5 Chapter 5: CONCLUSION

We have seen that a preoccupation and fascination with death are found throughout the history of Mexico.  Death rituals and death representations are common to indigenous religion of the pre-conquest and the Catholicism that arrived with the conquerors.  Images of skulls, bones, and skeletons take central part in ritualized religious practices of both cultures, the popular festivity of Day of the Dead, and lately in the Santa Muerte cult.  However, even if there are surface commonalities between the Santa Muerte cult and the Day of the Dead celebration, the latter has been more widely accepted as a secular practice, whereas the former is located on the fringes of Mexican society in a sphere of marginalized and counter-culture people who resist the norms imposed by the larger society.  The Day of the Dead has been widely known throughout the U.S. for decades, and popular elements such as sugar skulls have been absorbed into and marketed with many U.S. Halloween practices.  In contrast, knowledge of the Santa Muerte cult in the U.S. and even in Mexico remains obscure, disturbing, and unsettling.

A study of the texts used in the form of prayers to invoke assistance from Santa Muerte has not been published before the present study.  To this end, I have produced an analysis of the European and Mexican traditions of praying and the classifications that are given to the different types of prayers.  These traditions present contrasting and similar views about the communication between humans and the divine, and it turns out that praying to Santa Muerte simulates the Catholic patterns and rituals of Roman Catholicism combined with esotericism and evokes the indigenous ancient songs to death of the early inhabitants of Mexico.

I have provided sociolinguistic evidence to advance the argument that, in the Santa Muerte cult and the language of some of the prayers used for personal and collective devotions of people in need, Santa Muerte is elevated to a superior and divine status that devotees invoke from their human and lowly status.  Santa Muerte as a saint and as a deity has the power to destroy and create that is reminiscent of other goddesses in the pantheon of supreme beings of pre- and post-conquest Mexico.

The study of the Santa Muerte cult in Mexico has gained popularity among researchers in Mexico and the U.S.  In the last decade, Santa Muerte has captured the interest of research in cultural anthropology, religion, and sociology (Perdigón, 2008; Chesnut, 2012; Rouch, 2012; and Martín, 2017).  Aside from academic presses, popular publications have also been produced, including short books to aid devotees with descriptions and instructions for the Santa Muerte rituals (Velásquez, 2006 and Ambrosio, 2009).  In addition to printed materials, there has been a proliferation of Internet sites that provide prayers and an abundance of esoteric subjects related to Santa Muerte in digital format.  A portion of the Santa Muerte prayers that were analyzed in this study (Table 2) were hand-written or computer printed, photocopied, and made available or given away to those who visit the temples.

I argue that the language of Santa Muerte prayers, as it was analyzed in this project, takes a conciliatory stance on the resistance against religious and economic conquest.  This position is taken within the order of power, it accommodates, it is a strategy of survival, it adopts a neutrality, and it assumes tolerance.  In the Santa Muerte cult, as it is in the time of death, everybody is equal and welcome.  The very fact that devotees create an independent space for expressing their religious beliefs is an act of resistance.  Not resisting is disappearing.

The future of scholarship on Santa Muerte is uncertain as political and economic conditions in Mexico change, due to the new administration of President Enrique Peña Nieto, new challenges of immigration from Mexico to the U.S., the weakening of the drug cartel leaders, and the renegotiation of the NAFTA trade accord.  The cult gained more followers in the last decade given the popularity that it had among Mexican and Central American migrants to the U.S. (González, 2015).  With the current U.S. anti-immigration policies and the political issues with security of the U.S.-Mexico border, the cult could possible dwindle.  It may very well be that with a positive change in the Mexican economy, devotees no longer require “divine intervention” from Santa Muerte and less people would have the need to pray or practice the Santa Muerte cult.  As reported in the Mexican media, one thing that is certain is that after the assassination of Enriqueta Romero’s husband, the popular Santa Muerte rosaries of Barrio Tepito in Mexico City are no longer prayed (Chesnut, 2016).

At the conclusion of this analysis of Santa Muerte prayers, there are many unanswered questions.  Why do people who pray to Santa Muerte use the antiquated language that is not part of the standard every-day language in Mexico?  Why were the beloved Mexican Virgin of Guadalupe and the various saints of the Roman Catholic church no longer sufficient to intercede on behalf of marginalized people, such that they needed to create their own saint?  Why do people need a dead entity to protect them from risky living?  Is there a conscious knowledge of the history among devotees of the pre-conquest religion that people want to go back to?  What prompted the cult to Santa Muerte?  While the answers to these questions are largely unknown or speculative, what we do know is that Santa Muerte is out in the open.  A frightening saint in the middle of a Mexico City street, as in my initial sighting of Santa Muerte, and as present and visible as it is in “Las Juntas”, Guadalajara, and beyond the Mexican borders.  The Santa Muerte practitioners are indeed following the words of the rosary reflections to not hide their devotion.