Summoning Saint Death: death-worshiping drug warriors on the rise?

What happens when spreading drug war violence combines with the worship of death?  A new article in Small Wars, "The Spiritual Significance of ¿Plata O Plomo?" (pdf), broods on what an aggressive conversion tactic suggests about new religious violence.  

Some notes follow here, as part of Infocult's focus on the Gothic in everyday life.  After all, the topic is death-worshiping underground violence.

For Gothic horror, the Small Wars article hits it right away:

instances of tortured victims and ritual human sacrifice offered up to a dark deity, respectively. Severed heads thrown onto a disco floor in Michoacan in 2005 and burnt skull imprints in a clearing in a ranch in the Yucatán Peninsula in 2008 only serve to highlight the number of such incidents which have now taken place. 

Or we can start with the Santa Muerte tradition, which goes beyond the Day of the Dead.  It seems to be an underground or simply marginal faith tradition, one growing over the past decade or so.  Santa Muerte is the Lady of Shadows, the Skinny or Boney Lady, the White Lady, holding a scythe in one hand and the Earth in the other.

Note the way Santa Muerte connects with social margins:

Most followers of Santa Muerte live on the margin of the law or outside it entirely. Many drug traffickers, mobile vendors, taxi drivers, vendors of pirated merchandise, street people, prostitutes, pickpockets and gang members... [Wikipedia]

Adherents number in the several millions.

Next, Santa Muerte streams into the current wave of Mexican drug cartel battles.  Belief is widespread enough in that world for the Bunkers to suggest that "this insurgency has at its basis a spiritual, if not religious, component".

In fact, if this connection holds, and the cartels continue to widen their conflicts, the Bunkers wonder if we'll see a growing wave of death-worshipping religious violence on both sides of the US-Mexican border.  The rise of "convert or die" tactics ("Plato o Plomo", silver=paid conversion/ lead=death) foretell an aggressive growth campaign.

One US military report thinks so, entitled "The Death Cult of the Drug Lords".

An alternative view is that the Santa Muerte faith changes once it enters the United States religious scenes.  A Los Angeles perspective sees it mellowing, become more New Agey.

Despite the startling imagery, these worshipers say, their cult is centered on love and virtue and is becoming accepted... "It is about health, prayer."

Gothic or New Age: such are the choices, sometimes.

Bonus: more on the Gothic horror aspects - 

Whereas the infamous ‘black cauldron’ incident in Matamoros in 1989, where American college student Mark Kilroy’s brain was found in a ritual nganga belonging to a local narco gang, was the rare exception, such spiritual-like activities have now become far more frequent.

(via Zenpundit)

Comments

[Steve B]

Good links in the metafilter post on Santa Muerte last month, too.

http://www.metafilter.com/91474/Santa-Muerte

[Charles Cameron]

Hi Bryan:

Thanks for this -- I've been following this story for some while, noted the recent posts on Small Wars Journal and Zenpundit, and am still hoping to write something up of my own. Your link to the "The Death Cult of the Drug Lords" analysis is particularly helpful.

From the POV of the "gothic" qualities of the story, I found the police photo of the Santa Muerte related narco-killer Gabriel Cardona particularly noteworthy -- his closed eyelids tattooed with an image of "eyes wide open" is pretty eerie, in an "uncanny valley" sort of way.

http://www.zimbio.com/Gabriel+Cardona/articles/1/Gabriel+Cardona+Tattooed+teenager+Mexican

I'll let you know if/when I have a more detailed write-up of my own.

[Charles Cameron]

Sadly, your blog format doesn't allow "A HREF" tags for URLs, and (at least on my browser) cut off the URL I posted where it exceeded the standard line length.

For the sake of those who would like to see the mysterious eyelid tattoo, which really is worth the effort IMO, the part of the URL after "articles/1/" should read:

Gabriel+Cardona+Tattooed+teenager+Mexican

[Bryan Alexander]

Agreed, Steve_B.

Good stuff, Charles!
This tinyURL should set you straight:
http://tinyurl.com/26vfk4a