In northern borderlands (of Mexico), unusual saint of death draws followers

thenewsmexico ^ | 12 19 2002 | John Sevigny, AP - 12/19/2002

[dennisw]

Saint Death is becoming a more popular cult figure in northern Mexico. File Photo, TheNewsMexico.com

In northern borderlands, unusual saint of death draws followers

John Sevigny, AP - 12/19/2002

MONTERREY, Nuevo Leon - When police raided the home of a powerful Mexican drug trafficker, a statue of a skeleton standing on a homemade altar peered back at them with eerie, yellow eyes.

The figure, known as La Santísima Muerte, or Saint Death, is a spirit representing death worshipped by everyone from drug traffickers to jealous housewives in Mexico's borderlands. Anthropologists say a growing number of border residents are turning to witchcraft and black magic for power over a host of evils, from deceit and jail time to poverty and sickness.

"God helps the good and the devil helps the bad, but death treats everyone the same," said Blanquita Tamez, a Monterrey spiritual counselor who calls on Saint Death for worshippers.

Tamez said she began praying to Saint Death when she was a little girl. Her grandmother was also a follower. Statues of the grim reaper dressed in a long cloak and wielding a scythe line the shelves of Monterrey's markets. Saint Death also appears on medallions that dangle from the necks of waitresses in tough cantinas.

Last year, police found a statue of Saint Death when they raided the home of the Gulf cartel's lieutenant, Gilberto Garcia, in the northern state of Tamaulipas, which borders Texas. The Gulf Cartel was the strongest of the border-based Mexican cartels until 1996, when Juan Garcia Abrego was sentenced in Houston to 11 life terms for drug smuggling.

Many drug lords turn to black magic and folk saints for protection.

Nearly every town along the Rio Grande hosts channelers to call on the different spirits. Herb shops along the Mexico-Texas border sell magic candles that believers burn in their homes to ward off everything from traffic tickets to bad grades. Some candles in glass holders picture a giant X over a police officer.

The church has frowned upon such practices and is especially concerned about Saint Death - which borders on black magic. Prayers to Saint Death often mention the Father, Son and Holy Spirit - Catholicism's Holy Trinity.

"That's nothing more than religious ignorance and superstition," said Rev. Pedro Garza, a priest in Monterrey, an industrial city of 4 million people.

At times such practices have gone to the extreme. In 1989, Mark Kilroy, a 21-year-old U.S. pre-med student, was kidnapped off a busy street in Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Texas.

The mutilated remains of Kilroy and 14 young men, were later found on a Mexican ranch. The victims had been boiled alive, castrated, slashed and shot, their brains and hearts cut out of their bodies. Drug smugglers who carried out the satanic ritual believed the sacrifices would give them supernatural protection from the law.

But some say Saint Death stems less from violence and more from the same pre-Colombian beliefs behind Mexico's popular Day of the Dead holiday in which people picnic on tombs and seem to embrace death as a part of life.

Images of death are nothing new in this country. Jose Guadalupe Posada, the 19th century printmaker who is considered by many to be the father of modern Mexican art, used images of skeletons working, riding bicycles and doing other everyday activities to poke fun at the middle class and politicians.

During Mexico's Day of the Dead holiday, people eat skulls and coffins made of candy and decorate their homes with paper streamers depicting skeletons.

Tony Zavaletta, an anthropologist at the University of Texas at Brownsville, said Saint Death's following appears to be growing, noting that more markets along the Mexico-Texas border now sell the Saint Death images and amulets.

Zavaletta said each spirit appeals to different people for different reasons. Drug traffickers, for example, might be drawn to Saint Death because they live often dark lives.

"Just like people choose different flavors of ice cream," Zavaletta said, "people also choose different entities to represent them."

 

[Aliska]

Agreed, but would they listen even if the catechesis were available?

Probably not, but some would want to and couldn't.

Invincible ignorance is a thin thread on which to hang one's eternal destiny. But if they are really *invincibly* ignorant, catechesis wouldn't help (almost by definition)

You have a point there. If they weren't so powerless in other ways, maybe the temptation to turn to it would be lessened. How would you deal with it if you were their shepherd?

[DallasMike]

Most of the historically Protestant nations of Europe are effectively atheistic; it's only a matter of time before they lapse into Islam or paganism. Is that Protestantism's fault?

Yes, it pretty much is. It wasn't Christians -- either Catholic or Protestant -- who looked the other way during the Holocaust, it was people with an outward semblance of religion.

[DallasMike]

Is this "saint of death" a part of Santeria? Are they related?

I don't know whether it's a part of Santeria per se, but it's definitely a part of the indigenous folk religions that have thoroughly infiltrated the churches.

[Cogadh na Sith]

Ha, that reminds me of the old 'cuentos' told here in NM. (Would it surprise you to know that I have 3 Santisima Muerte candles?)

La Compadre Sebastiana pulls up to an old house in her black caddie lowrider. The wife of the newly wed couple inside recognizes her immediately and tells her husband: "Go hide in the bathroom, maybe I can stall her and find out what she wants."

Before skeletal figure in the long flowing black widow's dress could knock on the front door, the young wife opens the door and says: "Sebastiana! How nice to see you, won't you come inside for tea?" Getting down to business, La Compadre says: "Where is your husband, I've come for him." The husband hears this through the bathroom door and shaves off his beard, hair and mustache so that Death wouldn't recognize him.

He introduces himself as the young lady's brother. The Saint of Death drank tea and chattered her lipless mouth with the couple about the old people who are no longer in the village until well into the afternoon.

Rising to leave, Lady Death announces: "Well, it's too late to bother looking for your husband, I'll just take baldy here with me."

[lasereye]

Instead of catechisms, why doesn't the Catholic Church try teaching the flock scripture? That has all they need to know, and is the word of God. There's plenty of Protestant Churches where you won't hear much scripture nowadays either.

[Campion]

Instead of catechisms, why doesn't the Catholic Church try teaching the flock scripture?

What did you find about the citation from the catechism I posted that contradicts Scripture? The catechism itself rests on Scripture and quotes it extensively.

Every Sunday at Mass we have three Scripture readings, plus a sung psalm. And big chunks of the remainder of the Mass are lifted directly from the Bible.

But people who don't go to Mass don't hear those.

How much time do you spend at church reading the Bible? Not listening to someone preach about what they think it means, but actually reading, out loud, from the holy book?

I disagree with you that "the Bible is all they need to know". Every cult in the world reads the Bible, and most of them read it to their own destruction. Scripture must be rightly interpreted and correctly taught.

[theFIRMbss]

>Every cult in the world reads the Bible, and most of them read it to their own destruction. Scripture must be rightly interpreted and correctly taught.

Yes, but the cultists
are always taught the leader
is the only guy

"qualified" to tell
them what Scripture "really" means.
The point is people

need to look to the
Holy Spirit and their own
hearts, and not any

cult leader or "code"
for the "meaning" of Scripture.
Scripture means itself...

[AnAmericanMother]

That's not the Baron. (he's Haitian voudon, anyhow, as distinct from santeria which I think is what's going on here.) --

He always wears a BLACK top hat and a tuxedo, gloves, quite sophisticated and formal, and he always is smoking a cigar (not quite sure why). Don't know what strange apparition this fellow is supposed to be. (My bona fides is that my family has good friends in Haiti and we used to visit there a lot before things got so unsettled.)

Jose Guadelupe Posada and his "calaveras" were always given credit by Diego Rivera for his artistic start:

Here's the relevant detail from the Sueño de una tarde dominical

The anorexic (g) woman holding the youthful Rivera's hand in is the Calavera Catarina, perhaps Posada's most famous creation. She is on the arm of Posada himself. And the exotic lady directly behind Rivera is his long-suffering wife Frida Kahlo (perhaps the currently most overrated darling of the feminists . . . but that's another story.)

[dighton]

Good, interesting post. Thank you.

And the exotic lady directly behind Rivera is his long-suffering wife Frida Kahlo (perhaps the currently most overrated darling of the feminists . . . but that's another story.)

Yes. As it happens, I like his and her art, despite their Communist politics and her feminist cult.

[Cogadh na Sith]

he always is smoking a cigar (not quite sure why)

It certainly shows the original Caribe Indian influence--tobacco--on the West African cultures that were transplanted there. It is another symbol of his Baronial status both in our world and the spirit world. It also marks him as a 'seer'.

[AnAmericanMother]

I like his and her art, despite their Communist politics and her feminist cult.

I am rather fond of the Mexican muralist school myself, and of that lot Rivera is IMHO the best and most technically able. Kahlo I am of two minds about. Some of her work is very moving and original - particularly when she draws on the Mexican tradition of the ex voto. She looks like a Surrealist, but she isn't, really. But much of her painting is technically inept, sloppy and self-indulgent. That's not as obvious in small reproductions on the internet, but when you see the works in the original it kind of jumps out at you. I'm afraid I'm a serious traditionalist re: art and demand a certain level of technical skill in all but the true folk artist (vide Howard Finster, our local visionary folk artist, whom God reward.)

My daughter just wrote a paper for her Spanish class about Rivera, and when I got into the closed stacks at my old school (on my alumni card) to get her some source material, I naturally couldn't resist reading it all myself. :-D I'm really convinced that Rivera and Kahlo were supreme egoists, each in their own way, and that's why their Red leanings don't really disturb me. Communism was just another playtoy and sop to each one's view of the universe with him or herself as the Hub. (Great (or self-promoted "great") artists must make uncomfortable neighbors. Reminds me of something my grandmother once said about people you couldn't possibly ask to dinner! :-D )

Chookter, I figured it was something like that - analogous to incense I suppose. I still find it surprising the way folks outside the voudon tradition throw this entity's name around in a casual way (you notice I don't use it myself.) While as a great Irish writer once said, "the shadow of the Crucifix is between me and them," I guess I've been around too many Haitians to take it lightly.

[Sparta]

Bump for later read!!!!

[Junior]

One benefit of multiculturalism is that you can now buy those voodoo candles (the ones with the pictures of saints on them) in Target.

Do you mean votive candles? You know, the ones Catholics burn in rememberance of someone or something? Those ain't voodoo candles, buddy.

[dennisw]

Very nice commentary. Frida Kaloe's life was driven by pain due to her bizarre and famous accident on a Mexico City streetcar. I cut her a lot of slack for this. Good, bad or ugly her art is passion and pain put onto canvas.

Art can come from a balanced and contemplative place. The Japanese, Chinese specialize in this. None of the master artists (treasures) of Japan are kooks. Great art can come from a mad/crazy/eccentric place. The West has many of these types.

[dennisw]

Do you mean votive candles? You know, the ones Catholics burn in rememberance of someone or something? Those ain't voodoo candles, buddy.
 There is such a thing as Santeria and Caribbean voodoo candles. We (Florida) have shops down here where you can buy such.

[Junior]

He specifically mentioned the ones with saints on them. I have votive candles for St. Anthony and St. Jude (two saints who hold a special place in my heart). They have nothing to do with voodoo.

[rmmcdaniell]

Older catechisms will state flatly (and they are correct in doing so) that activity like that described by the article is a mortal sin against the First commandment. That means it damns a person to hell.

What more do you expect us to say? Protestants act like it's the Church's fault that unconverted people who are at most nominally Catholic act like unconverted people.

Its not what you say its what you do. Furthormore its not just the "nominal catholics" who act like the unconverted but a large portion of the priests as well. What good is it to have a catechism when you have priests endorsing pro-abortion candidates with impunity?

[AnAmericanMother]

[GOPJ]

You show intense insight. Are you a priest?

Both Protestants and Catholics do not present the true faith to the people. The Catholic church does little or nothing to stop the spread of false apparitions. They are afraid if they crack down on these things people will leave. So they do nothing and let them contaminate the rest of the flock who are struggling to maintain the truth as they understand it.

It's all caused by a desperate spiritual hunger everywhere.

[Aliska]

Are you a priest?

No and I am struggling to find my own way. I'm female, so that wouldn't work, would it :-).