The Bureau of Land Management says it’s investigating the unauthorized repainting of Penitente Canyon’s Virgin of Guadalupe. Dale Culver, BLM’s San Luis Valley field manager, told The Citizen that BLM is currently investigating who repainted it and when. 

“Looking at it, it’s not like the standard, unfortunate vandalism that we’ll see in places like ‘Bobby Sue was here’ or whatever. The color schemes kind of match. Were they trying to freshen it up? Or really what was their intent with it?” Culver said. 

The Virgin of Guadalupe had begun to fade into the rock wall and was an icon of the canyon. BLM is currently working on its next course of action. Whoever did the painting, Culver said, did not have authorization from the federal agency. 

“There was no permission or authorization from us to do any of that work on that,” he said. 

Culver said that BLM has an idea of when it was done – sometime in the past two weeks – and was informed by locals. Since then, BLM and the archaeologists it works with have been investigating and determining what comes next.

“I know it probably needed some touch up work, a little freshening on it, but what they did was not of high quality work, I guess if you want to say. … Some of the colors match, some of the shapes match, but it’s not of that detail before. I’m not sure what their intent was with it,” Culver added. “That’s kind of the disturbing thing, is trying to, in the investigation, determine if it was actually vandalism or someone actually was trying to do it, get some base coats on, and look for a different time to come back and finish it. Those are things we’re trying to figure out and want to try and address.”

When the original Virgin of Guadalupe was painted is a point of some debate. Some say it was done in the 1910s, while other stories point to the 1930s, 1940s, and as late as the 1980s. 

What isn’t up for debate was that it was done by at least three members of Los Hermanos Penitentes (the penitent brotherhood) who were part of the larger Catholic fraternity Hermanos de la Fraternidad Piadosa de Nuestro Padre Jésus Nazareno (The Brothers of the Pious Fraternity of Our Father Jesus of Nazareth). It is said they lowered themselves with ropes and used car tires as seats to paint the Madonna. 

Culver said that in light of this repainting, BLM will work with the local Catholic and tribal communities, because Penitente Canyon is a place of cultural significance to both groups. Utes, Jicarilla Apache, Dine, and Puebloans left behind evidence of their connection to the canyon. The canyon is also home to a series of petroglyphs.

The canyon was formed during a very active volcanic era. The walls of the canyon are made of volcanic tuff.

Today, Penitente Canyon is a beacon for rock climbers. Each year, the San Luis Valley Climber’s Alliance hosts the True Penitence Climbing Festival. Within the canyon are 300 established climbing routes that are climbed throughout the year. Climbers have flocked to Penitente since the climbing routes were established and put on the map in the early 1980s. Most of the walls face the sun, making the canyon one of the best winter climbing spots. 

The Virgin of Guadalupe is 20 or so feet off the ground. The easiest way to access it to paint it would be to drop down from the top with the help of rock climbing gear, such as when it was originally painted. 

“It’s not a simple walk-up and do,” Culver said. “There’s definitely some effort that went into it. It’s surprising as many folks that visit that we only found about, or it was discovered after the fact. We don’t know if someone snuck in in the middle of the night and did it with headlamps, or even just during a snowy day.”

This act raises questions about what public or historic art is and where the line between graffiti and historic preservation meet. 

Even before this happened, Culver said the BLM has been having conversations of “do we just let it be … natural? Or does someone come in and look at it to freshen it up or not. I think there’s merits to both. Does it lose some of that historical context if it’s freshened up by someone versus where you have that, I don’t want to say classic or rustic look, like some of the stuff down in Santa Fe in all that historic culture from back then, too.”