Nuestra Señora de las Sombras: The Enigmatic Identity of Santa Muerte

Introduction

In the colorful barrios of Mexico City, the figure of Death is ubiquitous. The lures and dangers of narco-culture, the violence among competing youth gangs, the haunting realities of an economy in collapse, and the gravelly fight to survive in a Tepito marketplace: Mexicans face the reality of death on a daily basis. Out of this chaotic social scene, and in a twist of sacred irony, Mexicans are turning to an image of Death, Santa Muerte, to protect them from uncertainties of their everyday lives. A skeletal figure draped in royal robes or dressed in the virgin’s shroud, Saint Death is both Grim Reapress¹ and Angel of Mercy, offering hope to a society threatened with hopelessness. While Santa Muerte’s plastic iconographic representations may suggest a hard character, by contrast, Santa Muerte has an ambiguous and malleable identity that is essential to its growth in a society full of uncertainty. When death is the only guarantee, it seems like Death is the only one to be trusted.

A Broken Social Scene : Mexico ’s Dangerous and Rapidly Changing Social Realities

Former Mexican president Felipe Calderón’s declaration of war on the cartels in 2006 was received with praise by North American politicians.² In their view, it seemed as though the Mexican government was finally taking a strong stand against the cartels and that there would be a swift resolution to the social problems associated with drug trafficking. This open war declared on the cartels has resulted in an escalation of drug violence and forced several dramatic changes to the safety of Mexico and its already chaotic social scene. Military personnel, paramilitary groups, and the cartels have been fighting for control in the country and have created a state of panic in the border towns and beyond. Discoveries of mass graves, decapitations, and other forms of drug-related violence³ are reported every day and photographed for all to see—indeed, the photos often appear on the front page of local, national, and international newspapers. The panic and violence experienced in the north has begun to gradually make its way south and is reaching areas that were once considered “safe.” According to the BBC, from 2006 to 2012, more than 50,000 individuals have died from drug-related violence. The violence seems unending.

Amidst drug-violence instability the once strong and influential Mexican Catholic Church has been losing credibility, support, and members. This loss of faith in the Catholic Church could be caused by many factors: general pessimism, individuals searching for other forms of faith, and the result of the church’s support for governing political parties.⁴ Although faith in the Virgin of Guadalupe is still strong amongst the Mexican people, many believers have also turned for comfort and refuge to a new saint. In recent years, a mysterious figure has appeared in the midst of all this chaos in Mexico: Santa Muerte (literally, Saint Death or Holy Death). The shrouded skeletal representation of Death has gradually been making her mark on the streets of Mexico City. She used to be found only in the socially marginalized barrio of Tepito—an area of Mexico City associated with crime, violence, and prostitution—but now Santa Muerte is making her way around the city and can be found in middle-class neighborhoods such as the Condesa district. Santa Muerte is also mobile. Her life-sized figure is taken on weekly processions on a cart around the historical downtown area in front of the Metropolitan Cathedral, the government buildings (Palacio de Gobierno), and the pedestrian street Madero.

Who is this Santa Muerte? Anthropologists and historians such as J. Katia Perdigón Castañeda and R. Andrew Chesnut agree that veneration of Santa Muerte is based on a combination of Catholic imagery and rituals as well as pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican gods and rituals.⁵ This explanation seems convincing at the iconographical level, as one’s first glimpse of Santa Muerte will conjure up images from our collective memory of the fifteenth-century representations of the Grim Reaper...