Folk Saints Research Articles

King Death: The Origins and Identity of Guatemalan and Mexican Skeleton Saint, Rey Pascual

This article delves into the intriguing origins and identity of the folk saint Rey Pascual, a syncretic figure venerated in Guatemala and Mexico. Rey Pascual’s emergence is rooted in the blending of Catholic and Mayan beliefs, transforming the Spanish saint Pascual Bailón into a skeletal folk saint. Pascual Bailón, a sixteenth-century Franciscan friar known for his mystic and contemplative nature, was later venerated in the Americas following his alleged apparition in Guatemala during a typhoid epidemic. This apparition, a luminescent skeleton, promised to end the epidemic in exchange for being recognized as a patron saint. Over time, Rey Pascual’s cult evolved, incorporating elements from European Grim Reapers and Indigenous death deities, symbolizing a unique amalgamation of religious elements. His identity and veneration were further shaped by historical events, including persecution by the Catholic Church and state authorities in both Guatemala and Mexico. Despite these challenges, Rey Pascual’s following grew, with devotees attributing various miracles and protective powers to him. This article highlights Rey Pascual’s role as a symbol of resilience and spiritual agency, particularly among Indigenous and mestizo communities. It emphasizes how Rey Pascual’s story reflects the adaptability of religious beliefs in the face of cultural change and the enduring legacy of syncretism in Latin American religious life.

Santa Muerte: The most fashionable saint of the year

This article presents and analyses the relation between the cult of a Mexican folk saint, Santa Muerte (Saint Death), and fashion. The article describes the unique phenomenon and its complex history as an amalgamation of Christian and pre-Hispanic elements. Even with the cult’s growing recognition, Santa Muerte is still surrounded by controversies – lack of academic research and stereotypes presented by media and popular culture lead to numerous discrepancies such as erroneous image of the followers of Santa Muerte who are often depicted as criminals related to drug smuggling. The main part of the article focuses on the practices of building and decorating the altars, shrines and chapels for Santa Muerte. The text also highlights a spreading custom of designing various types of dresses and robes for the figures of the patron and the practice of modifying the figures themselves (adding ornaments, artefacts and various items). Some of these items and ornaments express the intentions of the prayers, holidays and individual preferences of the worshippers. Following sections present the impact of the cult of Santa Muerte (especially its aesthetical dimension) on the fashion industry, which is visible in the example of jewellery and clothing. The article concludes with an exploration of trends among the followers of Santa Muerte and their impact on the esoteric industry that is wide and rapidly developing in Mexico.

Przemiany ikonograficzne w kulcie Santa Muerte (Świętej Śmierci). Analiza wybranych przykładów

The article explores the transformations in the image of the most popular Mexican folk saint, Santa Muerte (Saint Death). Based on photographic documentation and in-depth interviews conducted during field research in Mexico in 2022 and 2023, an analysis of iconographic changes has been carried out, particularly evident in the case of Santa Muerte figurines. By examining the most widespread variants of figurines available in devotional and esoteric product shops, one can observe the influence of Afro-Caribbean beliefs, pre-Columbian heritage, medieval and baroque aesthetics, as well as local folklore and popular culture, which directly shape the iconographic sphere of Santa Muerte’s cult. Examples include the color palette and manner of decorating the figurines, the saint’s attributes, and offerings. The article illustrates how current iconographic transformations reflect changes in beliefs, rituals, and perceptions of Santa Muerte both among her followers and those outside this community.

Petitionary Devotion: Folk Saints and Miraculous Images in Spanish America

Petitionary Devotion: Folk Saints and Miraculous Images in Spanish America

Borderland (Narco) Folk Saints and Texas Media

This study investigates and reflects upon the interpretations of (narco) folk saints on the Texas–Mexico border by analyzing their recent representations in local Texan and national U.S. print media. These articles portray the melding of religion and crime to promote anti-immigration ideas and politics in Texas. To understand the connection between culture and crime on the Texas–Mexico border, this essay first delves into each aspect individually, providing their origins and historical context. An analysis of U.S. and Mexican statistics illustrates that many of the societal issues spurring the creation and devotion of folk saints remain prevalent in borderland culture today, including governmental shortcomings, dissatisfaction with the Church, social conditions, and media prejudice. The ubiquity of these themes in borderland daily life continuously incites more (narco) folk saint devotees, and Texas print media further distort the relationship among religion, culture, and crime until they eventually become inseparably intertwined in popular public opinion.

Autoethnography of Holy Death: Belief, Dividuality, and Family in the Study of Santa Muerte

Through an autoethnographic account that interweaves academic observations, my story of how I came to study Santa Muerte in Mexico and the entangled, emotive tale of Abby, a Santa Muerte devotee whom I grew very close to, I discuss the topic of belief in the ethnography of the occult and the “politics of integration”, derisively referred to “as going native”. I reveal how being an ethnographer of the Mexican female folk saint of death has taught me the necessity of dividuality and embracing belief in both the epistemological worlds of academia and the occult. I argue that slipping fluidly between the realm of science and the cosmos of magic has given me access not only to arcane knowledge and networks of practitioners but also through shared experiences of participatory consciousness with devotees of death during our rituals, proffered unique experiences, and new insights through intersubjectivity and interexperience, allowing me to understand the mystical power of Death Herself.

At Death’s Door in Cancun: Sun, Sea, and Santa Muerte

SummaryThis article describes a visit to a Santa Muerte shrine in Cancun, offering insight into why devotees are dedicated to the Mexican Saint of Death. Rites to the folk saint allow locals to express their needs and demands in a tourist city where they are otherwise beholden to visitors and their requirements. A quiet form of feminism is at play at the shrine, run by a woman, self‐identified bruja, shaman, and curandera, Yuri Mendez, and her all‐women team who support their community through their spiritual offerings and in return acquire prestige and financial independence.

Doctor Death and Coronavirus: Supplicating Santa Muerte for Holy Healing

Human beings have long turned to religion and faith healing to overcome illness and seek to delay death. In the context of the COVID‑19 pandemic, I consider how in Mexico, devotees of Santa Muerte are turning to the folk saint of death to ward off and recover from the virus. I argue that supplication of Santa Muerte during times of coronavirus offers a social critique on the current context in Mexico. The government has introduced budget cuts, reducing spending during this pandemic, and failed to provide adequate measures to protect already vulnerable citizens living in poverty and within the grips of the drug war, from COVID‑19. Frontline workers are labouring in unsafe conditions with inadequate protective equipment and protocols. As a result, the death toll has risen rapidly. Mexico is currently listed as having the fourth highest death rate. I describe how fearing death, many have turned to the saint of death for recovery from coronavirus and to prolong life. My argument also counters the popular portrayal of Santa Muerte as a narcosaint, that is to say a saint solely venerated by narcotraffickers. Instead, I reveal that she is a saint of healing.

Syncretic Santa Muerte: Holy Death and Religious Bricolage

In this article, we trace the syncretic origins and development of the new religious movement centered on the Mexican folk saint of death, Santa Muerte. We explore how she was born of the syncretic association of the Spanish Catholic Grim Reapress and Pre-Columbian Indigenous thanatologies in the colonial era. Through further religious bricolage in the post-colony, we describe how as the new religious movement rapidly expanded it integrated elements of other religious traditions, namely Afro-Cuban Santeria and Palo Mayombe, New Age beliefs and practices, and even Wicca. In contrast to much of the Eurocentric scholarship on Santa Muerte, we posit that both the Skeleton Saint’s origins and contemporary devotional framework cannot be comprehended without considering the significant influence of Indigenous death deities who formed part of holistic ontologies that starkly contrasted with the dualistic absolutism of European Catholicism in which life and death were viewed as stark polarities. We also demonstrate how across time the liminal power of death as a supernatural female figure has proved especially appealing to marginalized socioeconomic groups.

Christ in Yaqui Garb: Teresa Urrea’s Christian Theology and Ethic

A healer, Mexican folk saint, and revolutionary figurehead, Teresa Urrea exhibited a deeply inculturated Christianity. Yet in academic secondary literature and historical fiction that has arisen around Urrea, she is rarely examined as a Christian exemplar. Seen variously as an exemplary feminist, chicana, Yaqui, curandera, and even religious seeker, Urrea’s self-identification with Christ is seldom foregrounded. Yet in a 1900 interview, Urrea makes that relation to Christ explicit. Indeed, in her healing work, she envisioned herself emulating Christ. She understood her abilities to be given by God. She even followed an ethic which she understood to be an emulation of Christ. Closely examining that interview, this essay argues that Urrea’s explicit theology and ethic is, indeed, a deeply indigenized Christianity. It is a Christianity that has attended closely to the religion’s central figure and sought to emulate him. Yet it is also a theology and ethic that emerged from her own social and geographic location and, in particular, the Yaqui social imaginary. Urrea’s theology and ethics—centered on the person of Christ—destabilized the colonial order and forced those who saw her to see Christ in Yaqui, female garb.

Holy Death in the Time of Coronavirus: Santa Muerte, the Salubrious Saint

As Santa Muerte prayer cards and candles circulate in Mexico with petitions of protection against COVID-19, we consider death as doctor in these tumultuous times proving that the folk saint of death is not solely a narco-saint, as the press depicts, but is supplicated for miracles of COVID healing and protection from the virus. We not only reveal the importance of religion for coping with pandemics but also focus on the notion of death as healing and as a giver of life. We decolonize knowledge of Santa Muerte and explore the saint’s syncretic origins, hailing not only from the European Grim Reaper during times of plague but also from Indigenous thanatological epistemologies that account for her dual powers of gifting life and also doling out death.

Death is Women’s Work: Santa Muerte, a Folk Saint and Her Female Followers

Santa Muerte is a new religious movement that originated in Mexico. It centers on devotion to death. It has come under fire from the Catholic Church, the Mexican State, and mass media across the Americas. In misrepresentations that are often racist, and sexist, Santa Muerte has been portrayed by the above institutions as a ‘narco-saint’, that is a saint worshiped by narcotraffickers, and the religion portrayed as one that only violent, barbaric males follow This article counters this erroneous depiction suggesting that devotion to death is women's work. I detail how Santa Muerte has long been appealed to by women who have been at the fulcrum of the expansion of the movement. I describe how knowledge of Santa Muerte continues to be germinated by women who through gynocentric thanatological praxis are empowered and fashion spaces in which to deal with the violence, precarity and poverty that riddles the Mexican post-colony.

Not Just a Narcosaint: Santa Muerte as Matron Saint of the Mexican Drug War

Santa Muerte is a Mexican folk saint who personifies death. Santa Muerte has been depicted as a narcosaint, that is to say a saint propitiated only by those who belong to drug cartels, in particular by the Mexican State. As a consequence, the Mexican army, under orders from the Mexican State, has obliterated thousands of shrines dedicated to the folk saint across the country. However, as we evince, the popular figure has followers in all camps involved in the drug war. Both narcos and those who fight them, prisoners and prison guards, venerate the folk saint, turning to her for spiritual favours, protection and even to predict death. This diverse group of people, although divided by their differing positions in the drug war, turns to her for parallel reasons, to explain, predict and control events. As such, Santa Muerte rather than being a narcosaint should be considered the Matron Saint of the Drug War.

A Miami Misterio: Sighting San Martín de Porres at the Crossroads of Catholicism and Dominican Vodú

The supernaturalism associated with San Martín de Porres places him at the crossroads of institutional Catholicism and the Vodú of the Dominican Republic and its Miami, Florida migrant community. Despite Martín's official May 6, 1962 canonization as an emblem for the Second Vatican Council's updated sensibilities on racial and social justice, Martín's racial heritage and his mystic associations positioned Martín as an emergent folk saint (misterio) for practitioners of Vodú in the 1960s. This uptick of San Martín de Porres "sightings" within Dominican folk religion reveals the dialogic reformations of Dominicanidad (Dominican national-religious identity) in consequence of the momentous changes wrought by the 1960s. The assassination of dictator Rafael Trujillo (1961), the ensuing Dominican Civil War and U.S. occupation (1962–1965), and the abolishment of the U.S.'s national-origins quota system (1965) each worked in tandem to create a mass-exodus of Dominicans to the United States. Within the Church, the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), the Medellín Conference (1968), and their approach to popular religion and liberation theology further transformed Dominican identity and experience. This study is situated in the Archdiocese of Miami, Florida, a geographic and cultural hub for the Afro-Catholic diaspora. There Dominican Vodú spiritism is a practice that illustrates the sacred and transnational dimensions of Hispaniolan historical experience as worked out between devotees and the agentive personalities of their misterios.

Religiosity at the roadside: memorials, animitas, and shrines on a Chilean highway

ABSTRACTRoadside memorials devoted to vehicle-related deaths are increasingly common across the globe. Scholars have generally emphasised their commemorative status—as sites where a private memory is publicly displayed—underestimating, however, their religious dimension. This article is based on research which involved the content analysis of photographs taken during multiple visits to the 94 roadside memorials existing in 2015 on Route 78, a major Chilean highway connecting Santiago (Chile’s capital city) and San Antonio (one of the country’s main sea ports). We argue that Chilean roadside memorials are not solely commemorative sites but primarily animitas that have a core (popular) religious component: they are privileged locations where salvific grace is dispensed, acting as mediators between the living and the divinity and connecting the sacred and profane worlds. Furthermore, we suggest that the tragic nature of the deaths they commemorate confers on them a miraculous efficacy which may transform the sites into shrines and the victims into folk saints.

El arte de la subversión en la España inquisitorial: Fernando de Rojas y Francisco Delicado (con dos notas de Cervantes) by Manuel da Costa Fontes

Reviewed by: El arte de la subversión en la España inquisitorial: Fernando de Rojas y Francisco Delicado (con dos notas de Cervantes) by Manuel da Costa Fontes Patricia W. Manning Manuel da Costa Fontes. El arte de la subversión en la España inquisitorial: Fernando de Rojas y Francisco Delicado (con dos notas de Cervantes). iberoamericana / vervuert, 2018. 470 pp. in the preface to this translation and update of his study of literary modes of subversion (originally published in 2005 as The Art of Subversion in Inquisitorial Spain: Rojas and Delicado [Purdue UP]), Manuel da Costa Fontes affirms: "traté de poner el libro al día, incorporando la crítica pertinente que ha aparecido durante los últimos años" (15). While the Spanish-language version represents a solid contribution to the field, it would have benefited from deeper engagement with scholarship published since 2005. This is not to suggest that no changes have been made. In this new edition, Costa Fontes cites from the Spanish translation of Henry Kamen's now classic book on the Spanish Inquisition (La Inquisición española: mito e historia, translated by Juan Rabasseda and Teófilo de Lozoya, Crítica, 2013). And the bibliography relating to the literary works that Costa Fontes analyzes generally has been updated; however, gaps become more apparent in the volume's underpinning arguments. For example, chapter 1 ("El problema converso") characterizes the first centuries after the Muslim conquest of 711 as a "período de tolerancia en el que cristianos, musulmanes y judíos vivían juntos, en coexistencia pacífica" and "convivencia" that came to an end as Christians came to control more territory (17–18). This notion of medieval convivencia overlooks recent work that offers a more complex picture of coexistence among the three religious communities in Iberia. To mention only one example, David Nirenberg's assertion "that violence was a central and systemic aspect of the coexistence of majority and minorities in medieval Spain" (Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages, Princeton UP, 1996, p. 9) offers an important counterpoint to the picture of amicable cohabitation that should have been taken into consideration. Moreover, this and Nirenberg's other books, along with Patricia E. Grieve's monograph (The Eve of Spain: Myths of Origins in the History of Christian, Muslim and Jewish Conflict, Johns Hopkins UP, 2009), could have enriched [End Page 251] an argument that at times seems overly focused on Christian-Jewish (or -converso) relations. Another shortcoming is that Costa Fontes includes relatively few references to Muslims (or Moriscos) in Iberia and only considers the Mediterranean settings of the Retrato de la Lozana andaluza (hereafter La Lozana) in appendix 2, which discusses Moriscos in Don Quijote. Also in chapter 1, Costa Fontes alludes to rumors about Jewish residents' purported murders of children in Spain without referencing Grieve's analysis of devotion to El Niño de la Guardia, a folk saint whose popular devotion fanned the flames of anti-Semitism (Grieve 98–104). Another issue emerges when Costa Fontes draws attention to the tendency to encode erotic language in the guise of less sexualized content (195n158, 255); on such occasions, his arguments would have been enhanced by reference to Adrienne Laskier Martin's study (An Erotic Philology of Golden Age Spain, Vanderbilt UP, 2008). An important addition Costa Fontes makes to his study of subversion with this Spanish translation relates to the two appendices concerning works by Miguel de Cervantes. Appendix 1 ("El poder nivelador del amor en La española inglesa") examines the role love plays in the exemplary novel. Beyond the redeeming value of love, the analysis of this novella also concerns the converso community. Isabela's status as a Catholic Spanish woman in England not only analogously references the status of the converso community in Spain, but also the case of María Nunes, a Portuguese Jewish resident of Amsterdam kidnapped by English forces, "la cual, sin duda, sirvió de inspiración a Cervantes" (375). While it is certainly possible that a reader interested in converso culture would make these connections, it also seems equally likely that readers, especially those residing in Spanish communities that...

Szkielet znaczeń. Meksykański kult Santa Muerte w perspektywie semiotycznej.

The article provides an overview of chosen aspects of the cult of Santa Muerte („Saint Death”) in Mexico from a semiotic perspective. What distinguishes Santa Muerte from other Mexican folk Saints is her astonishing, constantly growing popularity in recent decades, as well as her exceptional receptiveness to elements originating from diverse currents of popular religiosity, including commercial esoterics, neopagan practices, and Cuban Santeria. These differenials can be explained by indicating a set of particular features that enable to qualify Saint Death as a „semantic lens”.

New Directions in Catholic Historical Research: Saints in Social Work

ABSTRACTFor over half a century now, the profession of social work has ignored calls to develop critical infrastructures for strengthening and expanding historical research in schools of social work. Since World War II, for example, doctoral dissertations involving significant historical research in schools of social work have become virtually extinct. The vanishing of these dissertations represents a simultaneous vanishing of social work's capacity to detect historical figures who are indigenous to and yet have remained undetected in social work history. As a result, and unintentionally, social work scholars have been seemingly unable to detect Louise de Marillac as the patron saint of social workers or Ellen Gates Starr as a popular folk saint among social workers in Catholic religious orders. The study includes the rare, post-mortem photograph of Ellen Gates Starr, dressed in the full habit of a Catholic Benedictine nun.

The Scythe and the Pentagram: Santa Muerte from Folk Catholicism to Occultism

Santa Muerte is establishing a presence among practitioners of contemporary occultism in Europe and North America. The occult milieu is highly different from the Mexican cult of Santa Muerte, having a strong heritage of secrecy and tradition as social capital and being mostly middle-class in orientation. Nonetheless, this Catholic folk saint with a mostly pragmatic, popular, and grassroots cult is becoming increasingly popular among occultists. Based on a survey of three recent books on Santa Muerte geared towards an Anglophone, occult audience, it is therefore the aim of this article to understand how and why the Skeleton Saint is attracting adherents in the occult milieu, by analyzing the underlying causes of this growing trend, as well as the conditions shaping it. It is the overall argument of this article that the beginning reception of Santa Muerte in occultism is a result of perceived needs and demands specific to the occult milieu rather than characteristics inherent in the symbol itself, and that an analysis of the ways in which she is spreading outside of her original sociocultural context must be guided by an understanding of the novel one she is integrated in.

Santa Muerte as Emerging Dangerous Religion?

Santa Muerte is one of the fastest growing folk saint movements in Mexico. She has a core following in Mexico among dispossessed populations, but also devotees from a broader swath of the Mexican population. This article analyzes the development of Santa Muerte veneration in Mexico since 2000. I argue that, from a structural analysis perspective, Santa Muerte veneration is on the threshold of designation and treatment as dangerous religion, although its eventual status remains contingent. The movement’s status will be determined by three interacting factors: (1) a core membership of outsider and dispossessed populations; (2) symbolic and social organization in a form that challenges the legitimacy and authority of the institutions of church and state; and (3) institutional control measures that contest the legitimacy of its symbolic presentation and organizational practices. I suggest several alternative developmental scenarios based on these factors.