“It should be completely avoided,” his statement reads. The bishops, thank God, in Mexico, are speaking out more strongly against it,” he said.
Santa muerte full#
“I think it’s ignorance, a lack of a full understanding, and also a lack of good preaching by our priests. He noted how drug traffickers often use some of their dirty money to establish good works in poor communities - medical clinics or other resources - and thus win the confidence of the desperately poor, uneducated residents of the town. And they are getting stronger and stronger, and they promote this devotion, especially in villages where there are poor people,” Bishop Pfeifer explained. People “hear about the material benefits that come from this devotion, and so they turn to it - and also because, in recent years, it has become the religion of the narcotraficantes (drug traffickers). In effect, then, the cult is a manifestation of popular religiosity gone awry, despite being rooted in a country known for its deep Marian devotion via Our Lady of Guadalupe.īishop Pfeifer, who is a member of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate and served in Mexico for 16 years, attributes this phenomenon to simple ignorance, mixed with the aforementioned desire to get material favors from the spiritual realm. “Contrary to what would be expected, Santa Muerte does not make them afraid, as it does those outside the cult.” Anthony of Padua, or others from the Catholic canon of saints,” Father Zarazúa continued.
… Prayer groups, directed by a leader - generally the owner of the altar of the principal statue - organize rosaries in homes or stores, overflowing sometimes onto the street, in which they pray the Our Father, the Hail Mary and numerous Catholic prayers,” he wrote.īut at the same time, these devotees address Santa Muerte “as if addressing a loved one or a close relative, with a relationship similar to that which is cultivated with the Virgin of Guadalupe, Christ, St. In an analysis of the cult written by Father Jorge Luis Zarazúa Campa, in an essay from 2015, rituals to Santa Muerte involve authentic Catholic devotions mixed with prayers to the scythe-wielding skeletal female representation of death.Ĭeremonies in honor of Santa Muerte “resemble Catholic rituals in many respects. But what is clear is that, in the second half of the 20th century and now in the 21st, the cult has gained many followers in Mexico and spread northward to the United States. Many say it’s been around for centuries, attributing it to ancient Aztec worship of the god of death. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.The history of this cult is rather uncertain.
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. Because of the novelty, immediacy, and sometimes clandestine character of this devotion, there is almost no scholarly literature published on this topic, and my sources are my own fieldwork, scarce books, articles, devotional manuals, and the Internet. In this chapter, I examine the European, Native Mexican, and Colonial origins of the usage of death images and the reasons for the beginning and expansion of Santa Muerte devotion in Mexico and the US-Mexican borderlands, as well as its meaning and implications for individuals and society. 3 This new devotion can be traced to the Tepito neighborhood in Mexico City’s marginal colonia Morelos, in mid-twentieth century, where it started as a personal cult that spread widely about 20 years ago and reached an unprecedented popularity in the past ten years. The unofficial saint, Santa Muerte or Holy Death, another contemporary manifestation of a fierce liminal deity connected to marginality, inferiority, outsiderhood, and ritual powers, is worshipped in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and the “Greater Mexico” in the United States.
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