2 Chapter 2: MEXICO AND THE CULT OF DEATH

Philosophers, historians, and anthropologists have studied the Mexican obsession with death.  Death has also been a central topic in Mexican literature.  Authors such as José Gorostiza (1901 – 1973) penned the symbolic poem “Death without End”, and Octavio Paz (1914 – 1998) wrote about the Mexican fascination with death in his famous book “The Labyrinth of Solitude”.  In the concluding chapter “Mexican views of death” of his book about the popular Day of the Dead celebration in México, Brandes (2006) questions the stereotypical views of the association of Mexico with death by explaining:

“The image of the morbid, death-obsessed Mexican, as promoted through the Day of the Dead, has become integral to Mexican national identity.  It represents the essence of being Mexican, particularly in the increasingly complex dialogue between Mexico and the Anglo United States.  Alleged Mexican attitudes towards death are cultural capital.  They are among the most effective ways to create and maintain ethnic and national boundaries in an era of globalization, when boundaries are being broken as never before”. (p. 193)

Mexican popular culture continually has used images of death such as skeletons, skulls and bones to forge a recognizable image called “La Calavera Catrina” or “La Calaca” (The Elegant Lady Skull), which was first developed after the Mexican Revolution by the Mexican graphic artist and printmaker José Guadalupe Posada (1852 – 1913) between 1910 and 1913.  It is well documented that the work of Posada catapulted the image of death as depicted in “La Calavera Catrina” to the status of an icon of Mexican identity.  In his workshop, Posada used images of skulls and skeletons to print broadsides of daily life in Mexico, and made political satire a staple in Mexico City.  The skeletons were depicted as humans living their daily life and they illustrated texts written in prose or verse containing political themes of the post-revolutionary Mexico.  The intention of the broadsides was to ridicule with irony and humor political figures or situations.  Later, the Mexican artist Diego Rivera (1886 – 1957) used Posadas’s Catrina and gave central stage to that icon in his 1946-47 mural “Dream of an Afternoon in the Central Alameda,” solidifying the presence of death in the Mexican psyche.  Posada’s imagery is etched in Mexican consciousness and aesthetics.  Today, “calaveras” are written notes that people give to each other, making fun of death during the Day of the Dead around the First of November each year, and sugar skulls are given to children in the celebration.  Other uses of the death in popular culture are present in the bingo-like card game of “Lotería” (Lottery) which includes the image of a skull and a skeleton as part of the boards and cards of the game.  Perdigón (2008) and Chesnut (2012) trace the origin of the Santa Muerte cult to syncretism between medieval Catholicism and Aztec religion.  The authors maintain that the popularity of the images depicting skeletons and skulls during post-revolutionary Mexico along with the creation of a national identity where death, skulls, and bones come to represent Mexicanness.

Similar to the Day of the Dead, the rituals of Santa Muerte also employ altars, candles, flowers, candy, and food offerings, and also unique elements such as candles of different colors.  Chesnut (2012) provides a good description of the properties and associations of colors with candles.  In fact, the topics in his book are organized by chapters that are associated with a particular color.  In general, blue is for understanding, white for purity, black for protection from negative energy, red for love and passion, gold for money and success, purple for healing, and green for law and justice.  Santa Muerte altars may include fruit, liquor, water, flowers, candles, and printed images or small statues of Santa Muerte.  However, even if some offerings used to decorate Santa Muerte altars are similar to those that are prepared for the Day of the Dead altars, the cult and rituals of Santa Muerte are not considered part of the Day of the Dead celebrations by most Mexicans.

It is no coincidence that the place where I first encountered the statue of Santa Muerte is nearby the Barrio Tepito neighborhood, which is considered the epicenter of the Santa Muerte devotion in Mexico City.  Barrio Tepito is known to be a rough place that is home to marginalized people and where open-air markets selling counterfeit goods abound.  As mentioned earlier, narco-culture has had a negative impact on the security of people in Mexico, and Barrio Tepito is one example of a neighborhood that has been affected by drug cartel activities.  Tepito has a high incidence of robbery, among other crimes.  On the streets of Tepito, it is likely to find people who are impoverished and disenfranchised, yet who also exercise resistance to state-enforced harassment of local merchants who illegally sell their wares on the streets, and who deviate in other ways from the supposed economic, political, cultural, and religious norms of the country.  In this neighborhood, a woman named Enriqueta Romero has kept a shrine to Santa Muerte since 2001.  She organizes well-attended prayer sessions for reciting the rosary.  She has been credited as the source for the prayers that are used (Rousch, 2012) at the shrine.  She makes sure that there is no confrontation between the Santa Muerte devotees and traditional Catholics from the neighborhood churches.

The cult of Santa Muerte has recently spread from the capital center in Mexico City to other regions in Mexico and across the border to the United States.  Even though Mexico City has the largest and oldest shrine and congregation of Santa Muerte devotees, according to Martín (2017), the Santa Muerte cult has spread to other large cities such as Ciudad Juarez, Tijuana, Nuevo Laredo, and Los Angeles.  Regional manifestations of the cult have been documented in the metropolitan region of Guadalajara (González, 2015, and Bravo Lara, 2013).  These two studies have focused respectively on the social connections to the cult with migration from Central American and Mexico to the U.S., and the proximity of the cult with Catholic practices from disenfranchised sectors of the population from the main Catholic tradition in Guadalajara.