1 Chapter 1: PRAYING FROM PRE-HISPANIC TO CONTEMPORARY MEXICO
Given that contemporary Mexico is a product of the Spanish conquest, it is logical to maintain that religious expression could be analyzed through a lens that shows the dynamic tension between conqueror and conquered people; that is, between the official religion and popular religious manifestations. In the case of Santa Muerte’s prayers and rituals, this conflict is played out in private, pagan, insurgent, and delinquent spheres where resistance against the conquest is manifested. In this section, I discuss the origins of views of death by pre-conquest Mexicans and Europeans. I argue that by looking at the practice of Santa Muerte cult and analyzing the prayers to Santa Muerte, we find continued resistance against the conquest of Mexico that manifests itself as a refusal by a marginalized sector of the population to follow the religious practices of the conqueror.
Research in the field of Mexican anthropology and archaeology has found evidence that in the ancient history of Mexican indigenous people, the cult of death was present (León-Portilla, 1993; León, 2007; Pennock, 2012). Through the ages, indigenous inhabitants of Mexico have had divergent views about death and dying. Of the many indigenous Mexican Indian groups, the ancient Aztecs were well-known for their sacrificial practices and a seeming obsession with death. For example, in the Aztec pantheon are gods and entities that were associated with the dead. In the book “Aztec Goddesses and Christian Madonnas,” Kroger and Granziera (2012) present an interesting collection of divine women in pre-Hispanic times, some of which were related to death or had dying attributes. We find, for example, descriptions of goddesses like the Cihuateteo (Divine Women), these being women who died in labor and went directly to a better place (p. 179-180). The notable Coatlicue (Skirt of Snakes), known as the mother goddess of gods, was also an Earth mother goddess associated in part with sacrifice and death (p. 184-187). The two deities Mictlancihuatl (Lady Death) and Mictlantecuhtli (Lord Death) (p. 199-200) take a central part in the great Aztec myth of creation when Quetzalcoatl descends to “Mictlan” or the underworld, and whose entrance is protected by the guardians Mictlancihuatl and Mictlantecuhtli. Quetzalcoatl deceived the guardians, rescued the bones of the ancestors, and brought humanity back to life after spilling his own blood over the bones.
After the Spanish conquest of Mexico, evangelization and the replacement of indigenous religion with Christianity began. For example, the goddess Tonantzin (Our Mother) was melded with the Christian Virgin of Guadalupe (Kroger & Granziera 2012; p. 143), illustrating the dynamic of conquered-conqueror. Tonantzin was worshiped on the hills of Tepeyac, north of Mexico City, thus that site was transformed by the Catholic church into the Basilica of the Virgin of Guadalupe. The transposition of Tonantzin into the Virgin of Guadalupe is a testimony of the efforts to convert the Mexican natives to Christianity. The conversion of the natives was carried out by the power exercised by the Conquistador Hernán Cortés, with the aid of Franciscan and Dominican missionaries. This point in history marks the origin of the fusion of Mexican and Catholic beliefs about death and dying.
Prior to the arrival of the Spaniards, people who inhabited ancient Mexico had developed a sophisticated writing system, as seen in the glyphs and stelae of the Mayans and the codices of the Aztecs. These Mayan and Aztec writings presented in stone carvings, codices, and manuscripts have occupied social scientists and linguists for centuries. It is known that those Mexican writings of the pre-conquest contained subjects such as poetry, philosophy, ruling class lineages, songs, myths, legends, prophesies, and even invocations to death. Most of the pre-conquest codices disappeared or were destroyed as a consequence of overzealous Catholic clergy who viewed the texts as heretical, but a few were taken out of Mexico and are today part of library collections in the Vatican, England, Spain, and museums and libraries in the U.S. A few other surviving codices remained in Mexico and are kept in the custody of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH). The texts from some codices, such as those documenting the lineage of those in power, were produced for elites. Other texts, such as the manuscript called “Cantares Mexicanos,” were songs and poetry to be performed by ordinary people during celebrations, rituals, and ceremonies. The texts from the “Cantares Mexicanos” have been the topic of intense paleographic, transcription, and translation research by Bierhorst (1985) and León-Portilla and Curiel (2011). In Bierhorst’s analysis of the “Cantares Mexicanos,” the author calls the songs “ghost songs” that are “passively subversive” against Spanish colonialism. However, Mexican scholars, led by León Portilla and his research group from the INAH, questioned Bierhorst’s characterization of the “Cantares Mexicanos” (León-Portilla & Curiel, 2011). For León-Portilla and Curiel (2011), the songs reflect a philosophy of living that is represented in the symbols of the flower (Xochitl; Flor) and the song (Cuicatl; canto), the dialogue with one’s own heart by listening to a song and contemplating a flower. Further, León-Portilla and Curiel (2011) contend that this philosophy is just as valid as the philosophies of Aristotle, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Kant, Hegel, or Marx. It is interesting to notice the different views from the scholars who studied the “Cantares”, as the American sees a “ghost” aspect in the “Cantares” while the Mexicans see a “life” aspect; Bierhorst sees “songs /poetry” while León Portilla, et. al. see “philosophy”. According to León-Portilla and Curiel (2011), in the “Cantares” the expression “death by the edge of the obsidian blade” is a reference to war, death and human sacrifice, and the poets/authors of those songs refer to death and the beyond in terms that are “totally different from the Christian European way of thinking” (p. 199). As an example, the following song refers to death in unique terms:
“Incomparable war death! Incomparable flower death! Life Giver has blessed it. Ah, where can I find what my heart desires?” (folio 66v; English translation by Bierhorst (1985; p. 365)
Attention to death has also been present in the Roman Catholic tradition. Since the Middle Ages, Roman Catholics have used churches as cemeteries. This practice continued in colonial Mexico. For example, in the cathedral of Guadalajara, there is in public view a tomb of an important political or religious person, whose remains are inside the church with an inscription that reads in Latin “Ossa et Cineres” (Bones and Ashes). There are constant reminders of the unescapable human death in prayers such as the “Hail Mary”, during the “Ash Wednesday” celebration of Lent, and in the “Holy Sacrament of Extreme Unction”, also known as the ritual of the last rites to a dying person. The Catholic Church has also included intercessory prayers to saints for a “Good Death” as part of the popular devotions. Some of these saints include St. Joseph, St. Catherine of Alexandria, and Our Lady of Mount Carmel. An image that is well-known in the Catholic Church is that of the Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel, an image that is said to have the attribute of pulling the souls of the dead out of purgatory.
One might think that this tradition of internment in churches might be exclusive to the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico, but a quick look at Catholic Churches in Europe and Latin America will reveal that sarcophagi, crypts, and shrines with relics of saints and members of the Church hierarchy are very common. During Holy Week in Seville, Spain, the statue of “La Canina” sculpted by Cardoso de Quiros in 1691 is paraded ahead of the glass-encased statue of Christ (Perdigón, 2008). This image of La Canina represents the “Triumph of the Cross over Death”. La Canina is depicted as a meditating skeleton seated on a globe that represents the world. At its feet, there is an empty cross with a ribbon that has inscribed the Latin words “Mors mortem superavit” (Death overcame Death) while Sin, represented in the form of a dragon, coils defeated at the foot of the Cross. La Canina precedes the sarcophagus in the procession.
In the European Catholic tradition, we see that prayer books, such as the numerous Books of Hours, illustrate the uneven access to sacred texts in Medieval societies. Rich patrons might commission artists to illuminate with exquisite taste single copies of bound manuscripts of prayers for their use or their family’s use only. Only the elites or those in powerful positions thus had access to commissioning, owning, and using these elaborate books of prayers. Unlike the books of prayers in the Western Christian tradition during the Middle Ages (c. 1100 – 1453), when not only access but also education for reading religious texts were for the power elites and the educated clergy, the prayers and texts of catechisms produced by missionaries for the evangelization of indigenous peoples in Mexico were meant to be accessed by the populace in their native languages, often accompanied by illustrations, glyphs and ideograms. However, like the illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages, Mexican codices were illustrated with the purpose of reaching an educated audience. In essence, the accessibility of those texts was dependent upon the division of power between those who wrote and produced the books, those who owned them, and those who read them.
Shortly after the conquest of Mexico, Catholic missionaries set out the task of evangelizing the indigenous people; thus, it became a vital strategy for the missionaries to learn indigenous languages in order to reach their mission. For that reason, bilingual indigenous – Spanish language dictionaries began to be produced in book form with the intent that these would facilitate the religious conversion of the indigenous population. In 2014, when I traveled again to Guadalajara, I had the opportunity to study some exemplars of prayer and catechism books in the archived collection of indigenous Mexican languages at the Juan José Arreola Public Library. This archive was originally in the libraries of Franciscan churches and universities, and became property of the Mexican state after the Mexican revolution. The collection includes books of prayers in Latin, Castilian Spanish, and indigenous languages.
Translating religious texts was certainly useful for the missionaries to communicate with the native Mexicans; however, Remesal and Sáenz de Santa María (1964) documented that the translation of fundamental religious concepts such as “God” from Castilian to indigenous languages was problematic because the way Aztecs conceptualized God was different from the concept of the Catholic missionaries. According to Remesal, Franciscan friars had printed and distributed a catechism in “the language from Guatemala” “to teach and indoctrinate” indigenous people. This translation ensued a controversy between the Dominican and Franciscan friars who were converting the Indians to Catholicism. On the one hand, the Franciscans followed Saint Paul’s use of the term “Theos” to contrast the Christian God with Jupiter, whereas the Dominicans used the Indians’ term for naming a God. Up until 1551, this difference in interpretation among the two religious orders was antagonistic, and the disagreement between the friars was “never settled, until the passing of time made everything to be forgotten” (p. 277).
Nowadays prayer books are not confined to the libraries of religious orders. Christian bookstores and websites of Catholic presses, such as Loyola Press, Pauline Books, Liguori Publications, and Oregon Catholic Press, enable people to easily find traditional books of prayers and a wide selection of praying cards both in English and Spanish. These bookstores and websites make prayer books available to people and religious organizations searching for spirituality and guidance in their religious life. Some of the Catholic books of prayers have a standard set of daily prayers for many occasions, and are dedicated to God, Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and numerous Catholic Saints; some other prayers are benedictions and invocations for grace. In some instances, the authors of the prayers are acknowledged, but more often the prayers are by unknown authors.
Similarly, in the case of Santa Muerte prayers, the authors are anonymous. Prayers to Santa Muerte were first introduced before the 1990’s and printed on tall votive candles in glass holders (Roush, 2012). Like other candles for Catholic saints, the image of the saint – Santa Muerte in this instance – is printed on one side and the prayer on the back. An Internet search produces sites that sell Santa Muerte paraphernalia, including praying cards. Images from those sites often juxtapose the Virgin of Guadalupe and Santa Muerte. Often in Mexican grocery stores in the USA, people can find and purchase Santa Muerte prayer candles in different colors for their private rituals.
Books that contain prayers and instructions for rituals to Santa Muerte are also found in popular street markets and esoteric shops in Mexico (Velázquez, 2006; Ambrosio, 2009). Velázquez and Ambrosio also provide instructions for altar preparations, and explanations on how to perform rituals for life’s challenges, such as getting a job, doing well in a job interview, or conquering love. One example of praying that I witnessed in Guadalajara was the presence of a man in his late thirties who came to the temple at “Las Juntas”. He was very well-groomed and was wearing clean, well-ironed black pants and a white shirt. He brought flowers for Santa Muerte. He knelt on a prayer bench in front of the altar, placed his offering, and with his eyes closed, he remained there in a quiet state of concentration and praying.
The cult of Santa Muerte and its prayers illustrate the power dynamics in Mexico. Santa Muerte devotees are “los sin poder” (the powerless). Roush (2014) refers to a power confrontation between “amparo y desamparo” (protection and loss of protection), which carries juridical and religious connotations (p. 130). As expressed by Luis I. Sáinz in the preface to Perdigón (2008), Santa Muerte devotees and their cult face constant prejudice and exclusion from Mexican mainstream society. Sáinz maintains that critics to the cult have pointed out at its lack of orthodoxy, a profession of faith without a liturgy, and Santa Muerte as “[a] version of the sacred that demonstrates” … “[a] universal idea that is devoid of intellectual refinement and doctrinal sophistication” (p. 12).
As a means to understand the issue of power relations in Mexico, where marginalization and resistance occurs, we can look at the disciplines of anthropology and sociology in the works of Scott (1985) and Martín (2017). Based on a discourse analysis of interviews given by Santa Muerte devotees in two documentary films about Santa Muerte, Martín (2017) argues that “Santa Muerte’s devotees’ frequently employ her dark side not because they are coded as suspect and criminal in Mexican society, but rather, as a means to acknowledge their representation as marginalized subjects and resist it” (p. 10-11). In the ethnographic research that led to his book “Weapons of the Weak”, Scott (1985) listed the “everyday forms of peasant resistance” of a farming community in Malaysia employed to resist the external efforts from power elites to industrialize rice production. Attitudes and actions such as “foot dragging, dissimulation, false compliance, pilfering, feigned ignorance, slander, arson, sabotage, and so forth” were all indicators of farmers’ discontent. “These … forms of class struggle have certain features in common. They require little or no coordination or planning; they often represent a form of individual self-help; and they typically avoid any direct symbolic confrontation with authority or with elite norms” (p. 29). We see similar actions of resistance from Santa Muerte devotees in the accounts of Perdigón (2008), Roush (2012), Chesnut (2012), and Martín (2017), but unlike Scott’s (1985) “ordinary weapons of relatively powerless groups” that are used to resist a hegemonic system in agriculture, Santa Muerte devotees resist the hegemonic system of the conquest. I contend these actions of resistance that Scott (1985) indicated need to be understood from an historical context, where vestiges of history and power struggle are present in the language of Santa Muerte prayers.