Saints of the underworld

National Geographic Magazine has a nuanced, tragic and colourful article about the growing numbers of unofficial saints in Mexico that are called on to protect against death in the increasingly turbulent cities, or have been created as revered patrons of the criminal underworld by gangs and drug traffickers.

“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,” says Jos√© Luis Gonz√°lez, a professor at Mexico’s National School of Anthropology and History who specializes in popular religions. Among the helper figures are Afro-Cuban deities that have recently found their way to new shores and outlaws that have been transformed into miracle workers, like a mythical bandit from northern Mexico called Jes√∫s Malverde. There are even saints from the New Testament repurposed for achieving not salvation but success. In this expanding spiritual universe, the worship of a skeleton dressed in long robes and carrying a scythe‚ÄîLa Santa Muerte‚Äîis possibly the fastest growing and, at first glance at least, the most extravagant of the new cults. “If you look at it from the point of view of a country that over the last ten years has become dangerously familiar with death,” Gonz√°lez says, “you can see that this skeleton is a very concrete and clear symbolic reference to the current situation.”

There is an excellent Wikipedia page on La Santa Muerte if you want more background on the deathly figure.

The NeoGeo article also discusses Jes√∫s Malverde, the ‘narcosaint’ that we mentioned in a previous post, who has a remarkable following on YouTube with numerous digital tributes appearing on the site.

Also, don’t miss National Geographic’s striking photo gallery that accompanies the piece.

Link to National Geographic article ‘Troubled Spirits’ (via 3QD).
Link to National Geographic photo gallery for the article.