Abstract
One of the more intriguing religio-ethnic phenomena of the 21st century is the explosion of Santa Muerte in the Mexican social scene. Santa Muerte—“Saint Death” or “Holy Death”—looks like a Grim Reapress: a skeletal figure clothed in robes of the Virgin Mary and adorned in religious symbols. While this new religious movement has 18th-century roots, it only went public a decade ago, and one of its purported leaders, the recently incarcerated David Romo Guillén, claims that there are five million devotees. This sort of popular growth certainly warrants attention, but most Mexican and American media coverage of the movement has tended to focus on the Santa Muerte’s connections with the violent narco-culture of Mexico’s poorest barrios and the northern borderlands. This narrow focus makes Devoted to Death an essential correction to popular opinion.
R. Andrew Chesnut has written two other important books in Latin American religious studies: Born Again in Brazil: The Pentecostal Boom and the Pathogens of Poverty (1997) and Competitive Spirits: Latin America’s New Religious Economy (2003). Chesnut focuses his extensive field research and his long career as an historian in post-Catholic Latin American spirituality into a highly accessible and remarkably readable field guide to Santa Muerte (SM) devotion.
A quick Google image search of “Santa Muerte” will demonstrate the colourful nature of this street spirituality. As a heurism for explaining SM and as a tool to structure his book, Chesnut uses the seven-coloured devotional candle that followers can find in any esoterica shop. In the Introduction, Chesnut gives some historical background and a basic definition of SM: “an unofficial … female folk saint who personifies death, … heals, protects, and delivers devotees to their destinations in the afterlife …” (7). He paints the picture of a popular saint—like Jesús Malverde or San La Muerte—who is a “formidable multitasker” (25) and provides her followers with miracles, much like the growing charismatic movements of Brazil. SM’s pliable identity allows her to evolve into a religious figure who is able to respond to Mexicans’ personal needs.
As the candle for wisdom and knowledge, the brown candle of chapter one provides the history and origins of the “cult.” While Chesnut’s historical sketch is not novel, particularly in SM’s connection with pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican deities, he draws together some threads that help us understand SM better. In particular, he puts Santa Muerte in the context of Spain’s feminine Grim Reaper, La Parca. He demonstrates a subversive SM following in the 1790s which re-emerges in the 1940s as a love charm (see chapter four, the red candle), and increases in popularity from that point until the first evangelist in 2001, Tepito street vendor Doña Queta. While there is much work to be done on the historical links for Santa Muerte from shrouded beginnings to cloaked public figure today, Chesnut’s sketch is informative.
Chesnut’s second chapter, the white candle of devotion, is probably his most helpful. In it he describes the intricate and sophisticated rituals and beliefs of Santa Muertistas. While the casual reader is likely to be both intrigued and horrified by the beliefs and praxis of devotees, it is this spiritual expression that takes up most of the book. The black candle, chapter three, is the votive candle lit to protect believers from harm, but also provides curses for a devotee’s enemies. Chesnut makes the helpful correction that Santa Muerte is not just the patroness of drug lords, as the popular media suggest, but the patron saint of the drug war, protecting criminals, officials, and innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire. The gold candle (chapter six) promises prosperity and abundance, a highly relevant miracle in a state of economic uncertainty and skyrocketing youth unemployment. The purple candle (chapter seven) and the green candle (chapter eight) are requests for healing and justice, respectively: in a country that fails its weakest citizens in both health care and the administration of justice, SM can fill in the gaps.
The result of Chesnut’s research is an enlightening look at a budding movement, based on his own research. He focuses too narrowly on Santa Muerte’s role as folk saint, and the connection of Santa Muerte as healer with Brazil’s Pentecostal communities misses distinctions in spiritual formation. Overall, however, Devoted to Death is an essential first resource in understanding not just Mexico’s chaotic social scene, but North America’s rapidly evolving religious landscape.