The rise of cults and unholy saints, who now hold sway beside time-honoured religious icons, is an unexpected consequence in the severe realities of a country torn apart by warring drug cartels and law enforcement.
With the public display of skeletal images on the Day of the Dead, when departed love ones allegedly rise from the dead to share a few hours of remembrance and feasting with the living, Mexicans have long been familiar with the sight of skeletons. There has however, risen a new and grisly cult in the midst of the drug cartels war, which have claimed thousands of lives.
Followers believe that so long as vows are honoured to La Santa Muerte, she accepts you without judgement, no matter what your crimes. However, petitions are granted only in exchange for payment that is relative to the size of the miracle asked for. The punishment for not paying one's debt to her is said to be horrendous. It is believed that rituals for this saint require human blood and even human sacrifice. Also known as the Holy Death, she is portrayed as the guardian of the worst and most defenseless sinners.
The grisly saint is not just restricted to public arenas. Dressed in a bridal outfit and surrounded by devotional candles, a larger-than-life statue of La Santa Muerte, fondly named la flaquita, the Little Skinny One, peers from the corner of a Mexico City living room.
Even though the Roman Catholic clergy and Interior Ministry have denounced the cult, devotees pour into a shrine in Tepito, a Mexico City barrio, to lay a kiss on the forbidding skeletal icon, at the start of each month. Outside the shrine, surrounded by iconic images, teenagers congregate together to inhale solvents.
La Santa Muerte is only one of the growing number of otherworldly figures, Mexicans are turning to, in a nation devastated by the collapse of tourism, swine flu, drought, the depletion of oil reserves and total economic meltdown, besides the appalling drug trade and its gruesome violence.
Among the ‘new saints' are Afro-Cuban deities and outlaws who have been transformed into miracle workers, such as a mythical success bandit from northern Mexico called Jesus Malverde. All are revered alongside the Roman Catholic St. Jude Thaddeus.
With the rattle of machine-gun fire bursts nightly, the local inhabitants are filled with the fear of being cut down by a stray bullet. The drug traffickers use violence as a particularly effective method of communication, having horribly disfigured their victims and leaving the corpses for all to see, so that everyone will know how much power the drug lords have. Looking to patron saints of desperate causes for protection and survival seems quite natural.
Jose Luis Gonzalez, a professor of Mexico's National School of Anthropolgy and History says. "The emotional pressures, the tensions of living in a time of crisis lead people to look for symbolic figures that can help them face danger,"
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