3 Chapter 3: LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF SANTA MUERTE PRAYERS

For a linguistic analysis of the Santa Muerte prayers, I use the three lower divisions of the seven Liberal Arts: Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric that are known as the Trivium in the Medieval University.  “Logic is the art of thinking; grammar, the art of inventing symbols and combining them to express thought; and rhetoric, the art of communicating thought from one mind to another, the adaptation of language to circumstance” (Joseph, 2002; p. 3).

Of particular help to this analysis is the use of the Trivium in the reading process suggested by McFarland (2017) for viewing and interpreting films.  Accordingly, the Grammar stage is an understanding of the texts and answers questions about the basic details of those texts in the prayers.  The Logic stage is an understanding of the message(s) in the texts and aims to identify the message(s) that the prayers are presenting.  The Rhetoric stage is the interpretation of the texts and focuses on what we say about the prayers.  In summary, my analysis centers on the text of the prayers, the message that they convey, and the interpretation of those texts and messages.

The Grammar Stage

For the “Grammar stage” of this analysis, I classify the type of prayers, and the number of instances in which the subject pronoun “vos” in Spanish (you or thou in English) is used in each of the prayers.  In certain regions of Latin America there is a linguistic phenomenon called “el voseo”, meaning the use of the pronoun “vos” to address a singular interlocutor.  The use of the pronoun “vos” originally had a plural value to refer to a group of people, but it is presently used as singular and it alternates with two other singular pronouns, “tú” and “usted”.  The use of “vos” depends on several sociolinguistic variables.  Speakers then have three pronoun options to address someone who is of a different social stature, age, or gender.  When addressing the saints, God, and the Virgin Mary, we show respect through the pronouns we use.

When we look at the history of the evolution of Latin into Spanish, we find that the second person plural pronoun “vōs” from Latin became “vos” in 4th century Castilian Spanish.  Linguistic changes in pronoun usage continued and by the early 13th century, there was evidence (as seen in “The Poem of Mio Cid”, the oldest Spanish epic poem), that “vos” as a plural pronoun branched out to a singular “vos” used among the nobility, and a singular pronoun “tú” that was used both to address one’s family and close acquaintances as well as address people of inferior rank.  In the first half of the 15th century, the form “vuestra mercéd” (your grace) appeared, being a linguistic unit with the value of a second person pronoun, which through several changes became the second person formal singular pronoun “usted”.  In the 18th century Latin America, the familiar “vos” with singular value alternated with “tú” and “usted”.  Table 1 illustrates the old and modern uses of “tú”, “vos”, and “usted” based on the social rank of the speaker and in relation to the person being addressed.

Table 1: Old and Modern Uses of Vos

Several sociolinguistic factors play also a role in the use of “vos”.  Social variables such as age, gender, socioeconomic level, and social rank determine the pronoun use in a conversation.  Historic and cultural aspects such as indigenousness, nationality, and levels of education determine the use of pronouns as well.  The degree of formality and informality of a situation also play a factor in the use of “vos” depending on whether the language is colloquial (vernacular), formal (erudite), intimate or familiar, and distance or closeness among the speakers.

In the history of Latin America, the regions that had longer contact with Spain are more likely to use “vos”.  The three regions that predominantly use “vos” in everyday informal communications are the Rio de la Plata region (Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay), the Andean region (Colombia, the Andes of Venezuela, and Chile), and the Central American region (Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica).  Recently in the U.S., some Central Americans have protested that Mexican Spanish is the norm for Spanish spoken in the U.S., and “vos” is decidedly not used.  Central Americans who use “vos” want to preserve the form to at least ensure that “vos” is recognized, even if it is not the standard (Alvarenga, 2016).  It is also important to point out here that the contemporary use of the pronoun “vos” in Latin America comes with its idiosyncratic corresponding verb endings that, although derived from the Old Castilian, are not the same verb forms present in the Santa Muerte prayers.

I center my analysis in the everyday use of language, and particularly in the intimate act of praying, as well as focus on those old forms of Castilian Spanish.  The collection of prayers included in this review consist of 38 prayers divided in two sets. The first set is a corpus of 20 prayers collected during two Drake University travel seminars to Guadalajara in 2014 and 2016 (https://issuu.com/egv2012/docs/sm-prayerbook.docx).  Participants in the seminars visited two Santa Muerte temples at “Las Pintas” and “Las Juntas” and Communities in Tlaquepaque, Jalisco, Mexico (see Table 2).  The prayers collected in 2014 were in a spiral-bound booklet of word-processed and photocopied pages printed from a dot matrix printer.  The booklet was laid out on a table in “Las Pintas” for public usage, and I was allowed to take digital pictures of each page that were later used for transcription and analysis.  The booklet contained the first 19 prayers listed in Table 2.  In 2016, a set of stapled photocopied pages of a rosary prayer (Prayer 20 in Table 2) was given to me by the keeper of the “Las Pintas” temple.

The second set of prayers is a corpus of 18 prayers that Katia Perdigón (2008) published through the Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) that are included in an appendix of her book.  In the appendix, the author classifies the prayers in two groups: 1) Eleven prayers that are prohibited by the Catholic Church (Table 3), and 2) Six prayers according to the devotional to Santa Muerte traditional Catholic Church, Mexico-US (Table 4).  The language in this collection of published prayers can be classified as “educated,” as there are no grammatical mistakes or problems with spelling and punctuation.

Table 2: Prayers Collected in Guadalajara in 2014 and 2016

Prayers by title and pronoun(s) used to address Santa Muerte in the prayers.

In Table 2, the prayer “Twelve Promises to the Beloved Death …” (Prayer # 19) is handwritten, and the prayer “In order to get out of Debt” (Prayer # 3) has abbreviated or shorthand language similar to that used in texting.  For example, the letter ‘k’ and the vowel ‘e’: (ke) were used as a contemporary shorthand of the word ‘que’ (what), commonly used these days when texting in Spanish.  In the prayer “Divine and Powerful Saint Death” (Prayer # 11) there are 11 instances of the use of “vos”.  The “Rosary to Holy Death” (Prayer # 20) uses the “tú” pronoun, and one instance of using “vos”.

In the prayers from Perdigón’s (2008) appendix, there are several that do not address Santa Muerte but are associated different aspects of healing.  For example, two of the prayers are to a cigar (p. 146) and the herb rosemary (p. 147).  These prayers (Prayer # 6 and # 7 in Table 3) could be part of a ritual with origins in Cuba.  The inclusion of these prayers may reflect that “santeros” from Cuba went to Mexico, as Perdigón has pointed out, and brought “santería” rituals to Santa Muerte in Mexico (p. 73).  Additionally, the prayer to “Mr. Diego Duende” (Prayer #8 in Table 3) is an invocation to an imaginary character that is usually associated with magic or witchcraft.  A “Duende” (in English, elf or leprechaun) has the attribute of being a helper.  In the Santa Muerte context, Mr. Diego Duende helps her in healing rituals and “especially in difficult cases” (Perdigón, 2008; p. 79).

Table 3: Prayers that are prohibited by the Catholic church according to Perdigón (2008)

Table 4: Prayers according to the devotional to Santa Muerte Traditional Catholic Church, Mexico-US (Perdigón, 2008)

Another type of prayer that is traditional in the Roman Catholic Church is the “novena”, which is a set of prayers to be prayed on nine consecutive days.  In the two novenas to Santa Muerte found in Perdigón’s appendix, one uses the “tú” and “vos” pronouns (Prayer #2 in Table 3); while the other novena only uses “tú’ (Prayer # 1 in Table 4).  Prayers #2 through # 6 (Table 4) are chosen according to the need of the person who is praying, and they are to be said after the novena followed by the rosary (Perdigón, 2008; p. 159).  Each “decade” or ten repetitions of the Rosary is followed by three short prayers: one to the “miraculous mother”, one to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and one to Santa Muerte.  The short “Sacred Heart” prayer is a well-known Roman Catholic prayer, which incidentally uses the pronoun “vos”.

Following are selected samples of the use of “vos” in the Santa Muerte Prayers:

Luz que dirige su brillo hacia mí, concededme el amor y el respeto al supremo y eterno dios viviente entre nosotros … [Prayer # 11; Table 2]

Light that directs its brilliance towards me, grant me the love and respect to the supreme and eternal living God among us …

Dadle fin a esta súplica, Muerte Protectora y Bendita por la virtud que Dios te dio … [Prayer # 2 in Table 3; Perdigón (2008) p. 144]

Put an end to this supplication, Protective and Blessed Death for the virtue that God gave you …

The Logic Stage

Continuing with the Trivium analysis, the “Logic stage” focuses on the message(s) that these prayers convey.  In the prayers to Santa Muerte, Santa Muerte plays the role of an advocate; that is, she is a lawyer (“abogada” in Spanish).  She is also addressed as friend, sister, and mother.  However, the intimate or endearing titles that devotees give her in everyday speech (flaquita, niña blanca, bonita, etc.) are rarely present in the text of the prayers.

In general, the prayers follow a formula that goes like this: asking permission from God and the Holy Trinity to address Santa Muerte, and then invoking Santa Muerte with the desired prayer or need.  The majority of the prayers that I analyzed used the familiar intimate “tú”, with the exception of Prayers # 4, # 11, and # 20 (Table 2), which used “vos” with singular values.  Of particular interest is Prayer # 11 that is written in the form of a ‘jaculatoria’, or short and fervent prayer.  It is a prayer of repetition similar to a psalm or a litany, and it uses the archaic singular pronoun “vos” with plural verb endings (‘concededme (vos)’ – grant me).  Repetition is used as rhetorical strategy to draw the reader’s attention to a certain idea.  The archaic “vos” verb form ‘concededme’ is used 11 times, and the prayer concludes with 4 instances of the verb form ‘concédeme’ which is the contemporary “tú” form of the request ‘grant me’.

The purpose of the two novenas in Perdigón (2008; Prayer #2 in Table 3 and Prayer # 1 in Table 4) are different.  The first novena is about praying for Santa Muerte’s help to make a “fulano/a)” (meaning, an average ordinary person) fall in love with the person who prays the novena.  The intention of the second novena is asking Santa Muerte to provide help in living a good and productive life that is free from sin and closer to Christ.  From a linguistic viewpoint, the prayers in Perdigón (2008) do not present grammar or spelling errors.  In contrast, those from “Las Pintas” have numerous spelling errors that are indicative of the low literacy levels of the person(s) who wrote or transcribed the prayers.  In the “La Magia / Milagro” (Magic / Miracle) section of her book, Perdigón indicates that there are variations in the performance of rituals when devotees ask for favors to Santa Muerte (p. 68).  Usually people make a request or do a petition to Santa Muerte, they pray, and if the miracle is granted, then people do something as a sign of thanksgiving.  A variation to this sequence requires preparation before the petition.  It includes building an altar with candles, displaying objects with colors that attract energy, doing a petition, praying, and following the sequence indicated above.

In the Roman Catholic tradition, praying the Rosary includes a set of five mysteries that reflect on the life and miracles of Christ.  Each of these mysteries is followed by reciting the “Hail Mary” prayer ten times, which is known as a “decade”.  In comparison, the five mysteries of the Santa Muerte rosary reflect on the following topics: 1) faithfulness of her chosen devotees, 2) a promise to respect and defend her, 3) a promise not to hide the faith that is professed to her, 4) gratefulness for all the favor and blessings from her, and 5) gratefulness for the health, work, love, and strength that she brings.  The text of this rosary is followed by a series of litanies that exalt Santa Muerte as the protector of the poor, of single mothers, orphans, the elderly, of battered women, abandoned children, prostitutes, people of the third sex, the disabled, of the kidnapped and disappeared, those who committed suicide, and of the dead, among other people.  The Rosary is doubly important and jarring in the Santa Muerte tradition of Mexico City, first because rosary prayers have always been dedicated to the Virgin Mary and the life of Christ, and second because the praying of the Santa Muerte rosary has become an event that is attended by thousands of people (Rousch, 2012).  In other words, Santa Muerte has co-opted the rosary and displaced both the Virgin Mary and Christ from their own prayer.

The Rhetoric Stage

The final stage of the Trivium is the “Rhetoric stage,” which is concerned with the interpretation that we give of these prayers.  During the Spanish colonial times in Mexico, missionaries such as Fray Bernardino de Sahagún (1500 – 1590) commissioned or wrote books that collected the customs of the inhabitants of Mexico.  Others missionaries like Diego de Landa (1524 – 1579) wrote books documenting the life of indigenous Mexicans.  Sahagún qualified the texts written by indigenous Mexicans before the conquest, such as the “Cantares Mexicanos” as being of obscure meaning, and ridden with “errors and heresies” (Bierhorst, 1985; p. 17).  Sahagún’s assessment of indigenous prayers is thus loaded with judgmental language that qualify those prayers as pagan, outside of Christianity.  He maintained that nobody understood them because they were dark.  His explanation was tautological; for him the prayers were dark, and he insisted that he did not understand them because they were dark.

Since language reflects power relations, I argue that the similarities between Western and Mexican indigenous religion traditions on how the texts produced for and consumed by the elites reflect uneven power relations, and illustrate how anachronistic linguistic forms have persevered and still prevail in the present-day prayers to Santa Muerte.  The ordinary people who wrote the prayers found in “Las Pintas” near the metropolitan area of Guadalajara are keeping linguistic forms that are traced back to the language that was introduced by the conqueror during the time of the Mexican conquest.  They are using the archaic language of old Roman Catholic prayers as a way perhaps of “elevating” Santa Muerte prayers, making these prayers sound far more traditional and orthodox than they are, meanwhile swapping out Mary and Jesus (Prayer #20; Table 2) for Santa Muerte, and putting Santa Muerte up above themselves linguistically as a superior.

As in the Roman Catholic religion, in the Santa Muerte practice there is a hierarchy of power that situates humans in relation to God and the divine.  According to Perdigón (2008), Santa Muerte devotees practice their belief in accordance to the several planes that operate in the hierarchy of the relationship between humans and God or the divine.  In that hierarchy, Santa Muerte is above the Catholic Saints and the Virgin Mary, and above them they have access to God through Jesus Christ.  This hierarchy is useful to establish the power relations between humans and Santa Muerte.  Given that Santa Muerte is in a higher position of power, when addressing Santa Muerte through prayers, it would be expected that humans would use formal language and the pronoun “vos” if the prayers follow the pattern used in old Castilian Spanish.  However, changes in the use of pronouns to address the saints and the divine have switched from formal “vos” to familiar / personal “tú”.  Then, the presence of “vos” in Santa Muerte prayers found in this study, obey to residual or archaic / antiquated (conqueror) Castilian Spanish.  Santa Muerte may be seen as an equal, or as divine.  The use of diminutives, such as “Blanquita” (Little White Girl) and “Flaquita” (Little Skinny Girl) that devotees use to describe Santa Muerte in everyday life, also shows a sign of endearment or having familiarity with her.

It is important to note the title that Perdigón (2008, p. 149) gives to the set of prayers in Table 4, namely “Prayers according to the devotional to Santa Muerte Traditional Catholic Church, Mexico-US”.  The words “Traditional Catholic Church” may cause a subtle and perhaps intentional confusion that suggests the Roman Catholic church condones these prayers and the entire cult.  Instead, the title refers to a specific Santa Muerte congregation that calls itself the “Santa Muerte Traditional Catholic Church, Mexico-US”.  As indicated by Chesnut (2012), the “Santa Muerte Traditional Catholic Church, Mexico-US” was founded David Romo, a shady character who has also declared himself a bishop of that church. These subtleties of language and distinction between the Roman Catholic Church and the Santa Muerte cult may be lost on some practitioners.  During our visit to the Santa Muerte temple in “Las Juntas”, we were told by the keeper of the shrine that their prayers are sanctioned by “the Catholic church”.

Prayers to Santa Muerte are highly personal.  They convey a sense of dialogue between the individual devotee and the Saint; between the individual and a higher power.  An analysis of the plural first person subject or object pronouns in Spanish (“nosotros”, “nuestro”; “we”, “us”, and “ours” in English) in the two sets of prayers collected at “Las Pintas” and “Las Juntas” in 2014 and 2016; and in Perdigón (2008) indicates that the majority of the prayers are from the point of view of an individual.  Only the Rosary, the Novena, and the prayers from parents to protect their family or an absent son are prayers expressed from the collective “we” or “us”.