Borderlands Saints: Secular Sanctity in Chicano/a and Mexican Culture

5. Illegal Marginalizations: La Santísima Muerte

182 5 illegal Marginalizations la santísima Muerte “Santa Muerte hears prayers from dark places. She was sent to rescue the lost, society’s rejects. ‘She understands us, because she is a cabrona like us. . . . We are hard people and we live hard lives. But she accepts us all, when we do good and bad,’” claims Haydé Solís Cárdenas, a resident of Mexico City’s infamous barrio Tepito and devotee of La Santísima Muerte or Saint Death (Thompson n.p.). Solís Cárdenas, a street vendor who sells smuggled tennis shoes for a living, feels an affinity with Santa Muerte not as a righteous, holy inspiration but as a tarnished outsider much like herself. Secular saints like La Santísima Muerte, who is the unofficial patron of the poor, the criminals, and the sinners, in general, are outsiders who straddle the line between good and evil or sacred and secular. Although devotees from all walks of life worship Santa Muerte, she is especially important to those who live on the margins of society, such as undocumented migrants, taxi drivers, truck drivers, prostitutes, drug addicts, and criminals in Mexico, the United States, and beyond. Perhaps because of her link to marginalization and illegality, she has exponentially risen in popularity on both sides of the border in terms of media attention, cultural production, and academic studies . Many scholars attribute the death saint’s increase in popularity in Mexico to the economic crisis of 1994, also known as the efecto tequila (tequila effect), during which the Mexican peso sharply decreased in value and the middle class lost most of its buying power (Gil Olmos 91–92). The crisis intensified Mexican migration to the United States, as many sought to escape ever more precarious economic conditions. In the past fifteen years or so, Santa Muerte has found a home in cities and regions of the United States with large populations of Mexican migrants, while in Mexico today only Jesus and the Virgin of Guadalupe have illegal Marginalizations 183 more devotees.1 Whether Santa Muerte is viewed as a solution in times of crisis or as just another manifestation of crisis, she is popular precisely because of her controversial and contradictory nature. Devotees and critics alike are simultaneously fascinated and frightened by her. The focus here is on La Santísima Muerte as the most contradictory figure within the contemporary culture of secular, seemingly sinful or lawless, and explicitly cross-border sanctity. Santa Muerte is famous for being very miraculous and loyal but also for being a jealous, vengeful patron who requires the utmost devotion and respect and favors offerings of fruit, candy, liquor, and cigars. She is known by a variety of nicknames, such as “La Niña Blanca” (White Girl) or “La Flaca” (Skinny Girl), and many of her followers refer to her with loving, familial endearments such as “Mi Reina” (My Queen), “Mi Niña Bonita” (My Beautiful Girl), “Madrina” (Godmother), or “Holy Mother,” even as they may feel a great deal of fear toward her. She is represented as a skeleton, dressed in hooded robes, as a bride, or in other elaborate, hand-made clothing, wigs, and jewelry that change depending on the calendar or on the moods of her devotees.2 She often carries a sickle, a globe of the world, an hourglass, and the scales of justice. Like her followers , and indeed like every human, she is potentially good and bad at once. A true secular saint, Santa Muerte is not venerated for her purity or holiness but for her accessibility to the masses on both sides of the border and her resistance to the powerful forces of the state, the Catholic Church, and wealthy elites. A statue of Santa Muerte dressed a bride, seen outside of a shrine in Tepito, Mexico City. Copyright Jan Sochor, May 1, 2010. 184 Borderlands Saints As a symbol of death—both the only certainty of life and its polar opposite— Santa Muerte most fully embodies the duality between accessibility and inaccessibility that all saints represent. Since all humans must face death, both that of others and their own, La Santísima Muerte is the great equalizer across class and social distinctions and racial, gender, or sexual hierarchies. Judith Butler reiterates the unifying power of death, suggesting that it is the only thing that might unify diverse people as a collective, however reluctant: “Despite our differences in...