Secretary of Human Rights of the Nation; Elena Ferreyra, Secretary of Human Rights of the Association of Legislative Personnel (APL); Jose Antonio Mas Morales, Cuban referent of the November 8 Group; singer Dulce Mota; Emanuel Ntaka, the former Mambrú; Miriam Gomez, of the Cape Verdean Association; Flexa Correa Lopes, representative of the Afro-descendant community; and the historic activist Elida Obelia Murature.
Before the drums and songs of the Afro-Bolivians sounded, the Fernando “Chino” Navarro, the Secretary for Parliamentary, Institutional and Civil Society Relations, who received an image of Maria Remedios del Valle with the request that it be placed in the Hall of the Women of the Government House.
Source From: Ambito
