Divina Pastora (Barquisimeto)

Divina Pastora (English title: Divine Shepherdess) is a statue of the Madonna and Child, the Virgin Mary holding the infant Jesus, with a lamb at her side.

The statue is removed from its shrine and is carried on the main streets of Barquisimeto in a procession which starts at the Iglesia de la Divina Pastora in Santa Rosa until it reaches the Cathedral of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.

The painting of the virgin with pastoral hat, covered by a blue mantle, holding a boy in her left hand and a lamb in her right one, was called "Divina Pastora de Almas".

The devotion to the Divina Pastora in Venezuela dates from 1736, when the parish priest of the town of Santa Rosa commissioned a sculptor to make a statue of the Immaculate Conception.

In 1855, the status of the Divina Pastora as the patron saint of the Venezuelan state of Lara was further established, when a cholera epidemic occurred, striking a great number of families in Barquisimeto.

The earthquake of March 26, 1812, (which devastated the cities of Caracas, Barquisimeto, Mérida, El Tocuyo and San Felipe) destroyed the temple of the Divina Pastora, but the sculpture remained intact, reinforcing the belief of the faithful that the Virgin wanted to stay to protect them.

The disease lingered, in spite of medicine, laments and prayers, and the desperate people decided as a last resort to walk in procession through the streets of Barquisimeto to the Divina Pastora, to implore her intercession, which was supposedly granted, as the epidemic ceased thereafter.