Despite the tightening grip of COVID-19 cases plaguing the city, scores of Catholic Latinos across the city celebrated the annual Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe in honor of the Virgin Mary on Dec. 12.
Not ignorant of the potentially deadly consequences, many of these undeterred devotees, COVID-fatigued but wary, strapped on their face shields and masks aiming to observe the religious holiday anyway.
But that was nearly not the case in one Westlake-Mac Arthur Park neighborhood where the local community has commemorated the iconic mother figure for years in front of a 35-year-old mural that depicts her mythical apparition before the Mexica (Aztec) indian, Juan Diego.
For the past 20 years, Roberto Bautista, a local party supply business owner and music promoter, hosted and organized the event in front of the mural located just off 6th Street and Union Avenue, every Dec. 11 to 12.
Between 500 to 1,000 mixed generation Mexicans and Central-Americans would enjoy freshly made tacos, pupusas, pozele and the traditional ponche-warm fruit punch-to live music that would play well into the morning hours along the Union Ave. incline.
The large gathering, Bautista said, would prompt an unofficial street closure with little to no police involvement so long as the event remained festive. People would flock to the finely decorated mural with candles to light, and flowers to lay beneath the image, imbuing the scene with a sense of magical realism.
But in March, when California declared its state of emergency as a result of the pandemic, Bautista’s business suffered. As more people stayed home and sales decreased, the economic uncertainty forced him to shut down. With revenue dried up and COVID in full force, he said, the possibility of a celebration this year didn’t seem likely.
“People would approach me on the street and ask me if we were going to celebrate La Guadalupana,” Roberto Bautista said in Spanish. “And well, at the time, I didn’t have any plans to. The money that I’d put in years prior just wasn’t there.”
For Bautista, celebrating his beloved Mary isn’t simply a matter of a Catholic upbringing. It is cemented more in the hard knocks he’s suffered growing up in Los Angeles, when drugs and alcohol use was his norm-topped with an incident that nearly cost him his life four years ago.
While swimming with his kids at a friend’s pool one day, Bautista cracked a portion of his spinal cord when he unknowingly dove into the shallow end head first. His mind although alert, he said, could do nothing for him as the water began to seep into his lungs.
“The last thing I remembered was floating upwards face down unable to let anyone know I was drowning,” Bautista said. “I could see the air bubbling out of my body and the water filling my lungs. The last thing I saw was my daughter’s face. Then everything went white.”
Whether luck or divine intervention, his friend looked out a window toward the pool and quickly realized something was wrong and yelled, “Hey check on Roberto. He’s been there too long.”
His daughter and others ran out of the house and pulled him out of the water. The ambulance arrived and rushed him to General Hospital where he laid comatose for the next 40 days, he said. When he finally woke up, he was paralyzed.
“I prayed then,” Bautista said:
‘Virgencita, are you really gonna leave me like this? Please, let me walk again. I don’t care if you leave me with my arms dangling and flailing afterward. Just please let me walk again.’
“She gave me back both.”
After an extensive eight-hour operation to repair his damaged spine and months of physical therapy, Bautista was able to regain his ability to walk again. And that, he said, he owed in a big way, to Guadalupe.
And that is why, as the day of the feast approached, he found himself praying once more for a little help. This time however, the help he needed was for the yearly feast he had hoped to have as a show of his continued devotion and appreciation for her.
He had just about given up hope when someone from the neighborhood told him there was a man who had spent three hours trying to locate him-to discuss the possibility of hosting a small celebration in front of the mural depicting the Virgin Maria.
“It’s as if he fell to us straight out of heaven,” Bautista said over the phone, about the man whose last name he soon learned was-Bautista.
“When I learned that we shared the same last name, I knew I was supposed to be here, “Antonio Bautista, said. “I’ve always asked God to put me wherever he needs me to be.”
Driving east on 6th Street days before the Dec. 12 celebration, the 46-year-old house painter from Cambria California had just picked up paint supplies from the local Home Depot in the Mac Arthur Park area for a job he’d been hired to do when from the corner of his eye, he spotted her posted over the east facing wall of Coqueta’s-Coquette-clothing store.
Not the type to second guess himself, Antonio Bautista, pulled a U-turn and parked his vehicle, still dressed in his white painter’s bib overalls, to find the person in charge of the mural.
“I just wanted to give people a rest from all of the bad things that happened this year,” Antonio Bautista, said. “I felt that the fact that [the mural] was out in the open like that would make the festivity accessible to the community.”
Although, hesitant at first, Roberto Bautista was finally won over by Antonio’s enthusiasm.
Wasting no time, the two Bautistas pulled their resources together and by Friday evening, the mural blossomed with flowers, Christmas lights and decorations.
It was hard to know how many people would show. COVID-19 cases and related deaths continued to rise throughout the county by the hour and they worried about creating a super spreader event. So, in an effort to avoid the possibility, they’d put the word out that mask wearing would be strictly enforced.
By 10 p.m. on Dec. 11, as the first musical group, Mariachi Lindas Mexicanas, began to play, a small crowd of 50 or more, all wearing masks, had slowly gathered.
“These days really represent something to me bro. It just brings me a lot of joy to see this after all the crazy things we’ve been through this year. Tomorrow is my birthday, so this here makes me feel good,” Danny, who declined to provide his last name, said, after inadvertently stumbling into the festivity.
Despite the smaller number of attendees, the atmosphere was jovial. People encircled the band just close enough to get nearer the music. Others hanged back, watching from across the street, alone or in a group, eating tacos or bacon wrapped hotdogs from Maldonado’s taco truck, parked just a few feet away from where the Virgin Mary was being serenaded under a starless sky.
“I didn’t plan on coming,” a local woman who declined to give her name, said. “I was on my way home from the laundromat when I heard the music and it drew me in. It feels a little sad compared to other years, but she looks beautiful.”
The event ended on Dec. 12, just as quickly as it had been organized. But days later, Christmas banners were popping up-stretching from lamp post to lamp post at the same intersection.
For Christmas, Dec. 25, Antonio Bautista, said, they will host a small musical celebration at the same location to help liven people’s spirits, up a bit. There will be pinatas for the kids and live music for the grown ups.
“There’s a lot of people like me who’ve known poverty but who have been blessed like I have,” Antonio Bautista said. “I hope those people will do something good for others-today, hopefully. Because we just don’t know whether we’ll still be here tomorrow.”
Note: Some changes were made to headline for clarity and a few minor grammatical errors.
Notes From MacArthur Park/Pico-Union... 