Herald Sun (Australia), March 28, 2014
By Josh Whittington
SHE’S a Grim Reaper goddess with an
unquenchable thirst for blood.She specialises in protecting you from your enemies and will help smite those you wish to harm.
She is a jealous and vengeful deity who demands you conduct rituals and sacrifices with proper care to avoid her divine wrath.
And while she will deliver you safely to the afterlife, most important of all, she will never, ever judge you.
She is the skeleton saint, the saint for sinners and the saint of last resort.
She is Santa Muerte — the personification of death gathering a growing following among the infamous drug cartels of Mexico and sparking a modern-day battle between good and evil for the very soul of a nation.
THE
CULT OF DEATH
ON
November 1 each year thousands of people descend on the rough and gritty
neighbourhood of Tepito in Mexico City. Some walk on their knees for blocks,
tightly but carefully clutching small skeletal figures, as they slowly near a
shrine depicting a life-size image of their female deity. Others proudly carry
babies to be presented. Some arrive with only prayers.
The
goddess they approach is a skeleton, dressed as a bride and wearing hundreds of
pieces of glittering gold jewellery that have already been offered up by her
devoted followers.
A
carnival atmosphere pervades the throng around her. Food is served, bands play
and candles are lit. Flowers, fruits, sweets and money are readied as gifts.
Colour abounds. Senses are in overload.
But
there is no incense lit. In a clue to the dark nature of their idol, the
faithful blow marijuana smoke for her to inhale instead.
For
while this may look like and carry many of the trappings of a traditional
religious gathering, it is something no church official would take part in.
This is the cult of Santa Muerte’s most important ceremony of the year and
images of death are everywhere.
DEATH
BECOMES HER
SANTA
Muerte translates into English as “Saint Death” or “Holy Death” — and it most
certainly becomes her.
Usually,
but not universally, represented by a cloaked female skeleton wearing a wedding
dress and clutching a scythe or globe, she is both fearsome and alluring.
Sometimes strikingly draped in colourful, extravagant garb at other times she
appears garishly resplendent in gold jewellery, trinkets and sequins. In
different incarnations, she is either darkly foreboding all in black or glowing
all in white.
Clearly
many things to many people, she is fittingly known by numerous other sobriquets
— the Skinny Lady, the Bony Lady, the White Girl, the White Sister, the Pretty
Girl, the Powerful Lady or the Godmother to name but a few.
Although
worshipped like a goddess, she is in effect a folk saint — albeit, as author
and professor R. Andrew Chesnut explains, a rather special and unique
one.
“Folk
saints, unlike official Catholic ones, are spirits of the dead considered holy
for their miracle-working powers. However, what really sets the Bony Lady apart
from other folk saints is that for most devotees she is the personification of
death itself and not of a deceased human being,” he says.
While
the burgeoning cult surrounding her cannot be considered a fully-fledged
religion it does boast many of the fixtures — self-proclaimed priests, temples
and shrines, and many ritualised elements. Devotees pray at homemade altars and
often offer up candles, fruit and even tequila in the hope she will grant their
wishes.
Her followers
have, in effect, merged traditional ways of venerating saints with their own
local beliefs.
This
has led to varied and often personalised faith systems surrounding Santa Muerte
— and has meant the made-to-measure saint has become more and more popular.
FRIEND
OF THE DOWNTRODDEN
ENRIQUETA
Romero decided to build her shrine to Santa Muerte in Tepito more than a decade
ago.
A
religious woman of simple means, she shocked her neighbours by placing her
simple homage to the Saint of Death outside her modest home.
The
astounding, if gradual, transformation of her small tribute into a focal point
of the entire nation’s reverence of the “Bony Lady” perfectly illustrates the
growth in Santa Muerte’s adoration as a whole in Mexico.
Thought
to have been around as an object of reverence for about half a century, a
staggering eight million people around the nation are estimated to follow the
saint for sinners today. There are more followers in the US and Central
America.
Once
an underground movement — most prayers and rites were traditionally performed
privately in people’s home — it is well and truly out in the open now.
The
real explosion in popularity came during the 1990s as Mexico faltered
economically. Typically poor, uneducated and superstitious members of a
struggling population looking for answers were drawn inexorably to the deathly
folk saint who could grant miracles without judgment.
Journalist
and author Jose Gil Olmos said those who found themselves living in misery were
in desperate need of one thing — hope. They found it in the welcome embrace of
Santa Muerte.
YOU
WILL NOT BE JUDGED
THE
saint of last resort is amoral and does not judge.
More
than any other reason for Santa Muerte’s enthusiastic support among those in
need, her unwillingness to stand in judgment stands out.
“Since
she’s not an official Christian saint, you can ask her for things that maybe
you wouldn’t otherwise ask a canonised saint for,” Professor Chesnut, author of
Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, the Skeleton Saint, told NBC last
year.
“She’s
got a reputation as a very prompt miracle worker. That, I would say, is the
number one reason for her mushrooming cult.
“Here
you’re asking a figure of death, a representation of death, for a few more
grains of sand in the hour glass.”
For
each follower, however, the reasons for worshipping the skeleton saint can
vary, depending on circumstance. Yes, she may represent death and dark desires
but she can also fill a basic need for love and affection if required.
“She
loves us and heals us. People come here to ask her for help — a son in prison
or with Aids, or something to eat,” Romero said. “Holy Death is our saviour,
our light. It’s very difficult to explain what she means to us. She protects
those no one else will protect.”
It does
not need to be an exclusive devotion.
Many
of those who kneel at the bones of Santa Muerte still view themselves as
staunch Catholics — the dominant religion in Mexico. They simply feel they get
something from the Skinny Lady they cannot get elsewhere.
“Many
of the pilgrims who gather around shrines to the saint of death still see
themselves as devout Catholics. Some self-appointed ‘priests’, claiming to be
leaders of a cult that has no hierarchies or structure, have even tried to
insist that their temples are part of the official church,” Prof Chesnut says.
A
BLASPHEMY AGAINST RELIGION
WITH
pews increasingly empty across Mexico, the Catholic Church has found itself
looking on at Santa Muerte’s growing flock with offended but uncertain eyes.
“On
the one hand, the cult is un-Catholic, extravagant, and sometimes horrifying,”
Prof Chesnut says. “On the other hand, churches are losing their flocks at
alarming rates, even in predominantly Catholic Mexico, and it may be that Rome
is anxious not to alienate millions of practising believers who might worship a
different kind of saint on the side.”
Nonetheless,
the Vatican’s view appears to have indirectly been made clear by comments from
Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture.
“It’s
not religion just because it’s dressed up like religion; it’s a blasphemy
against religion,” he said late last year. “Everyone is needed to put the
brakes on this phenomenon, including families, churches and society in its
totality.”
And
just in case people didn’t get the message, he declared that devotion to Santa
Muerte “is the celebration of devastation and of hell”.
Unfortunately
for the church it is a view carrying little weight with the Bony Lady’s
burgeoning group of devotees.
Jose
Roberto Jaimes, one of those who came to Tepito to thank Santa Muerte, told the
BBC: “I also believe in God, in the Virgin, and all the saints, but I am more
devout to [Saint] Death. She is the one that helps me the most.”
GRUESOME
GANG WORSHIP
IN a
country racked by a deadly and protracted drugs war, the adoration of Santa
Muerte has taken sinister and gruesome forms.
Father
Ernesto Caro simply cannot forget the drug gang hitman who came to be exorcised
at his Monterrey church. The cartel member confessed to cutting up the bodies
of his victims into pieces and burning others alive. He also told how he
enjoyed hearing their screams as he did so. The man, believing himself to be
possessed by demons, explained he was devoted to the service of Santa Muerte.
And he
is not the only disciple among the murderous and brutal gangs and cartels of
Mexico.
“Santa
Muerte is being used by all our drug dealers and those linked to these brutal
murders. We’ve found that most of them, if not all, follow Santa Muerte,”
Father Caro told the BBC.
For
men and women dealing daily with death and the threat of death, the attraction
of an amoral deity is not surprisingly potent.
“For
most of the cartels’ foot soldiers and their gang associates, brutal deaths
prove almost certain,” Robert J. Bunker, author and visiting professor at the
Strategic Studies Institute in the US, writes in an article published on the FBI website. “Such a form of imminent
mortality facing adherents makes the worship of Santa Muerte spiritually dark.
The death of someone’s enemies, protection from harm (or, at least, hope for a
quick and glorious death), cultivation of a dangerous reputation, and ability
to enjoy the benefits of fabulous riches, including the company of beautiful
women become paramount.”
The
implications of such “dark” worship are terrifyingly clear.
“With
the stakes so high, the sacrifices and offerings to Santa Muerte have become
primeval and barbaric. Rather than plates of food, beer, and tobacco, in some
instances, the heads of victims (and presumably their souls) have served as
offerings to invoke powerful petitions for divine intervention,” Bunker says.
AN
EXTREME DEVOTION
FOR
Father Francisco Bautista, from Mexico City, there is no doubt the link between
the drug cartels and Santa Muerte has mushroomed in the last decade — with
increasingly horrifying consequences.
“From
approximately eight years ago we have seen Santa Muerte having a big presence
with drug cartel members, from the bosses all the way down. Why? Because these
people say that Jesus or the Virgin Mary can’t provide what they ask for, which
is to be protected from soldiers, police and their enemies,” he told the BBC.
“In
exchange they offer human sacrifices. And this has increased the violence in
Mexico.”
The
evidence of this disturbing correlation is both illustrative and shocking. For
example:
* A
powerful criminal figure in Tepito is said to have killed virgins and babies
once a year and offered them as sacrifices to gain magical protection;
* Gang
members have taken rival cartel members to Santa Muerte shrines and executed
them as offerings;
*
Police discovered a skeleton dressed as a bride at a Santa Muerte altar in a
house used to hold kidnap victims; and
*
Authorities found 50 victims of a mass murder in the northern state of Sinaloa,
all with tattoos and jewellery depicting Santa Muerte.
Just a
small, if nonetheless sickening, taste of the violence linked to the Bony Lady
— there are far worse examples so appalling as to defy belief.
The
Saint of Death indeed.
DEMONS
AMONG US
WHILE
the battle between drug gangs, government forces and, more recently, vigilante
groups rages on, the rise of Santa Muerte has imbued the clash with a
frightening spiritual aspect.
It
appears a conflict of religion is being waged side-by-side with a conflict of
law.
On one
side are the gangs who worship the Saint of Death and on the other, the
authorities defending the nation’s more established and traditional religious
views.
The
result: shrines to the Grim Reapress have become legitimate targets for the
military as it attempts to quell the influence of the drug cartels.
“Members
of the Catholic Church and the army see the growth of this cult as a dangerous
development,” Bunker writes.
Indeed,
Prof Chesnut says his interest in the saint of death was first piqued after he
saw the Mexican government bulldoze more than 40 Santa Muerte shrines on the
US/Mexican border.
“I
thought it was just amazingly intriguing that this folk saint had become
spiritual enemy number one of the Mexican government in its war against the
drug cartels,” he told NBC.
A high
priest linked to the cult was even arrested on kidnapping charges in 2010.
THE
BATTLE FOR SOULS
A
bizarre by-product of this theological clash is an explosion in the number of exorcisms
being conducted in Mexico.
Journalist
Vladimir Hernandez recently reported on the nation’s exorcists facing an
unprecedented demand for their services, ridding people of demons every day of
the week.
“There
is an infestation of demons in Mexico because we have opened our doors to
death,” Father Bautista bluntly told the BBC reporter.
The
fantastical appears to have become an everyday problem.
“We
believe that behind all these big and structural evils there is a dark agent
and his name is The Demon. That is why the Lord wants to have here a ministry
of exorcism and liberation, for the fight against the Devil,” Father Carlos
Triana, from Mexico City, says.
“As
much as we believe that the Devil was behind Adolf Hitler, possessing and
directing him, we also believe that he (the Devil) is here behind the drug
cartels.”
Father
Caro makes no bones about it — the Church has been drawn into a fight for the
nation’s soul.
“He
[Former President Felipe Calderon] started a war against them [the cartels] and
he started a war as well against the cult of Saint Death, and he asked the
church to help him,” he said.
The
Catholic Church, for its part, says Mexico has to send out a clear message to
its young generation.
“The
mafia, drug trafficking and organised crime don’t have a religious aspect and
have nothing to do with religion, even if they use the image of Santa Muerte,”
he said.
Meanwhile,
millions keep praying to the Saint of Death.