Santa Muerte

• 1. Introduction

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  Santa Muerte, whose name means Saint Death, is a skeleton in a long robe who is asked for healing, protection and a safe journey to the afterlife. Her devotees are estimated at 12 million. They are concentrated in Mexico, Central America and the United States, with smaller groups in South America, Canada and Europe. R. Andrew Chesnut, a scholar of Latin American history and religious studies, places her at the center of the fastest-growing new religious movement in the Americas. Until the early 2000s, though, her worship was an occult practice, and her few public appearances often provoked harsh reactions. Where did a saint with a skull for a face come from? Why do people turn to her when other saints have not rescued them? And why do the Roman Catholic Church and Evangelical Protestant denominations condemn her while her following keeps growing?

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• 2. Aztec Roots, Posada's Skeletons

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  Mictēcacihuātl, the skeletal Aztec goddess of death, lost much of her worship after the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, but it was never wiped out. Researcher Judith Katia Perdigón Castañeda has found references to a death figure in 18th-century Mexico. One account in the annals of the Spanish Inquisition describes Chichimecs in central Mexico tying up a skeletal figure they called Santa Muerte. They threatened it with lashings unless it performed miracles or granted their wishes.

  Day of the Dead shows another blend of pre-Columbian and Catholic belief about death. Many Mexicans go to cemeteries to sing and pray for friends and relatives who have died. Children eat chocolate or candy shaped like skulls.

  Scholars disagree about how Indigenous Santa Muerte really is. Malvido, Lomnitz and Kristensen have argued that her origins are not Indigenous. Malvido links that view to an Indigenist discourse that began in the 1930s. Perdigón Castañeda, Thompson, Kingsbury and Chesnut reply that her origins lie in authentic Indigenous beliefs. Ethnoarchaeological research by Kingsbury and Chesnut, plus Perdigón Castañeda's archival work, has established clear links between worship of pre-Columbian death deities and appeals to Santa Muerte.

  At the start of the 20th century, José Guadalupe Posada created a secular cousin of the saint. La Catrina is a female skeleton dressed in the fancy clothing of her time. Posada's paintings of skeletons in daily life argued that death makes all human beings equal. They also portrayed the arbitrary and violent nature of an unequal society. Diego Rivera's mural Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in the Alameda Central features La Catrina.

  Over time, the image was commercialized and tamed. Skeletons appeared in extravagant dresses with braids in their hair. They became attractions for tourists and symbols of national folkloric identity rather than Posada's political message. The devotion to Santa Muerte followed a different path. American anthropologists reported it in the 1940s, in working-class Mexico City neighborhoods such as Tepito.

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• 3. Names and Symbols

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  The scythe in her hand has a long handle, which signals that it can reach anywhere. It reflects her origins as the Grim Reaper, la Parca of medieval Spain. It can stand for the moment of death, when it is said to cut a silver thread. It can also mean cutting away negative energies. Because a scythe is a harvesting tool, it can symbolize hope and prosperity too. The globe in her other hand represents her vast power over the earth. It may also be seen as a tomb to which everyone returns.

  Scales stand for equity, justice, impartiality and divine will. An hourglass marks the time of life on earth, and since it can be turned over, it suggests that death is not the end. It also stands for patience. An oil lamp represents intelligence and spirit, lighting the way through ignorance and doubt. An owl signifies wisdom, the ability to move through darkness and the role of messenger. Owls are tied to Mesoamerican death deities such as Mictlantecuhtli, which scholars read as evidence that death worship continued into Santa Muerte devotion.

  She is the only female saint of death in the Americas. Unlike other Latin American folk saints, she is not seen as a dead human being but as a personification of death itself. Her skeleton is not what marks her as female. Her clothing and hair do. The hair was introduced by a believer named Enriqueta Romero. Two male skeletal folk saints resemble her: San La Muerte of Argentina and Paraguay, and Rey Pascual of Guatemala and Chiapas, Mexico.

  Translators render her name as either Saint Death or Holy Death. Chesnut prefers Saint Death because it better reveals her identity as a folk saint. Devotees often use the variant Santísima Muerte, meaning Most Holy Death. Her nicknames are tender and blunt at once. They include the Skinny Lady, the Bony Lady, the White Girl, the Pretty Girl, the Powerful Lady and the Godmother. Some followers believe she is jealous, and that her image must never sit beside those of other saints or deities.

  One image has caused particular anger. GuadaMuerte merges Santa Muerte with the Virgin of Guadalupe. It shows her in a blue veil with stars, a red dress and a fiery yellow halo, often in a praying pose. According to news sources, it upset the Catholic Church so much that Santa Muerte leaders in Mexico advised against it. Some devotees are also furious that their formidable saint is confused with a completely separate figure.

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• 4. Colors and Candles

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  A polychrome candle with seven colors sometimes appears on her altars. Chesnut believed it was adopted from the seven powers candle of Santería, an Afro-Cuban faith brought to Mexico by Cuban migrants. Its colors are gold, silver, copper, blue, purple, red and green.

  Color is the grammar of this devotion. Votive candles carry her image on the front, and prayers matching the color's purpose on the back. White is the most common. It means gratitude, purity and the cleansing of negative influences. Red is for love, lust and passion, and can also signify emotional stability. Gold stands for money, success and prosperity. Green is for justice, legal matters or unity with loved ones. Blue is for wisdom and favored by students. Brown is used to call up spirits from beyond.

  Amber or dark yellow means health, and images in that color appear in rehabilitation centers, especially for drug addiction and alcoholism. Purple also signifies health. When the coronavirus arrived, devotees used black, purple, yellow and white candles to ask for healing and protection, as Kingsbury and Chesnut documented. Newer colors include silver, transparent and a red candle paired with a black gown.

  The red candle has the oldest job. Her first main purpose in colonial Mexico was love magic, which came over from Spain. Anthropological references from the 1940s to the 1980s mostly describe her as a lover sorceress. A devotee can light red to attract a lover, or to end a bad relationship and start another. Rituals call for ingredients such as red roses, rose water for passion, cinnamon for prosperity and a binding stick to unite the lovers.

  Black is the private color. It invokes protection and vengeance, and is linked to black magic. It is rarely seen at devotional sites and is usually lit at home. It has gentler uses too, such as reversing spells and clearing energetic blockages.

  Effigies are dressed to match the request. Some wear a bride's gown for those seeking a husband, or the habit of a medieval European nun. Each devotee adorns an image personally, with U.S. dollars, gold coins and jewelry.

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• 5. The Tepito Shrine

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  The address is 12 Alfarería Street, in Tepito, Colonia Morelos. In 2001, Enriqueta Romero built a shrine there for a life-sized statue of Santa Muerte, visible from the street. Many people regard this figure as the patroness saint of Tepito. Romero calls herself the chaplain of the shrine, a role she says she inherited from her aunt, who began the family practice in 1962.

  The shrine holds neither Catholic masses nor occult rites. People come to pray and leave offerings. Flowers, apples and other fruit, candles, toys, money, notes of thanks, cigarettes and alcohol gather around the statue. Large amounts of jewelry are pinned to her neck, arms and clothing. On the first Monday of each month the Romero family changes her dress. The house also holds a shop selling amulets, bracelets, medallions, books and images. Votive candles are its most popular item.

  On the first day of every month, Romero or an assistant leads prayers and the Santa Muerte rosary. It lasts about an hour and is based on the Catholic rosary. The biggest night is the anniversary on the 1st of November. The statue is dressed as a bride and wears hundreds of pieces of gold jewelry that the faithful gave in gratitude for miracles or to ask for one.

  The celebration begins at the stroke of midnight, and thousands come to pray the rosary. Marijuana smoke is used for purification in place of the incense Catholics traditionally burn. Guests are served cake, chicken with mole, hot chocolate, coffee and atole, while mariachis and marimba bands play. Santa Muerte has no official annual feast day. The 2nd of November, Day of the Dead, appears to be becoming the favored date, and others celebrate on the 15th of August.

  Most worship still happens at home altars. Chesnut describes the movement as generally informal and unorganized. Public shrines are multiplying, though. The one on Dr. Vertiz Street in Colonia Doctores is unique in Mexico City because it also features statues of Jesús Malverde and Saint Jude. Another stands in a small park on Matamoros Street, very close to Paseo de la Reforma. Shrines turn up in the backs of stores and gas stations.

  Botánicas, the shops that sell religious articles, depend on her. Chesnut found that many in Mexico and the United States stay in business through Santa Muerte merchandise, and numerous shops earn up to half their profits from it. Even Pasaje Catedral, behind the Mexico City Cathedral and devoted mostly to Catholic liturgical items, sells it. In Monterrey, Jackeline Rodríguez calls herself a Santa Muerte priestess and keeps a shop in Mercado Juárez beside tarot readers, healers and sorcerers.

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• 6. Who Prays to Her

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  As Señora de la Noche, the Lady of the Night, Santa Muerte is invoked by people whose work exposes them to danger after dark. These include taxi drivers, bar owners, police, soldiers and sex workers. Devotees believe she can protect against assaults, accidents, gun violence and all kinds of violent death.

  The movement reaches every social class in Mexico, but most followers are underemployed workers or members of the urban working class. They tend to be young, in their teens, twenties or thirties, and mostly female. Many are Mexicans and Hispanic or Latino Americans who are disillusioned with the institutional Catholic Church. They say its saints have not delivered them from poverty, corruption and violence.

  Some scholars call it a cult of crisis, because devotion has expanded during economic and social hardship. It draws people with scarce resources who are shut out of the formal economy, the courts and schools. Street vendors, taxi drivers, sellers of counterfeit goods, pickpockets, sex workers, drug traffickers and gang members are among those who follow her, and many are not practicing Catholics or Protestants. In essence, they built a faith that mirrors their own struggles.

  Her reach is wider than poverty. She is venerated in the affluent Mexico City districts of Condesa and Coyoacán. Smaller sectors of middle-class professionals follow her too. Higher social strata mostly look on with distaste, calling it superstition, though some artists and politicians perform rituals in secret. The Mexican police and military are counted among the faithful, asking blessings on their weapons and ammunition.

  LGBTQ+ people in Mexico also revere her as a protector. They ask her for protection from violence, hatred and disease, and for help finding love. Her intercession is commonly invoked at same-sex marriage ceremonies. The now-defunct Traditionalist Mexican-American Catholic Church, an independent denomination devoted to her, recognized gay marriages and performed religious weddings for same-sex couples. Rallies connecting queer identity to her have been held in Queens, New York.

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• 7. Across Borders and Screens

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  David Romo, founder of Mexico's first Santa Muerte church, estimated in the late 2000s that Mexico had around 5 million devotees. That was about 5% of the country's population. Growth since 2001 has been described as meteoric, largely thanks to her reputation for performing miracles. By the late 2000s she was Mexico's second-most popular saint, after Saint Jude, and rivaled the Virgin of Guadalupe, the country's national patroness.

  Around 2005, Mexican and Central American immigrants brought the devotion to the United States. By 2012 Chesnut suggested there were tens of thousands of followers there. It is most visible in cities with large Mexican and Mexican-American populations, including New York City, Chicago, Houston, San Antonio, Tucson and Los Angeles. Los Angeles alone has fifteen religious groups devoted to her, among them the Temple of Santa Muerte on Melrose Avenue in East Hollywood.

  In many places her appeal has spread beyond Hispanic communities. The Santisima Muerte Chapel of Perpetual Pilgrimage is maintained by a woman of Danish descent. The New Orleans Chapel of the Santisima Muerte was founded in 2012 by a non-Hispanic White devotee. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has issued no official position. Some Catholic elements, especially in Texas, New Mexico and Chicago, are nonetheless trying to combat the worship.

  The internet has become another altar. Videos, websites and music have been made in her honor. Devotees, called Santa Muertistas, are mostly women. They build online communities across platforms, share information and offer services such as healing and interventions. Members take active leadership roles, which adds to the movement's appeal for women.

  The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated all this, since many believed she would protect them from the virus. Facebook became a center for instant digital prayer, with devotees posting healing stories and virtual offerings to rebuke the illness.

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• 8. Crime and Condemnation

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  In August 1998, police arrested the notorious gangster Daniel Arizmendi López and found a shrine to the saint in his home. The press reported it widely. That discovery planted the lasting association in Mexican popular consciousness between Santa Muerte, violence and crime. Arizmendi, a kidnapper known as El Mochaorejas, is counted among her infamous devotees, along with Gilberto García Mena, a boss of the Gulf Cartel. Her shrines have been found in many drug houses in Mexico and the United States, and in many prison cells.

  Ritual killings seemingly inspired by or tied to her occurred during the height of Felipe Calderón's presidency. He declared war on the cartels and gangs after his inauguration in December 2006. In March 2012, Sonora State Investigative Police arrested eight people for allegedly sacrificing a woman and two ten-year-old boys to her. Silvia Meraz, a serial killer and cult leader, was convicted of three murders in Nacozari, Sonora, committed as human sacrifices between 2009 and 2012. In November 2024, a local religious leader devoted to her was shot dead at an altar. In 2025, authorities in Iztapalapa found altars while arresting three people in the Colonia Renovacion.

  Traffickers have an obvious reason to choose her. They avoid asking official Catholic saints to bless illegal acts, so some light her black candle to protect drug shipments across the border. Yet black candles sell far less than white, red and gold ones. Mexico's drug lords, such as those of La Familia Michoacana, have also used her to give their cause a sacred meaning that keeps foot soldiers disciplined. Mexican authorities and the press often connect her devotees to prostitution, drugs, kidnapping and homicide.

  In December 2010, David Romo Guillén, founder and archbishop of the Traditionalist Mexican-American Catholic Church, was arrested. The charge was managing funds of a kidnapping gang linked to a drug cartel. He was sentenced to 66 years for kidnapping and extortion, and his church had been stripped of legal recognition in 2006.

  The official response has been fierce. In March 2009, the Mexican Army demolished 40 roadside shrines near the U.S. border, saying she had been integrated with narco-culture. When Pope Francis visited Mexico in 2016, he repudiated her on his first full day in the country. He called her a dangerous symbol of narco-culture, and some news outlets have labeled her a narco-saint. In January 2013, vandals smashed a statue that had appeared in the municipal cemetery of San Benito, Texas.

  The Roman Catholic Church calls the devotion blasphemous and satanic, and a degeneration of religion. Evangelical Protestant denominations call it black magic and trickery. Catholic officials also object that her rites are modeled on Catholic liturgy, and that some devotees broke away and began competing for church buildings. Yet the Church stops short of calling followers heretics, accusing them of heterodoxy instead. Ironically, many of the military and police ordered to dismantle her shrines are devotees themselves. Priests tell parishioners that death is not a person but a phase of life. Many followers were baptized Catholic, but Santa Muerte churches and temples have instituted a separate baptism of their own.

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