Santisma de Muerte
Comments(1) I’ve recently become interested in this figure narco gangsters pray to in the ongoing northern Mexican drug wars, Los Zetas and others. The Santa Muerte cult in some ways seems similar to Indian Thugee cults who worshiped Kali. More research is needed. See also Maximon.
My first hint of such things I encountered seeing “death porn” magazines in LA during my first trip out there in ’94. There was a general pre-millenial crazy with killers and satanism in the 90′s, a throwback to the big 70′s craze, which included all sort of paranormal interest, from biorhythms to Est. There was a claim that many of the corpses shown mutilated in these magazines were victims of satanic cults in Mexico. It sounds like the usual nonsense hysteria when presented like that, but when you dig a little deeper, there are actual beliefs going on that help sustain, along with the chemicals, weapons and money, the malicious cycles of violence.
PRI’s The World had a story on the cult 3/1/09. Here’s a link to the accompanying pictorial
http://www.theworld.org/images/slideshows/santamuerte/index.html