The Lady in Blue of New Mexico

María de Jesús de Ágreda was born in 1602 and became a Conceptionist nun in Ágreda, Spain; she is now called Venerable by the Catholic Church. She never crossed the Atlantic, yet between about 1620 and 1623, by her own later account, she was carried by angels to the Jumano people of what the Spanish called New Spain. The Jumano, who ranged across the plains of Texas and New Mexico, were said to know her as the Lady in Blue, after the blue cloak over her habit.

The New Mexico side of the story begins at Isleta, near present-day Albuquerque. According to Wikipedia’s account, the Franciscan custodian Alonso de Benavides asked Jumano visitors why they wanted baptism; they answered that a woman in blue had told them to ask the friars for help, and they pointed to a painting of a nun in blue as resembling her. Jumano at Isleta said she had also visited them near what is now Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument. Fray Esteban de Perea sent priests to the Jumano, and Texas Standard says they found many who spoke of her and baptised some two thousand. In 1629 a mission led by Fray Juan de Salas also visited the Jumano.

Benavides then travelled to Spain, reported the matter to the court in 1630 and, in 1631, interviewed María in her convent. He said she described the Jumano and their country in detail that only someone who had been there could know. Ágreda’s own writings on the subject were later scrutinised: the Inquisition took note of her reports but did not pursue her harshly, her book Mystical City of God was suppressed in 1681 and its prohibition suspended in Spain, and her cause for sainthood was opened in 1673.

The story is best treated as a faith tradition rather than a ghost story in the usual sense, since the woman was alive and in Spain throughout. Historians point out that the Jumano had long sought missionaries, perhaps for protection from the Apaches, and that Benavides’s account is the main contemporary record. Whether or not one accepts bilocation, which is not scientifically supported, the tale shaped Spanish missions in New Mexico and remains part of Jumano and Texan tradition.

A young woman in a blue cloak said to appear among the Jumano, teach them about Christianity and urge them to seek the friars, while her body remained in a Spanish convent.

Jumano settlements across central New Mexico, including near Isleta and the Salinas pueblos, and parts of west Texas, in the 1620s.

The Lady in Blue is a figure in New Mexico and Texas folklore, appears in Franciscan mission history and in Texas Standard’s retelling, and supports the movement for her beatification.