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Every Friday, Margarita Jimenez comes to see the virgin in the parking lot, where kids scream, cars honk and the air stinks of exhaust.
She turns to the scene of chaos and asks: "Anyone want to pray with me?"
No one responds, but she pulls out her rosary beads, bows her head and begins. She knows that in the City of Angels, others share her devotion.
Catholics have long created their own sacred spaces here. They build altars in parking lots, chapels in shopping malls, grottos in back alleys and shrines in weed-choked vacant lots.
The Virgen de Guadalupe was said to have appeared for the first time in the 1500s, to a poor Indian named Juan Diego on a hill near Mexico City. She is still seen today, somber, hands in prayer, draped in the red and green of Mexico's flag.
Audio slide show: L.A.'s shrines to the Virgen de Guadalupe
All over Mexico, she anchors altars — outside police stations, in plazas and apartment building corridors, even in public restrooms. Telenovelas feature her shrine in every barrio. It's where the heroine goes to cry when she's in trouble.
In Los Angeles, the tributes appear as vibrant mirages in a world of asphalt and concrete. Some are impressive, with recessed lighting and hand-carved doors imported from Mexico. Others are tiny, with little more than a burned-out candle as tribute.
Proud or plain, where there's a virgin, there's a story.
::
The shrine where Jimenez prays is one of East L.A.'s oldest — in the parking lot of El Mercado de Los Angeles, a large swap meet at East 1st and Lorena streets.
Here, the virgin appears framed by pink and white roses in a mural at least 15 feet high. She twinkles after dark beneath strings of Christmas lights.
Forty years ago, a group of women who sold clay pots and aprons in the parking lot loved the virgin so much that they paid a painter to grace the lot's back wall with her image.
Over time, the painted virgin took on a life of her own. People brought her flowers and candles, kissed her robe and placed photos of their loved ones at her feet. Eventually, the swap meet manager paid to make her permanent, in tile.
"Everyone respected her," says Maria Carlton, El Mercado's manager. "Even the gangsters."
Each year on her feast day, Dec. 12, hundreds gather before sunrise to serenade her. When Carlton took over El Mercado in the 1980s, she went on the radio to encourage people to come.
The annual event now draws more than 5,000 believers. They celebrate the virgin for 24 hours. Bands play, children dance and shopkeepers donate countless tamales, gallons of coffee and pots of menudo.
Jimenez, 62, always attends. But her real offering is her Friday visits.
"This way," she says. "She'll never feel alone."
She turns to the scene of chaos and asks: "Anyone want to pray with me?"
No one responds, but she pulls out her rosary beads, bows her head and begins. She knows that in the City of Angels, others share her devotion.
Catholics have long created their own sacred spaces here. They build altars in parking lots, chapels in shopping malls, grottos in back alleys and shrines in weed-choked vacant lots.
The Virgen de Guadalupe was said to have appeared for the first time in the 1500s, to a poor Indian named Juan Diego on a hill near Mexico City. She is still seen today, somber, hands in prayer, draped in the red and green of Mexico's flag.
Audio slide show: L.A.'s shrines to the Virgen de Guadalupe
All over Mexico, she anchors altars — outside police stations, in plazas and apartment building corridors, even in public restrooms. Telenovelas feature her shrine in every barrio. It's where the heroine goes to cry when she's in trouble.
In Los Angeles, the tributes appear as vibrant mirages in a world of asphalt and concrete. Some are impressive, with recessed lighting and hand-carved doors imported from Mexico. Others are tiny, with little more than a burned-out candle as tribute.
Proud or plain, where there's a virgin, there's a story.
::
The shrine where Jimenez prays is one of East L.A.'s oldest — in the parking lot of El Mercado de Los Angeles, a large swap meet at East 1st and Lorena streets.
Here, the virgin appears framed by pink and white roses in a mural at least 15 feet high. She twinkles after dark beneath strings of Christmas lights.
Forty years ago, a group of women who sold clay pots and aprons in the parking lot loved the virgin so much that they paid a painter to grace the lot's back wall with her image.
Over time, the painted virgin took on a life of her own. People brought her flowers and candles, kissed her robe and placed photos of their loved ones at her feet. Eventually, the swap meet manager paid to make her permanent, in tile.
"Everyone respected her," says Maria Carlton, El Mercado's manager. "Even the gangsters."
Each year on her feast day, Dec. 12, hundreds gather before sunrise to serenade her. When Carlton took over El Mercado in the 1980s, she went on the radio to encourage people to come.
The annual event now draws more than 5,000 believers. They celebrate the virgin for 24 hours. Bands play, children dance and shopkeepers donate countless tamales, gallons of coffee and pots of menudo.
Jimenez, 62, always attends. But her real offering is her Friday visits.
"This way," she says. "She'll never feel alone."
L.A. for less than the price of sunblock. 
