...and he remembered sometime during last night's debauch going with Dr Vigil to a church in Quauhnahuac he didn't know, with sombre tapestries, and strange votive pictures, a compassionate Virgin floating in the gloom, to whom he prayed, with muddily beating heart, he might have Yvonne again – UTV, 288.

Above: The interior of the Iglesia de la Soledad.

The words, "to a church in Quauhnahuac", suggest that the image of the solitary Virgin is also based on that of the church of San Salvador in the town of Ocotepec, to the north (and now a suburb) of Cuernavaca. The church is known for its stunningly beautiful Virgin (pictured below right), and traditionally remains open to celebrate the Day of the Dead.

But the most human church to my mind in Oaxaca, unweighted with magnificence, is La Soledad; standing on a little terraced plaza, it contains perhaps the second holiest image in Mexico - that of the Virgin of Soledad (the Lonely), who appeared miraculousy. She is the patroness of the state of Oaxaca and of all sailors; the size of a large doll, in a crown and elaborate robes, with a flower in her hand, she stands on the altar above the Host. She is Spanish of the Spanish, a Velasquez Virgin - and the loneliness she solaced, one imagines, was a Spanish loneliness of men heartsick for Castile – Graham Greene, The Lawless Roads, 253.

Above: The remarkably beautiful Virgin in the Church of San Salvador in Ocotepec, now a suburb of the larger city of Cuernavaca, but in 1939 a small village on its outskirts. Photo courtesy of Alberto Rebollo.