You may have heard of the "Narco-Saint" Jesus Malverde and La SantÃsima Muerte. These unofficial "folk" saints are very popular in Mexico among the poor and apparently with drug traffickers, hitmen, other bogeymen of the Prohibition state. All, we suppose, groups of people immersed in a violent milieu and with little faith in the system. They put their faith in only one true certainty.
According to this article in the Washington Post, the Mexican government has added destroying shrines to Santa Muerte to its list of ways to fight the drug cartels.
"A skeletal figure of a cloaked woman with a scythe in her bony hand, the Santa Muerte has become more popular in Mexico even as its drug wars have become more violent. Mexican law enforcement won't say outright it is targeting Santa Muerte, but last month soldiers stood guard while government backhoes crushed more than 30 public shrines to the saint in Nuevo Laredo, across the Rio Grande from Laredo, Texas. In the two weeks before, several altars in Tijuana and an altar built on the highway between Reynosa and Rio Bravo were razed."
That's a really odd reaction ... Attacking their god?
ReplyDeleteSomehow, I'm convinced--though I cannot say why--that this has something to do with the African pirates.
Poor, sad, beautiful Mexico.