One Year: Jesus on a Tortilla

Summary

Podcast Summary: Slow Burn – One Year: Jesus on a Tortilla

Host: Josh Levin
Guests: Maria Rubio and her family, Gustavo Arellano, Cindy Tate Badger, and others
Release Date: August 20, 2021

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Overview

This episode tells the extraordinary true story of Maria Rubio, a modest New Mexico woman who, in 1977, believed she saw the face of Jesus Christ on a flour tortilla she was making for her family. The event transformed her life and home into a place of pilgrimage, incited feverish debate and ridicule, brought national media attention, and deeply shaped her family for generations. Through first-person interviews, archival tape, and critical commentary, Josh Levin explores the deeper meaning of faith, cultural prejudice, skepticism, and the lasting effects of an accidental miracle.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Miracle in the Kitchen (00:31–06:28)

• Maria Rubio's Account: On October 5, 1977, while preparing breakfast burritos for her husband, Maria Rubio noticed a burn mark on a tortilla resembling the face of Jesus (01:52).
  • Maria Rubio (02:14): “I saw the little face of Jesus… I wasn’t sure. And then I felt chills… I don’t know if it was joy or fear, I’m not sure.”
• Family Reactions: Her daughter Rosie instantly saw the likeness; her husband Eduardo was skeptical at first but soon considered it divine (02:52-04:20).
  • Rosie Rubio (03:20): “That looks like the face of Jesus.”

2. From Private Wonder to Public Obsession (04:46–06:50)

• Immediate Spread: Rosie returned home from school to crowds outside her family’s home. Within days, hundreds, then thousands, came to see the tortilla (04:46-05:13).
  • Rosie Rubio (04:46): “…there was like so many people standing outside of my parents’ house.”
• Initial Skepticism and Belief: While the priest advised keeping it low-key, church members and wider community spread the word (12:01–12:35).

3. Maria Rubio’s Early Life and Family Struggles (06:50–10:13)

• The episode provides historical context on Maria: migrating from Mexico at 14, poverty, language barriers, early marriage, bouts of depression, and a troubled marriage with Eduardo who drank heavily (07:07–09:29).

4. The Tortilla As a Sign and Burden (10:13–18:55)

• Making the Tortilla: Details on the tortilla-making process underscore the everyday nature of the miraculous event (10:13-11:24).
• Community Reaction: Huge influx of mostly Latino, Catholic pilgrims seeking healing and solace; some saw the event as a message for the marginalized (13:38–14:35).
  • Visitor (14:35): “She believed that Jesus had appeared in a poor person’s house to show that people are all the same in God's eyes.”
• Toll on Maria: Overwhelmed by visitors, expected to perform healings, accused of trickery, Maria struggles with the blessing vs. curse (16:36–18:55).
  • Maria Rubio (17:35): “I’d ask [the tortilla] if it was a good thing or a bad thing… but it never answered me.”

5. National Fame and Pop Culture Infamy (19:42–27:46)

• National Press and Pilgrims: News spreads; pilgrims from across America (including Oklahoma and Europe) travel to see the tortilla (19:42–22:23).
  • Cindy Tate Badger (21:59): “It really does look like the face of Jesus… it truly does.”
• Media Ridicule: The press and late-night TV treat the story as oddball news, a spectacle of ethnic and religious “otherness” (23:16–24:55).
  • Gustavo Arellano (24:29): “It’s perfect. Dumb Mexican woman, Catholic no less…oh my God, let’s laugh at her and let’s put her into this carnival of freaks.”
• Discussion of Apparitional Tradition: The story’s deeper roots in Christian and Mexican history, including the apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe (25:04–26:30).

6. Shrine, Tourism, and Family Life (27:46–31:07)

• Long-Term Impact: The tortilla becomes a roadside shrine and tourist attraction at the Rubio home. Both a source of wonder and a lifelong disturbance for the children (28:39–30:06).
  • Angelica Rubio (28:39): “I was just sort of ruining my life in the sense of it was just interfering with my TV time.”
• Perception of Miracle: For Rosie, the tortilla's preservation without mold for years was itself a further sign (30:45):
  • Rosie Rubio (30:45): “If you don’t eat them after 3-5 days, they start molding. And this never happened.”

7. Media Scrutiny and Emotional Fallout (31:07–36:15)

• Televised Critique: Maria and Rosie appear on national TV when the story peaks (Phil Donahue, Oprah); they encounter laughter, skepticism, and public mockery (31:33–35:02).
  • Maria Rubio (33:44): “When I said that I thought it was a miracle, the people would laugh a lot…”
  • Rosie Rubio (34:42): “I just wanted to give her the finger. That was all I was thinking about.”
• Ongoing Shame and Reflection: The family wrestles with being seen as gullible, credulous, or fraudulent (36:22).
  • Angelica Rubio (36:22): “I think it was mostly like being ashamed of the story itself…my mom is famous for making a tortilla with the face of Jesus on it.”

8. Cultural Afterlife and The End of the Shrine (36:46–40:06)

• Pop Culture References: The “Jesus on a tortilla” becomes a meme—referenced on The Simpsons, by Kurt Cobain, and in the (bad) movie Tortilla Heaven (36:46–37:47).
• Physical Fate of the Tortilla: Eventually, the family built a small shrine (capilla) outside the house for privacy, then it was dismantled; the tortilla itself broke in the 2000s and the “face” portion is missing (39:26–40:06).

9. The Deeper Family Legacy (40:06–47:08)

• Transformation and Imperfection: The event galvanized the family in both positive and negative ways—providing hope amid hardship but also highlighting longstanding struggles, especially with mental health and alcohol (40:30–43:13).
  • Rosie Rubio (41:20): “At some point, we believed that…God…had to make an intervention. And that was the intervention for us.”
• Eduardo’s Transformation: Eventually, exposure and family support compelled Eduardo to quit drinking and pursue church singing (43:13–43:51).
• Maria’s Perspective: Now elderly, Maria is philosophical—happy but never certain about the miracle, focusing on daily thankfulness (46:04–47:08).
  • Maria Rubio (46:04): “Oh yes, I’m very happy…But there are moments where I’m happy and then sometimes I think whether it was true or…why it happened. One always has doubts.”

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• Maria Rubio (02:14): “I saw the little face of Jesus. Well, I wasn’t sure. And then I felt chills… I don’t know if it was joy or fear.”
• Gustavo Arellano (24:29): “Of course Jesus is gonna appear on a tortilla. He’s not gonna appear in fucking caviar.”
• Maria Rubio (17:35): “I would ask it if it was a good thing or a bad thing, but it never answered me.”
• Maria Rubio (33:44): “When I said that I thought it was a miracle, the people would laugh a lot.”
• Rosie Rubio (41:20): “We believed…God, the higher power, had to make an intervention. And that was the intervention for us.”
• Maria Rubio (46:04): “I want to continue thinking that it was a good thing. I do believe in miracles because…I wake up alive, and every day I’m fine.”

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Important Timestamps

• 00:31: Introduction to Maria Rubio and the tortilla event
• 01:52: Maria describes seeing the face on the tortilla
• 04:46: Rosie recalls returning home to find a crowd
• 13:38–14:35: Maria’s home becomes a pilgrimage site
• 16:36: Describes psychological toll and public pressure
• 19:53–22:23: Pilgrimages from as far as Oklahoma and Europe
• 24:29: Gustavo Arellano’s analysis of the media's response
• 31:33–35:02: National TV appearances and ridicule
• 39:26–40:06: The breaking and eventual loss of the tortilla
• 41:20: Family’s interpretation of the miracle as an intervention
• 46:04: Maria's reflections late in life

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Tone and Style

The episode is deeply empathetic yet unsentimental—conveying both wonder and pain, poking at the intersection of faith, skepticism, and culture, all with a respectful authenticity that reflects the Rubio family’s own voices and experiences.

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Closing Thought

Maria Rubio’s story is not just about a burn mark on bread but about the hopes, hardships, and endurance of a family—and the scrutiny and meaning imposed upon an ordinary woman by the extraordinary gaze of the world.

Transcript

[Narrator/Advertiser]

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[Josh Levine]

Hey slow burn listeners. Thanks for all your great feedback on our new show One Year. If you like our show, the best way to follow One Year is in its own feed in your podcast app. You'll get all of our episodes as soon as they come out, plus bonus content you can't get anywhere else. Just search One Year from Slate on any podcast app. Hey, this is Josh Levine, the host of one year. This is the seventh and final episode of our season on 1977, but I've got good news. We're coming back for another season very soon. Stay tuned after this episode to learn what year we're doing next and how you can help us out. Now on with our show. Can you just describe the best you can remember what happened the morning of the Jesus tortilla? That's Maria Rubio. On Wednesday, October 5, 1977, she woke up in her small green stucco house in southeastern New Mexico and started making her husband's lunch.

[Maria Rubio]

It was 6am I would always get up at 6am and that morning I got up and made about three or four tortillas. And when I was fixing the beans and the cheese and egg, When I put the food on the second burrito and when I was getting ready to roll it, That's when I saw the little face of Jesus. Well, I wasn't sure. And then I felt chills and I felt like I was going to move a bit because I felt like I don't know if it was joy or fear. I'm not sure.

[Josh Levine]

The first person Maria told was her 17 year old daughter, Rosie.

[Rosie Rubio]

I remember hearing my mom calling me. She was in our little bitty kitchen and she was like, there is something interesting here. There's like a burn on the tortilla. Tell me what it looks like to you. And so I looked at it and then I'm like, oh my God.

[Josh Levine]

That.

[Rosie Rubio]

Looks like the face of Jesus. And she was like, well that's what I thought, but I didn't want to Say it out loud because I didn't want you to think that I was crazy.

[Josh Levine]

Maria's husband, Eduardo Rubio, had slept through all of this. Now Maria told him to get up, there was something he needed to see.

[Maria Rubio]

And I told him, look what happened in the tortilla. And he said, wow, you two are crazy.

[Eduardo Rubio]

I said, what's going on with you? Are you guys making jokes or what? And then when I saw it, I felt that it really was something divine.

[Josh Levine]

Rosie Rubio remembers her father's reaction differently.

[Rosie Rubio]

Me and my mother were more like, oh my God, it's the face of Jesus, you know, really excited. But, you know, with my dad, it was a little bit more negative, more like a bad omen.

[Josh Levine]

Rosie's mother, Maria, was confused about what the apparition meant and what to do about it. But Rosie didn't have time to talk it out.

[Rosie Rubio]

I mean, I didn't think anything of it. I was like, okay, well, this happened, not a big deal. And I left. And when I returned back from school that afternoon, which would have been about 4 or 5 o', clock, there was like so many people standing outside of my parents house.

[Josh Levine]

The crowds that swarmed the Rubio's house that day, that was only the beginning. A thousand strangers walk in your house every day to see Jesus and a tortilla? I don't think that's possible. I think it's just another one of the tourist traps.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

I was not skeptical of the existence of God, but I was skeptical about Jesus on a tortilla.

[Josh Levine]

And when you left, were you still skeptical about Jesus on a tortilla?

[Narrator/Advertiser]

No, I was not at all, no.

[Josh Levine]

On October 5, 1977, Maria Rubio saw something that knocked her off balance. In the years that followed, she'd get besieged by believers and gawkers and the national press. She'd be called a visionary and a fool. The outside world had a lot to say about Maria and what she'd seen. But for the Rubios, the tortilla wasn't just a public spectacle. It was the miracle that changed their family. And but all these decades later, they're still reckoning with how it upended their lives.

[Angelica Rubio]

Was it a blessing or a curse? I mean, I think that's one thing that we'll never know.

[Josh Levine]

I'm josh levine, and this is one year, 1977 jesus on a tortilla.

[Rosie Rubio]

Mexico EN Ojinaga En Ojinaga Chihuahua, Mexico.

[Josh Levine]

Maria Rubia was born in the Mexican border town of Ojinaga. In 1940, her family moved to the United States when she was 14 years old.

[Maria Rubio]

Up to this day, I haven't learned English. There were a lot of problems in the schools to learn English when one came from Mexico. And we arrived here with only one suitcase, very little clothes, a couple of pillows, a couple of blankets, and a pan for the food. We didn't have a car, we didn't have a house or anything like that. We had a lot of problems.

[Josh Levine]

She met her husband Eduardo, in New Mexico on a ranch where they'd both found work cleaning cotton. They got married when she was 17.

[Maria Rubio]

It was very difficult. I remember that my mother. When I had my first baby girl, my mother would say to me, let me take care of her, because I didn't have a lot of experience, that I was very. And that I could. I could kill her or something. And so my little girl was raised by my mother until she passed away when my daughter was five years old.

[Josh Levine]

Maria had her first four children within five years. Rosie is the second oldest.

[Rosie Rubio]

So we were very poor. We normally lived in houses of the farmers that employed my dad. My mother was a very timid, submissive person. She had great depression, and so her depression pretty much dictated her life.

[Josh Levine]

Here's Rosie's younger sister, Karina.

[Rosie Rubio]

To see my mom struggling with her depression and anxiety. I understood what she was going through, but there was nothing really like you could do at eight years of age. I just knew that I never wanted to be like that.

[Josh Levine]

In those days, Maria's relationship with Eduardo was on very shaky ground.

[Eduardo Rubio]

I was a heavy drinker. I drank a lot. And we had problems in our marriage. Friday and Saturday would arrive and I had to drink.

[Rosie Rubio]

I remember always being a little nervous during the weekends because I knew that that's when my dad was going to drink, and he was a mean drunk. That was just the way things were. I just figured, this is a normal life.

[Josh Levine]

By the fall of 1977, the Rubio's had their own home in Lake Arthur, a remote desert town with one store and about 300 people. Maria was 37 years old. She was struggling and she was looking for solace. And so she prayed and she made tortillas for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day.

[Maria Rubio]

I don't have a very good recipe. I always just put the flour, I add salt, I put powder, I put lard.

[Rosie Rubio]

And you just have to have the right mixture so that it's not too hard or too sticky. And my mom was perfect in making the dough to perfection.

[Josh Levine]

Maria prepared the tortillas in a traditional Mexican style on a flat cast iron. Griddle a comal.

[Rosie Rubio]

As you lay it the first side, you flip it over as quickly as possible, and then you let the second part cook until it burns. And then you flip it over again to the initial side. And then once that's burned a little, then you take it off.

[Josh Levine]

What created the image of Jesus? How did it get there? Was it a burn mark from the Como.

[Rosie Rubio]

Tiempos?

[Maria Rubio]

It was like a burn, but at the same time it was puffy, like the skin of the tortilla was a little bit raised. And that's where the little face formed.

[Josh Levine]

The burn mark that Maria saw on that Wednesday morning in 1977 resembled a face in profile. That image was about an inch tall and an inch wide. It had stayed dry when other parts of the tortilla got soaked with green chili. If you look at photos from back then, the likeness is unmistakable. It's Jesus Christ, complete with a beard and a crown of thorns. After Maria showed the tortilla to her husband, and after Rosie went to school, the Rubio's carefully snipped out the face of Jesus, wrapped it in a napkin, and went to see their priest, Father Joyce.

[Rosie Rubio]

Father Joyce Finnegan. He had been our priest there in the church in Lake Arthur for many years, but he was very skeptical. He blessed it for them, but he advised them to keep it very unimportant. It was not a big deal. Yeah, it was nothing.

[Josh Levine]

Maria respected Father Finnegan, and she was inclined to believe him. But there were other people at the church, and when they saw what Maria was holding, they thought it was a big deal.

[Rosie Rubio]

The news just spread like wildfire. All of these people had heard about this thing happening, and so they just wanted to come and see it. And I would say that there was maybe between 75 to 100 people when I got home. Yeah, it was a little overwhelming.

[Josh Levine]

Six days later, a reporter found a traffic jam in front of the Rubio's small greenhouse. Cars lined up and down the block on both sides of the street.

[Rosie Rubio]

Me and my brother and my sisters, we needed to go into the house, and people in line pushed us back, you know, telling us, you have to go behind the line. We've been here for a while, and we're like, okay, but we live here. They were all lining up to come in, and the door is not very wide.

[Josh Levine]

Rosie's sister Carina, figured out a way to bypass the crowds entirely.

[Rosie Rubio]

It was just easier to go through the window.

[Josh Levine]

Maria didn't think it was her place to turn people away. If someone came to see the tortilla she felt it was her duty to share it with them. All those visitors strengthened Maria's faith. She treated the tortilla with reverence and care, displaying it in a glass and metal case atop a bunch of cotton balls like it was floating on a cloud. That case sat on the Rubio's dining room table, surrounded by flowers. By the end of 1977, more than 6,000 visitors had signed Maria's guestbooks. People streamed in from all over New Mexico, drawn by word of mouth and local news stories.

[Rosie Rubio]

There was a lot of Latino people. I think that was the majority of the people that came to visit the tortilla. I mean, we related a lot more to the Mexican Catholic people. Those were the people that I remember just coming in with a lot of faith, with a lot of intention.

[Josh Levine]

They prayed for sick relatives and lit votive candles. One visitor said that she was looked down upon because she was poor and Mexican American. She believed that Jesus had appeared in a poor person's house to show that people are all the same in God's eyes. Father Finnegan didn't appreciate all this hubbub. He worried that his flock was being led astray.

[Eduardo Rubio]

The priest said to me, there's more people coming to your house than to church. And I said, and what can I do? And he said, well, tell them not to. To come to church, that this is where God is. And I said, you know what?

[Josh Levine]

I can't.

[Eduardo Rubio]

I can't kick anyone out of my home because they believe in that little piece of tortilla.

[Josh Levine]

Eduardo and Maria kept their front door unlocked. People showed up at 6am and after midnight. Maria answered all their questions and prayed when they asked her to pray. And when reporters quizzed her on what the apparition meant, she spoke with the confidence of a true believer. Maria told the press that the burn mark was a message from God, that all human beings should get together and stop fighting among themselves. She volunteered that she'd been planning to separate from Eduardo, but the tortilla had brought them back together. Maria said that seeing Jesus on a tortilla had changed her, that she'd been impatient but now was filled with serenity and love. That's what Maria Rubio was saying publicly. The truth, she says now, was a lot more complicated. Some part of her did believe that the tortilla was a godsend. But that burn mark in the shape of Jesus, it also made her life excruciating.

[Maria Rubio]

People wouldn't stop asking me things. As soon as someone would come in, someone else would be there, and another one and everybody wanted me to tell them what had happened. Others wanted me to heal them, but I would tell them that I didn't heal. I would say to my husband, I think I'm going to go crazy because these people, they want me to do a lot of things that I've never done.

[Josh Levine]

Maria struggled to eat and sleep. She didn't want to profit off the tortilla, so she agonized about how to give away the donations she'd been getting. Some people even accused her of faking the whole thing of painting the image or burning it into the tortilla with a medallion. Maria started to wonder if the tortilla might be cursed or a tool of the devil. Would you speak directly to the tortilla?

[Maria Rubio]

Oh, yes. Yes, I spoke directly to it. I would ask it if it was a good thing or a bad thing, but it never answered me.

[Rosie Rubio]

She became scared of it. Like, she would tell me that it was kind of taking a life of its own.

[Maria Rubio]

I was so afraid. I had a big fear.

[Rosie Rubio]

No podia la iglesia sola. No po dia ira sola.

[Maria Rubio]

I couldn't go to church by myself. I couldn't go to the grocery store by myself. The church is on the other side of the street of my house. And I couldn't cross over because I was so depressed.

[Josh Levine]

Did you ever wish that the tortilla had happened to someone else?

[Maria Rubio]

Oh, yes. Sometimes I would think, why me? I would think so many things. When one is depressed, one feels like one's going crazy.

[Josh Levine]

Despite the pain the tortilla caused, Maria wasn't about to get rid of it. She believed that Jesus had appeared before her and she couldn't just reject him. Maria continued to welcome visitors into her home in Lake Arthur. And as 1977 turned into 1978, those people started coming from further and further away. The Rubio's were no longer just dealing with a local sensation. The Jesus on a Tortilla story had gone national. We'll be right back.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

I was working with Oklahoma Natural Gas, downtown Oklahoma City, and I had heard about this miraculous tortilla.

[Josh Levine]

That's Cindy tate badger. In 1978, a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist wrote about Maria Rubio and her tortilla. That column ran in Badger's local paper.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

I wanted to know if it was real. I just had to go find out. And it wasn't all that far.

[Josh Levine]

It's around 500 miles from Oklahoma City to Lake Arthur, New Mexico. Badger rode there on the back of her boyfriend's motorcycle. It was the summer of 78.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

It is boiling hot. It's dirt radiating up from the road. The cool thing on a motorcycle is when you have a dip in the road and you go down in a little dip, it smells different. Like if there's a field of grain. It almost smells like it's toasting, but it smells. You can smell the rain coming. And then there's long hours where you're just desperately bored. And so then you sing songs. And we had an intercom system between the helmets. And so I just sang every silly song I could think of that I had taught my kids. You know, weenie man. Just things like that.

[Josh Levine]

I think you have to sing it. I think it's the law when you mention it.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Okay, here we go. I know a weenie man he owns a weenie stand he sells most anything from hot dogs on down. Someday I'll change his life I'll be his weenie wife Hot dog. I love that weenie man Hot dog.

[Josh Levine]

When they got to Lake Arthur, no one answered the door at the Rubio's little house. But there was a sign out front.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

And the sign in Spanish said, come on in. The tortilla's on the right, and it was a little shoebox of a room. That's where the little pedestal thing with the tortilla is. I stood there looking at this tortilla, like, in amazement. It really does look like the face of Jesus that you see in Sunday school books and Bibles and such. It truly does.

[Josh Levine]

After a few minutes, Maria Rubia walked into the room.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Just the most wonderful lady. And she would have talked to me a long time. But it's all in Spanish, and I could not follow her conversation worth a darn. And I regret that I didn't have a translator there to hear her firsthand story.

[Josh Levine]

How often have you thought about the tortilla since you took that trip?

[Narrator/Advertiser]

From time to time. I don't talk about it very much. I haven't. For this reason. I will not listen to somebody scoff and make fun of it. They weren't there. They didn't see it. They know nothing about it. I'm not going to throw something like that in the path of somebody that would just want to stomp on it.

[Josh Levine]

Some people came from the east coast to see Jesus on a tortilla. Others came from Europe. The first round of media coverage spawned a second round and a third. The AP and UPI wire services both sent reporters to Lake Arthur. There were also pieces in the National Catholic Reporter, the Los Angeles Times, and Newsweek. As the tortilla story spread around the nation. So did a new wave of of skepticism. A tortilla like Mexican food? Yes, a tortilla like Mexican food?

[Rosie Rubio]

No, no.

[Josh Levine]

One reporter said the burn mark looked less like Christ than it resembled the boxer Leon Spinks. Magician Ricky J. Developed a trick in which he talked about Maria Rubio's discovery, then conjured up a gift for someone in the crowd. A tortilla seared with a happy face. As silly as this was, the appearance of the face was quite startling. I reached into my case and handed him a bottle of Dos Equis and a tin of refried beans. As I escorted him back to the audience saying, have a nice day. A television segment that aired on Showtime played up the strangeness of the Rubio's tale and the oddity of their cuisine. And it's become known as the shrine of the tortilla.

[Rosie Rubio]

It's impossible for an image of Jesus to appear in a tortilla.

[Josh Levine]

In the late 1970s, Mexican food wasn't nearly as ubiquitous in the United States as it is today.

[Gustavo Arellano]

You still have to explain to people what a tortilla is. I mean, if they know about tortillas, it's in a can.

[Josh Levine]

Gustavo Arellano hosts the Times, the daily news podcast for the LA Times. He wrote about the Jesus tortilla in his book Taco USA How Mexican Food Conquered America.

[Gustavo Arellano]

It was a perfect story for that era as American, especially as you have the reporters who are probably mostly white, and consumers who are definitely still white, consuming mainstream news. It's perfect. Dumb Mexican woman, Catholic no less. She says that she saw Jesus on a flour tortilla in New Mexico, which is a weird state as it is. Oh my God, let's laugh at her and let's put her into this carnival of freaks.

[Josh Levine]

From the point of view of the white mainstream media, Maria Rubio story was weird news. Arellano never saw it that way.

[Gustavo Arellano]

Tortillas are holy foods. It is a humble, simple food made by one of the most fucked over countries in the world. And that's saying something Mexico. And still we persist. So of course Jesus is gonna appear on a tortilla. He's not gonna appear in fucking caviar.

[Josh Levine]

So far as I can tell, the Jesus tortilla was the first widely reported case of a food based apparition. But visions of Jesus and the Virgin Mary more broadly are a hallowed part of Christian tradition.

[Gustavo Arellano]

Virgin Guadalupe is basically the founding myth of Mexico, of modern day Mexico. So an apparition of the Virgin Mary appeared before an Indian, an Aztec named Juan Diego. Juan Diego told the Catholic authorities at the time that he was seeing this virgin. The bishops did not believe this. Simple to them. Simple Indian.

[Josh Levine]

This all happened in the year 1531. The archbishop was swayed ultimately, when the virgin's image appeared a second time on the inside of Juan Diego's cloak. Religious leaders in the 20th century didn't think Maria Rubio was lying exactly. They just weren't all that impressed by Jesus on a tortilla. Here's a local Franciscan priest.

[Maria Rubio]

The Virgin of Guadalupe is of an entirely different order. This image here in Lake Arthur, it's.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Just a little image.

[Josh Levine]

Maria Rubio's burn mark. Jesus wasn't the only holy vision in America. In the 1970s, a shining cross appeared on a bathroom window in the South Bronx. Jesus face showed up on a stop sign in New Orleans and on an altar cloth in Shamokin, Pennsylvania. And in the spring of 1975, the head of Christ appeared on an adobe wall 250 miles north of Lake Arthur in Holman, New Mexico. They stand by the hour and look at it, sometimes try to outline it with the beam of a flashlight. Some people never do see it. Some stare and stare, and suddenly it's there. Many of the fervently religious people in this area are convinced it is a miracle. The wall in Holman became a shrine and a commercial hub, with vendors selling posters, cigarettes and hot dogs. But the image faded in a matter of months, and the pilgrims and the hot dog stands disappeared with it. And the Jesus tortilla that didn't go away. Year after year, it sat in that glass case on top of a cloud made of cotton. And year after year, people pulled off the interstate to see it. By the 1980s, the tortilla had become Lake Arthur, New Mexico's version of the world's largest ball of twine. The difference was this roadside attraction was the Rubio's house. Maria had never invited attention or publicity. She just never told anyone. No. That openness made Maria and her family vulnerable to pain, to embarrassment, and to ridicule. We'll be back in a minute.

[Angelica Rubio]

My first recollection is watching an episode of Three's Company, eating a bowl of ramen noodles and somebody knocking at the door wanting to see the tortilla and just being really bummed out about it.

[Josh Levine]

That's Angelica Rubio, the youngest of Maria's six children. She grew up in the 1980s, when the tortilla was already a part of the Rubio household.

[Angelica Rubio]

They would always just say, we're here. To see the Jesus tortilla. And I was like, okay. And then I would share a little bit about, yeah, this is a tortilla. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I always saw it like I was some tour guide, and it was just sort of ruining my life in the sense of it was just interfering with my TV time.

[Josh Levine]

Angelica was born two years after her mother saw Jesus in a burn mark. Maria Rubio said that those two events were connected to the Rubio's. Though this is more than a little image, it is a miracle. Past middle age, Mrs. Rubio had been told she could never have another child. But shortly after she received her tortilla, she delivered Angelica.

[Angelica Rubio]

I mean, I think there's, like, a level of, I guess, feeling special. But I also know that so much of my own, like, emotional issues have a lot to do with this huge idea of what the tortilla was.

[Josh Levine]

Growing up, Angelica couldn't escape the tortilla or her connection to it.

[Angelica Rubio]

This one boy that I had the biggest crush on started calling me the tortilla kid. And when you're a little kid, you can't really tell if they're, like, flirting with you or if they're just being jerks. And so I think at the time when I was in the fourth grade, to have, like, my crush call me the tortilla kid, I just remember going home and just, like, crying, because that was just, like, the most disappointing day of my life.

[Josh Levine]

The tortilla loomed just as large for Angelica's older sister, Rosie. But for her, the tortilla's continued presence wasn't an annoyance. It was a sign.

[Rosie Rubio]

If you know anything about tortillas, if you don't eat them, after three, four, five days, they start molding. And this never happened. And we had it for years and years and years. To me, that was a very clear indication that this was something big and something special.

[Josh Levine]

Rosie was always close with her mother. She wanted to protect Maria but also help her share her story.

[Rosie Rubio]

There was news people coming around with their cameras and wanting to visit with my mom. And of course, I ended up becoming the spokesperson for her because of her only speaking Spanish, like with the Phil Donahue Show.

[Josh Levine]

Rosie Rubio joins us with her mother, Maria. We thank you both for being here. Maria and Rosie had done a lot of interviews, but this one in 1994 was by far the biggest national television in front of a live studio audience. What do you remember about going to New York for Phil Donahue show?

[Maria Rubio]

Oh, I was very scared when we left. It was the first time I had ever gotten on a plane. And when we left Roswell, I told my daughter, I held Rosie's hand and I said, oh, I think I'm going to die now, because I felt so bad to go on the airplane.

[Rosie Rubio]

So we finally made it into New York, and I remember I was so excited. And I took her downtown and we had a really nice meal at the restaurant. And she loves dessert. And I ordered her apple pie or something. I think she could not eat it. She was so, so nervous. You know, I remember going. And people were. People can be a little cruel.

[Josh Levine]

In New Mexico, there have been thousands and thousands of people visit the home of a family there that saw an image of Jesus in a tortilla. Here it is. Well, are we not. Are the people who make these claims not in.

[Rosie Rubio]

I was holding her hand the entire time that we were sitting on the stage.

[Josh Levine]

She only said, like, one thing the whole time.

[Rosie Rubio]

Yeah, yeah.

[Josh Levine]

Your mother believed this is a visit. This is Jesus.

[Rosie Rubio]

She believes that he came to us to send a message.

[Josh Levine]

What do you remember about the. The show itself?

[Maria Rubio]

When I said that, I thought it was a miracle. The people would laugh a lot. They would laugh at me.

[Josh Levine]

It wasn't just the laughter. Maria and Rosie hadn't made any money off the tortilla. But on the Donohue show, they were presented as potential scammers.

[Maria Rubio]

You have to be very careful before.

[Josh Levine]

You just believe, because if you give.

[Eduardo Rubio]

Up your caution and your common sense.

[Josh Levine]

Any charlatan with a pocket full of magic tricks can come in and take your money and sometimes your life. Rosie, you didn't go and seek this publicity.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

No.

[Rosie Rubio]

It was a simple thing between my mother and me within our family.

[Josh Levine]

You looked so calm.

[Rosie Rubio]

Well, it looks like it didn't bother me visibly, like, but inside I remember just seething.

[Josh Levine]

Worst of all for Rosie were the comments from the audience.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

I'm not a religious person, I'm sorry.

[Rosie Rubio]

To say, but I was visited by an angel when I was younger, but I didn't go broadcasting it to everybody.

[Maria Rubio]

Yeah. I just wanted to say that although.

[Rosie Rubio]

I'm not much for tortillas, I am going to keep a close eye on my potato chips. Like, why would you say so? Something like that. Like, did it make you feel good? I think at that moment, I just wanted to give her the finger. That was all I was thinking about.

[Josh Levine]

That was the potato chip woman.

[Rosie Rubio]

Yeah.

[Maria Rubio]

I told my daughter that I no longer wanted to go to an interview like this.

[Josh Levine]

The next year, when the Oprah Winfrey show called, Rosie went without her mother. Her second big TV appearance didn't go much better than the first one. At the beginning of Rosie's segment, Oprah said, I just don't know why Jesus would want to be on a tortilla. And the crowd roared with laughter. Why do you think people would laugh at that story? What is that impulse?

[Rosie Rubio]

Oh, I think it's just a discomfort reaction, maybe a little bit of fear. I think we talk a lot about, you know, Jesus being in our midst, but I think if Jesus actually appeared to anybody in their life, it would probably scare the crap out of people.

[Josh Levine]

For Angelica, it was painful to watch her family get laughed at. It made her feel angry and a little bit guilty.

[Angelica Rubio]

I've sort of always known that people exploited my mom's story, and yet I did very little. I feel like I was sort of an accomplice, just not really like defending her. I think it was mostly like being ashamed of the story itself. I mean, think about it. I mean, just saying, my mom is famous for making a tortilla with the face of Jesus on it.

[Josh Levine]

By the 1990s, Jesus on a tortilla had become a kind of small scale meme. Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain wrote in his journal, I saw Jesus on a tortilla shell. The Simpsons referenced it too. So I figure I should just try.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

To live right and worship you in my own way.

[Josh Levine]

Homer, it's a deal. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to appear in a tortilla in Mexico. In the years since Maria Rubio saw Jesus on a tortilla, there have been other sightings just like hers. Tonight all I can say is holy guacamole because someone found a picture of Jesus on a tortilla. The real miracle here is that guy was just about to chow down on Nacho Jesus, but luckily noticed the image of Jesus before biting his head off. There's even a feature film, Tortilla Heaven, about Jesus image miraculously appearing on a tortilla in New Mexico. The Rubio's weren't consulted for that movie, which stars George Lopez and incidentally is extremely bad.

[Maria Rubio]

God, it's a miracle.

[Josh Levine]

The tortilla resurrected the pig. It's a miracle. I can't believe in Tortilla Heaven. Everyone tries to make a buck off the holy image, charging admission fees to see it and selling tortilla merchandise. That was the popular conception that anyone who saw Jesus on a tortilla surely had impure motives. But for Maria, the tortilla was always a duty, something she'd been asked to share. For reasons she didn't understand, in 1977, she opened her home to the entire world. But over many years, very gradually, that sense of obligation to the public, it started to go away. The first step was reclaiming the inside of her home by moving the tortilla outside. In the mid-1980s, Maria and her sister built a small chapel for the tortilla, a copilla with glass doors, an altar, and a candle that always stayed lit. Hanging on the wall were strings adorned with small metal figurines, tiny icons left behind by visitors. Many were shaped like body parts, hands and feet in need of healing. That copia stood on the Rubio's front porch for about 10 years. In the 90s, sometime after the Phil Donahue show, they moved it to the back of the house, and eventually they took the copia down entirely. Do you know the story of how the tortilla broke?

[Angelica Rubio]

Yeah, I mean, I've heard a number of versions.

[Rosie Rubio]

Honestly, we don't really know.

[Angelica Rubio]

My mom, what she says is that she lent it out to one of.

[Rosie Rubio]

My nieces, and shortly after that, we discovered that it was broken.

[Angelica Rubio]

I'm hopeful that in the next few years or so, we'll finally know this story.

[Rosie Rubio]

My niece is always saying, I can't believe you blame me for this. And I'm like, well, if the shoe fits.

[Angelica Rubio]

But nobody really is actually telling the truth, because I think they're just afraid of what might happen, which is nothing. Like, the tortilla is a tortilla. Like, it was bound to, like, break at some point.

[Josh Levine]

The tortilla broke around 2005, nearly 30 years after Maria saw the face of Jesus in her kitchen. It now sits in pieces, and the part with the burn mark has gone missing. Angelica Rubio is a politician now, a member of the New Mexico House of Representatives. The last few years, she's been thinking a lot about the tortilla and what it's meant.

[Angelica Rubio]

There was already suffering in our family. There was already a lot of mental health issues and alcoholism, and things weren't always perfect. And so I think, for me, as imperfect as it might have been, that somehow the tortillad really was sort of this thing that gravitated us all into believing that things could be better.

[Rosie Rubio]

My mom back then was weak.

[Maria Rubio]

She was sick.

[Josh Levine]

That's another of Maria Rubio's daughters, Edubina Morales.

[Maria Rubio]

There was times when my dad would be drinking that she just. I think at times just wanted to be done with life. And I think she would have given up hope completely.

[Rosie Rubio]

To me, it is A miracle, yes. ROSIE RUBIO There was something that our family needed. And at some point we believed that Jesus, God, the higher power, had to make an intervention. And that was the intervention for us. That it was like, come on, people, yeah, maybe you don't have a great life, but you have life. And I think over time, she realized, okay, I can't take care of all the world.

[Josh Levine]

Maria's daughter KARINA I can only say.

[Rosie Rubio]

My story, and I can only pray for them, but I can't change what they want me to change. It's not like there's magic. Things aren't going to get better until you do something about it.

[Josh Levine]

Back in the 1970s, Maria had told reporters that her husband Eduardo stopped drinking when Jesus showed his face in their home. But that didn't last.

[Eduardo Rubio]

The problem was quite advanced, and I couldn't just quit all at once.

[Josh Levine]

Por queso movivia no esta va feliz.

[Eduardo Rubio]

Because the way I was living, I was not happy. I thought I was, but I wasn't.

[Rosie Rubio]

I remember being 13, and my mom had just had it. She just said, okay, we're leaving. My dad had gotten drunk again, from what I remember, and we left. We grew up by then, and I think we were able to help my mother make some decisions that she probably should have made a long time ago. And I think my dad realized that my mom had the support of her children, and so he needed to change.

[Eduardo Rubio]

When I stopped drinking, I told Jesus, I know that I like the vice of alcohol, but I'm going to ask you for one condition. If I leave this, Show me something that I can fill that emptiness with. And he said, look, you like to sing. You're going to join a church choir, and you're going to sing there every Sunday. You don't need to drink to sing.

[Josh Levine]

And I thought, okay, can you sing a little bit of something that you would sing in the choir? Eduardo Rubio hasn't had a drink in more than 30 years. He and Maria have been married for 63 years. Maria is 81 now. She can no longer make tortillas because of arthritis in her hands. What do you think is special about Maria?

[Eduardo Rubio]

She has a good heart.

[Rosie Rubio]

She's definitely a totally different person than she was 40 years ago.

[Maria Rubio]

But she sometimes she just really has a hard time. I think she just has a lot of anger towards having had to put up with so much for so long.

[Angelica Rubio]

My mom, I think, has really overcome a lot, especially with relations to, like, mental health. She hasn't really, in my opinion, sought out the kind of supports that exist and that she, I think, would need. I mean, I guess that's the thing that I think makes her that much stronger, is that for her, it's trusting in the uncertainty.

[Josh Levine]

Are you happy that you saw Jesus on the tortilla?

[Maria Rubio]

Oh, yes, I'm very happy. But there are moments where I'm happy and then sometimes I think whether it was true or or why it happened, one always has doubts. I want to continue and try not to be thinking that the tortilla was a bad thing for me. I want to continue thinking that it was a good thing. I do believe in miracles because I say God to me every day is a miracle because every day I wake up alive and every day I'm fine.

[Josh Levine]

Throughout this season, Slate plus members have gotten exclusive access to more episodes of One Year on the Culture of 1977. On tomorrow's Slate plus episode, Slate's Sam Adams and Karen Hahn will focus on the movies of 1977, including Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Saturday Night Fever. And next week we'll have one final exclusive episode where you can hear from me and producer Evan Chung about how we made this season. To listen to these conversations, we're and all of our slate plus episodes go to slate.com oneyearplus. It's only a dollar for your first month and you'll be supporting our work here at One Year. That's slate.com oneyearplus. So this is usually the place where I give you a little preview of our next episode, but that was it. We are done with 1977. We hope you enjoyed listening to our first first season of one year, and we hope you'll rate and review the show and tell your friends so even more people will check us out. And please be sure to subscribe to the One Year podcast feed wherever you listen, because there's going to be more one year very soon. Yes, we are doing a second season. It's going to be all about 1995, And we want your help. Send your 1995 memories and story ideas to one [e-mail] and we've also set up a hotline. Give us a call at 203-343-0777 and tell us what you were up to in 1995 and what you think we should cover in our season. That's 203-343-0777. We'd love to hear from you. One Year is produced by me and Devin Chan, with editorial direction by Lo and Liu and Gabriel Roth Madeline Ducharme is One Year's assistant producer. Our mix engineer is Merritt Jacob. The artwork for One Year is by Jim Cook. Angelica Rubio has a blog about her experience growing up with the Jesus Tortilla. You can find it at thetortillakid.com Marcella Salmon was our Spanish language interpreter. She was also the English language voice of Maria Rubio. And Leon Crousa was the voice of Eduardo Rupio. Thank you to John Brandy, Joe Nicol, Amy Avery, Bob Carlson, Josh Mabe, Derek John, Lilly Loofborough and Shana Roth. And special thanks to everyone who helped make our first season of One Year possible. Alicia Montgomery, June Thomas, Jared Holt, Derek Johnson, Natalie Matthews, Sung Park, Katie Rayford, Asha Saluja, Amber Smith, Seth Brown, Rachel Strom, Chow Tu, Erica Timms, Mona Ducharme, Karen Fjellman and Jessica Seidman. Thanks for listening. We'll be back with our first episode on 1995. Very soon. After you saw Jesus, did you look for other things on a tortilla every day just to see if there would be other images?

[Maria Rubio]

Oh, yes, sometimes. One time I saw a heart and I thought, I'm not going to say anything anymore.