in the Virgin of Guadalupe series, shows a stone figure as the portrait of an ancient goddess. During the 16th-century, the Virgin of Guadalupe was seen as connected to the goddess Tonantzin, an ancient Aztec goddess the Mexican people worshiped in Tepeyac prior to the Spanish colonization of Mexico. Tonantzin was disguised so the Spaniards would retain her as a religious image acceptable to their imported religion of Roman Catholicism. López removed the disguise of the Virgin of Guadalupe, placed on Tonantzin by the colonizers. She sought to restore Mexican history and remind Chicano/as of their hidden past. In Lopez's revised image, the icon is seen as a protector and leader. Davalos explains, López's "intent was not to explore the Virgen de Guadalupe's divinity but to deconstruct the image 'to see how we present ourselves'. López's deconstruction of images of women such as the Virgen de Guadalupe was an effort to acknowledge the complex social and historical conditions that inform the experiences of Mexican and Mexican American women". ¿A Donde Vas, Chicana? While attending the University of California, San Diego, Lopez created the ¿A Donde Vas, Chicana?, Spanish for "Where are you going, Chicana?", Getting through College series as part of her MFA exhibition in 1977. The four by five feet canvas painted with acrylic and oil portrays a toned Lopez as the runner jogging intensely across a college campus in a tank top and shorts with her hair pulled back. She based this painting on her experience of running to get in shape and have control over her body. In the journal article "Yolanda Lopez: Breaking Chicana Stereotypes", Betty LaDuke interviews Lopez and she informs us that the series was presented from the perspective of "a woman calling on her body in an assertive and physically disciplined manner as a power ally. She commented on the runner's noteworthiness saying, "It is female. It is Chicana. It is a self-portrait. The metaphor extends from the symbolic fortitude of women to the literal image of a Chicana's struggle in a formidable institution." Lopez compared a runner's "short-lived speed with women's psychological and physical sustaining power of endurance" and stated that "Endurance is one of our greatest survival tools." Things I never told my son about being a Mexican Things I never told my Son about being a Mexican was a featured as a piece in López's exhibition Cactus Hearts/Barbed Wire Dreams