Our Most Holy Death

Born at the crossroad between Catholicism, Yoruba and shamanism around the 50’s, then considered a prison cult since the 70’s, the cult of the Santa Muerte since at least ten years has been regarding not exclusively Mexican gangsters‘ spirituality, and it has been diffusing as a popular devotion that became a congregation of three million people in the only Mexico City. Three hundred altars are dedicated to Santa Muerte, a full-size skeleton dressed like a Virgin Mary, to which people ask protection from the crime as well as for the crime, people asks to survive and to be able to kill. The devotion is obviously strong in the most popular districts, where people usually fear for their own life and where the mothers ask her protection for their own sons.