The first of many prayers offered was spoken through a megaphone as chilly, damp fog lingered in a dark sky – unusual for a tropical night in America's poorest neighbourhood.
But people had awoken and converged behind the Church of San Felipe de Jesús in Cameron Park on the outskirts of Brownsville, Texas, to prepare for the day of Our Lady the Virgin of Guadalupe, Queen of Mexico, Empress of the Americas. All along the US-Mexico border, and across the whole of Mexico itself, tens of millions were doing the same.
As the Christian world prepares to commemorate the Nativity this week, the Mexicans – including 28 million Mexican Americans and probably the same number of Mexican citizens living legally or illegally in the US – have already celebrated the spiritual highlight of their year; a demonstration of religious fervour that took place in the bleakest economic circumstances for a generation.
In places like Brownsville, faith, expressed through the pilgrimages, prayers and homilies of last week, has become more important than ever. In Cameron Park, the last census recorded the lowest average annual income in America – $4,100 (£2,530).
Like much of Cameron county, Cameron Park is a place though which the postmodern economy blew like a hurricane and departed. When Cameron Park was built in the 1970s, its factories serviced Levi's, Fruit of the Loom and other household names – jobs taken from the north – only to face closure when even cheaper labour turned up in Central America, and thereafter Asia.
Last month the Texas Workforce Commission found that 400 more jobs had been lost to Cameron county, taking unemployment to 10.5% – in a county with an average income five times that in Cameron Park, for which no separate, certainly higher, jobless figures were available.
Last Saturday – the day of the Virgin – those cares were briefly put aside.
"In the name of the Holy Virgin Mary, Mother of God and Nuestra Reina" – our Queen – said Father Héctor Cruz, down the megaphone, "and please keep to the side of the road." Three years ago a drunken driver ploughed into the parade, injuring three pilgrims. This year, with a pick-up truck leading the way, they set off just after 3am towards the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe on 12th Street downtown. Walking those three hours through the dark were mostly young people, couples in hoodies holding hands, fathers with little children, women and girls clutching bunches of roses and the striking image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, icon of Mexico's deep, multi-layered – by no means entirely Catholic – folk spirituality.
The Virgin appeared to what is commonly referred to as a "poor Indian" peasant, Juan Diego, through whom she asked for a great cathedral to be built. Mike Seifert, former activist priest of Cameron Park, describes her as a spiritual companion of the poor who is now more relevant than ever to the beleaguered migrant residents of Cameron Park.
"She appeared in the cotton fields; she is the cry of the poor and the redemption of the poor," he says. "But the poor Indian was from a warrior caste, vanquished and converted by another warrior caste [the Spanish Conquistadors], and in this she is the child of rape, but pregnant – both queen and outcast, pregnant with the mixed-race Mexican 'mestizos' people, after what was not an immaculate conception. Unlike any other Madonna, she is standing. Indeed, if you look at her left knee, she is even dancing."
A young man called Luis had returned specially for the pilgrimage. He now commutes to work as an ironworker "way north in Alabama and Georgia" because there were no jobs locally. A young woman called Gabriela Méndez is also in the group: two weeks ago she was laid off by the HEB supermarket chain. Wearing a Mexico 1994 World Cup bomber jacket, Alfonso, a steward keeping the parade in line, had been on all 13 "Guadalupana" pilgrimages from Cameron Park since their inception, but lost his job as a chandler in the harbour at nearby Port Isabel. "This," he insists, however, "is the day of 'esperanza' – hope – for us all, and for all Mexicans."
Guard dogs outside little bodega kiosks bark at the pilgrims. All along the way, they sing; in fact, the choir on the back of the truck is not deemed good enough and as we pass Coffee Pot Road they are ejected and stewards appeal to the now several hundred pilgrims: "Chi canta?" – who can sing? – in search of substitutes. The special hymns duly continue, with greater glow: "Y eran Mexicanos" – "They were Mexicans" – goes the hymn, to whom the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared in 1531.
The Virgin of Guadalupe is syncretic, and in one of the great works of Mexican literature, the Nahuatl-language Huei Thamahoicoltica, or "Great Event", the Virgin towering above the altar in Brownsville takes on aspects of Mexica lore, including the Aztec goddess Coatlicue, who gave birth to to the primary god Huitzilopochtli after being impregnated by a hummingbird feather. And the Virgin of Guadalupe is also a symbol of defiant hope in the dark days of now. "She is a social lament and helps us in our resistance," says Seifert.
After three cold hours, the procession from Cameron Park enters a bath of fluorescent light, the church resplendently decorated for mass which begins during darkness at 6am and features readings from the Apocalypse and drummers wearing lambent golden Aztec costumes and headdresses of peacock feathers, presided over by the icon of Guadalupe.
During the exchange of the sign of peace at the end, a woman in the front row cries "Viva la Virgén de Guadalupe!" "Y Viva!" roars the congregation, as the eastern sky quickens outside. "Viva San Juan Diego!" "Y Viva!" they respond, as grey dawn breaks. "Viva el Cristo Rey!" – Christ the King – "Y Viva!" comes the response.
In a pew on the nave is the writer Cecilia Ballí, who has narrated Cameron Park's tribulations and triumphs and whose ancestors were great ranchers and leaders in this area until the creation of Texas and then the US. "You note," she says, "how today Jesus Christ comes third in the running order."