Seven hundred years ago, Aztec runners held fiery torches aloft as they delivered messages to far-flung corners of their Mesoamerican empire.
On Sunday, Carlos Morales, a 17-year-old with braces from Salesian High School, wielded a modern-day version of the flame as he marked one of the final legs of a 2,700-mile torch relay that spanned two countries and ended on the football field of East Los Angeles College.
Wearing black slacks and a powder blue letterman sweater, the gifted runner jogged through the stadium with flame in hand as the crowd of 20,000 Roman Catholics roared and applauded as if at the Olympics. The relay was an addition to L.A.'s 77th annual Guadalupe Procession, an event to honor the Virgin Mary.
"It symbolizes hope for the poor," Morales said of the flame. "It shows the light to the people."
For generations, Mexicans have celebrated similar torch runs, ferrying fire from the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, an ancient Aztec site in Mexico City where Guadalupe -- Jesus' mother -- is said to have appeared before Saint Juan Diego in 1531.
The flame's odyssey, patterned after a similar torch relay that originated in New York six years ago, began at the Mexican basilica. Parishioners ran in organized relays through nine Mexican states, crossed the U.S. border at Brownsville, Texas, then passed on the flame to a delegation from Los Angeles.
Once it arrived in the United States in late October, the flame was transferred to another torch -- a 6-pound metal one.
Members of the Guadalupe Committee of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles drove the flame to Guadalupe, a small farming town in northwest Santa Barbara County, then launched a series of relay runs, walks and, in one case, a mile-long human chain, carrying it to more than a dozen Southern California churches bearing the virgin's name.
The torch reached parishes in Pasadena, Hermosa Beach and El Monte, among other places. Several thousand churchgoers greeted it at each stop, lining the streets in jogging shoes and exercise pants, and sporting the Virgin Mary's picture on T-shirts, bandannas and banners. Passing cars honked and yelled as the convoy passed, with parishioners running and praying on the sidewalk next to an old white truck hauling a 7-foot framed replica of the virgin's image.
