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Mexican drug gangs worship Saint Death (Santa Muerte: death cult)
The Times (UK) | 01/10/10 | Tony Allen-Mills

Posted on 01/09/2010 7:37:22 PM PST by TigerLikesRooster

January 10, 2010

Mexican drug gangs worship Saint Death

As bloody feuds grip the traffickers, many are turning to a grim icon. Tony Allen-Mills reports from Ciudad Juarez

Tony Allen-Mills in Ciudad Juarez

/snip

First, her head had been crudely hacked off — a trademark cartel warning to rivals. Second, her torso bore a distinctive tattoo of a cackling skeleton dressed in suggestive female clothing.

Police recognised it at once as Santa Muerte — best translated as Saint Death, a macabre feminine icon who has replaced the Virgin Mary as an improbable source of unholy comfort to Mexico’s legions of gangsters and hitmen.

“If you revere her and are faithful to her, she might look after you. But she’s a mean saint and beware her vengeance,” said Nacho Puente, a Juarez market vendor. In the past he sold statuettes of Santa Muerte mainly to tourists seeking souvenirs of the Day of the Dead, Mexico’s perversely cheerful funeral festival.

To the dismay of the Catholic church and the disgust of the Mexican government, a bogus saint from popular folklore has become a crucial accessory for junkies, gang members and cartel kingpins alike.

The government has dubbed the skeleton a “narco-saint” and sent troops to destroy the garishly decorated roadside shrines erected in her honour. In drug-related trials or in raids on supposed cartel strongholds, Santa Muerte is repeatedly invoked as an indication of depravity and guilt.

At the trial of Gabriel Cardona, accused of kidnapping and murder on behalf of the Gulf cartel, investigators alleged that he collected his victims’ blood in a glass and drank a toast to Santa Muerte. When police smashed into a house allegedly occupied by a leader of the Sinaloa cartel, they found an entire room turned into a Santa Muerte chapel.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; Front Page News; Mexico; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: brutality; catholic; culture; drug; familyvalues; gangwar; mexico; narcoreligion; primitives; religion; santamuerte
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To: TigerLikesRooster

I saw the pictures you posted after the one I posted. The figures of which I speak, Catrinas, are all female skeletons and they all have the wide brimmed hat and nicely dressed. The ones you posted with the scythe and such seem to be a different animal, for sure.


21 posted on 01/09/2010 8:03:40 PM PST by jsh3180
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To: TigerLikesRooster
There were several deities associated with death in the Aztec pantheon. Since Aztec culture was destroyed, this is about what the gangs are into and not a continuation. The type of energy this represents would work for the violent nature of these gangs.
22 posted on 01/09/2010 8:05:48 PM PST by dog breath
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To: dangus

We are in deep, deep trouble and refuse to acknowlede it ...


23 posted on 01/09/2010 8:07:07 PM PST by ArmyTeach
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To: ArmyTeach

This religion is basely most on Aztec and Mayan religion that type


24 posted on 01/09/2010 8:08:20 PM PST by SevenofNine ("We are Freepers, all your media belong to us, resistence is futile")
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To: TigerLikesRooster

Paganism in action...once again.


25 posted on 01/09/2010 8:12:20 PM PST by myknowledge (F-22 Raptor: World's Largest Distributor of Sukhoi parts!)
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To: TigerLikesRooster
U.S. now have a two-front war against insane religious nuts: Jihads on one front and narco death cult on the other.

And both are cults who worship the same "diety".

26 posted on 01/09/2010 8:12:27 PM PST by Prokopton
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To: SevenofNine

It is, and Mexicans often don’t even know that. Some of the people in my church congregation have Santa Muerte tattoos or stickers on their trucks (Mexicans love trucks!), and I don’t think they see any problem.

They just haven’t been taught, and it’s our job, as people who know the Christian Faith, to charitably straighten them out as much as we can.


27 posted on 01/09/2010 8:13:13 PM PST by Tax-chick (Spend it while you can, money's contraband. You can't take it with you when you go.)
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To: Tax-chick

Hey I live in SO CAL I know I see all the time they don’t realize that


28 posted on 01/09/2010 8:14:18 PM PST by SevenofNine ("We are Freepers, all your media belong to us, resistence is futile")
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To: Prokopton; TigerLikesRooster
... both are cults who worship the same "diety".

The "sophisticated" pro-abortion enviro-cultists are following the same death-god. They'd hate to admit it, but worshipping Death is worshipping Death, no matter how you dress it up.

Nancy Pelosi would never admit it, but she's a devotee of Santa Muerta as much as any Sinaloa narco is.

29 posted on 01/09/2010 8:21:27 PM PST by Tax-chick (Spend it while you can, money's contraband. You can't take it with you when you go.)
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To: SevenofNine

Hundreds of years ago, people expected to die any time. We don’t live that way now in the US, but it’s still out there. It’s not the Catholic faith, any more than the French-Caribbean Papa Legba is St. Peter.

Culture and history are ... what they are. And we have to recognize what is out there, while making a distinction between “what some people who call themselves Catholics believe” and “what the Catholic Faith is.”


30 posted on 01/09/2010 8:24:27 PM PST by Tax-chick (Spend it while you can, money's contraband. You can't take it with you when you go.)
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To: isthisnickcool

I think this is what the movie Apocolypto was trying to point out. The meztizos are only a few steps out of the jungle. They are coming to a hometown near you.


31 posted on 01/09/2010 9:16:37 PM PST by Devil_Dog27
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To: TigerLikesRooster

Looks like the patron saint of dead gang bangers and homeboys...


32 posted on 01/09/2010 9:21:48 PM PST by Mister Muggles (.Seattle: A city full of Liberal men with vaginas.)
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To: TigerLikesRooster

bookmark


33 posted on 01/09/2010 9:51:16 PM PST by GOP Poet (Obama is an OLYMPIC failure.)
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To: Devil_Dog27
The meztizos are only a few steps out of the jungle. They are coming to a hometown near you.

"What a beautiful world this will be,
What a glorious time to be free" - Donald Fagan, IGY

34 posted on 01/09/2010 10:49:49 PM PST by ARepublicanForAllReasons (Give 'em hell, Sarah!)
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To: myknowledge

According the the left, we should embrace other cultures and not make value judgements.
Mexico is just another turd world country that is barely out of the stone age.
Seal the borders, kill drug smugglers and dealers. Kill the head and the rest is dead.


35 posted on 01/10/2010 4:19:19 AM PST by Yorlik803 (better to die on your feet than live on your knees.)
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To: Yorlik803

You just got to stop making sense. You might cause others to think the same way.


36 posted on 01/10/2010 5:57:59 AM PST by Molon Labbie
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To: Molon Labbie

Sorry, it was early.....must have been the Copenhagen pouches for breakfast.


37 posted on 01/10/2010 6:00:10 AM PST by Yorlik803 (better to die on your feet than live on your knees.)
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To: TigerLikesRooster
Modern day Thuggee cult


38 posted on 01/10/2010 8:44:54 AM PST by Clock King (There's no way to fix D.C.)
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To: TigerLikesRooster; patriot08; ezoeni; Yehuda; Texas Gal; RC one; DirtyHarryY2K; woerm; bert; ...

Ping!

If you want on, or off this S. Texas/Mexico ping list, please FReepMail me.


39 posted on 01/10/2010 9:34:55 AM PST by SwinneySwitch (Mexico - beyond your expectation.)
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To: Clintonfatigued

“As one Freeper pointed out a few months ago, this isn’t a quaint little old custom, but a belief system which emboldens crimminal behavior.”

It’s been years since our sheriff found the relics of ‘Saint Death’ worship in camps in our national forests. Just think, as more Mexicans come, and more of their cartels take over our cities....soon THIS will be a protected religion in this nation. ONe of the delegates of the FR Squatter support squad will be along soon to tell us what good Catholics ALL Mexicans are.


40 posted on 01/10/2010 9:55:19 AM PST by AuntB (If Al Qaeda grew drugs & burned our forests instead of armed Mexican Cartels would anyone notice?)
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