Santa Muerte: Know Your Narco Saints

The religious iconography of the drug trade.

A A A Comments (0) By John Nova Lomax Wednesday, Sep 12 2012

Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe
(Our Lady of Guadalupe)
Official saint

This Nahuatl-speaking Virgin Mary miraculously appeared to the peasant Juan Diego during the Feast of the Immaculate Conception in 1531. That miracle helped fuse Spanish and native Mexican beliefs, and her mestizo-looking icon is now one of Mexico's national symbols. Garza says she is known as a patron of forgiveness, so he occasionally sees her altars in the homes of regretful suspects. Narcos know better than to ask her for criminal favors; for those, they turn most often to Santa Muerte or Jesús Malverde.

Juan el Soldado

San Judas Tadeo

Nuestra Señora de Guadelupe

Santo Niño de Atocha

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Santo Niño de Atocha
(Holy Child of Atocha)
Official saint

Like San Ramón, the Holy Child of Atocha's roots are in Moorish Spain. There in the city of Atocha, all the adult men were held captive by the Moors, and only young children were allowed to bring them food and water. A mysterious child wearing what Garza describes as "Little Dutch boy" clothes appeared with a seemingly inexhaustible supply, and the faithful soon noticed that the shoes on a statue of the Christ child at the local church were dirty and tattered. They believed that mysterious boy was Christ Himself leaving his perch at the church nightly on his missions of mercy.

Centuries later, the Holy Child appeared in the Mexican state of Zacatecas, where he performed a similar miracle to aid trapped silver miners.

Today the Holy Child is the patron of prisoners and travelers, both of whom are plentiful in the drug trade.

Some of the Holy Child's significance in narcocultura is geographical: He is also the patron of Zacatecas, a much-contested frontline between Mexico's drug cartels, and Arellano points out that Chimayó, New Mexico, the site of the Holy Child's most prominent North American shrine, is also known as the "Heroin Capital of the Southwest," with much of the supply of the Mexican black tar variety.

The shrine was not created to aid this trade. Around 1940, the army stationed many New Mexicans in the Philippines because of their facility with Spanish, and hundreds were taken prisoner by the Japanese. While captive, many prayed to the Holy Child, and those who survived built the shrine on their return.