Santa Muerte
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Just arrived in San Martin Tilcajete for my Street Photography Experience in the church hall I meet a boy. When I ask him about the icon of Santa Muerte around his neck he explains to me that not everyone is devoted to Santa Muerte with negative intentions and that, in particular, the yellow Santa Muerte is for positive things, to help him get a job, to example.
In the past I made a documentation and written an article about the cult of Santa Muerte. Originally written for Prisma News, a news magazine online, currently the text can be purchased on LatinPhoto. I propose here the full article:
Mexico, La Holy Death (Santísima Muerte) or Niña Blanca (white girl), as her adorers call her with affection and devotion, is increasingly proselytizing in Mexico. Holy Death is represented by a skeleton dressed as a veiled Madonna, which can hold a balloon or a scale and a scythe. A worship non accepted by the Catholic Church, which has repeatedly officially warned by the FLAQUITA (skinny) another name by which it is known, in fact in contends with the Virgin of Guadalupe for the primacy of spirituality (of course with the necessary distinctions). In Tepito, popular and also dangerous neighborhood of Mexico City, the cult is widespread, to the point that in this area a life-size skeleton was exposed for the first time in the street, but this phenomenon is reproduced in far and wide throughout the city.
Despite the Catholic Church, among others, has condemned this belief, are so many people who practice this cult. One of the reasons of embarrassment for the Mexican government and the Church is linked to the fervour with which this cult is followed in the environment of drug trafficking and prisons. The Catholic faithful in Mexico do not take kindly to the followers of Santa Muerte, so it can be said that there is a clash between the two beliefs. To know more about the Holy Death worship, we went at the Sonora market also known as the magic market. In this market, heir to pre-Hispanic cults, you can find everything from a variety of medicinal herbs to living animals (which is not difficult to imagine destined for a tragic end in a rite).
The market is located in the Colonia Merced Balbuena, in a traditional commercial area, near the old firemen station, in Spanish "bomberos". Sonora presents itself as an extremely distinct market, which combines tradition and modernity, faith and magic for practical remedy. From sex to headaches, from love problems to gastric: in Sonora there seems to be a remedy for everything, a panacea for all ills. And here the worship of the Holy Death is proudly exhibited by the skeletal figures two meters high or the paintings depicting Jesús Malverde, better known as “The Holy of Narcos”, to whom a syncretic cult has been developed from which, once again, the Church remains distanced. In relation to the cult devotees believe that “there are things that you cannot ask the Guadalupe virgin, to her you can ask good things but not one may take a curse or an envy”. In fact, the Santa Muerte is moving more towards another field, the darkness, the black one.
And in Veracruz it really the primacy of spirituality of the Virgin of Guadalupe is seriously undermined by this new religion. New religion, so to speak, in fact, although its provenance is uncertain, it seems that the cult is of pre-Hispanic origin. And although many assert to be a syncretism with the Yoruba religion, it would seem that the origin is in the Aztec culture, in which her ancient name was Mictlancihuatl.
Funerary practices of the Aztecs mixed with Catholic practices result in this union of religion, spirituality, faith and witchcraft for the great emotional range: that is what those who have seen some ceremony affirm. In this mystical-religious mix we must not forget the sociological importance of the Holy Death: transcending the mere spirituality, worship is the religion of the desperates and, just like other border syncretic religions (thinking of the Cuban Santeria in the United States or Voodoo in Haiti), it becomes an important reference for those who are sick or who aspire to a better world, who cross the line of the forbidden, perhaps for those who earn their life through prostitution, for those who engage in activities far from the law.
The Mexican government, faced with the large numbers of this cult, sees a big problem, since many drug traffickers, some of them very famous, are adherents of this religion. In addition to the position of the Church, to officially recognize Santa Muerte would be to give entity and acceptance to the drug traffickers, to their world and their way of life.
Alex Coghe - Mexico City, 2010 - All Rights Reserved
