Source: The Times
https://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1671984,00.html
In a small shop in one of this city's largest Mexican neighborhoods, Laura Martinez scans rows of candles bearing the images of Saint David, Saint Raphael, and Saint Jude. But she overlooks those and grabs two candles featuring Santa Muerte — Saint Death. "She's my patron saint," says the 24-year-old Martinez, who arrived here from a town outside Mexico City about six years ago. "You worship her," she says of Santa Muerte. "It's my religion."
Now appearing in New York, Houston and Los Angeles: Santa Muerte. The personage is Mexico's idolatrous form of the Grim Reaper: a skeleton — sometimes male, sometimes female — covered in a white, black or red cape, carrying a scythe, or a globe. For decades, thousands in some of Mexico's poorest neighborhoods have prayed to Santa Muerte for life-saving miracles. Or death to enemies. Mexican authorities have linked Santa Muerte's devotees to prostitution, drugs, kidnappings and homicides. The country's Catholic church has deemed Santa Muerte's followers devil-worshiping cultists. Santa Muerte has followed the thousands of Mexicans who've come to the U.S. And it is presenting a new challenge for American Catholic officials struggling with an increasingly multicultural population.
Santa Muerte's precise origins are a matter of debate. Some experts say its roots lie with Aztec spiritual rituals that mixed with Catholicism during Spanish colonial rule. What is clear, however, is that Santa Muerte developed a large following only in the last quarter century among Mexicans who had become disillusioned with the dominant Church and, in particular, the ability of established Catholic saints to deliver them from poverty. Residents of crime-tossed neighborhoods like Mexico City's Tepito began revering Santa Muerte more than Jesus Christ, experts say. Some of its devotees eventually split from the Catholic church and began vying for control of Catholic buildings. That's when Mexico's Catholic church declared it a cult.