Altars near and far

Churches in Brooklyn, NY this week.

While churches sit relatively undisturbed here in the north, the drug war in Mexico has increasingly led to religious persecution.

As Daniel Hernandez reports on his blog, the government has begun destroying shrines to ‘La Santa Muerte,’ or the patron saint of death. The Catholic Church has written off her following as a “diabolical cult,” and refuses to recognize her followers as proper Catholics. This is probably because her worshipers are stereotyped as being criminals and narco-terrorists. Daniel breaks it down nicely in this video and on his blog.

The idea of patron saints is something I found very compelling in Mexican culture. It’s a personally intimate system which might explain why the church is so upset about the growing popularity of a death saint. It feels comforting in a country full of death and destruction to be on her good side. Peace with death carries a powerful awareness of mortality and a comfort with life that can tend to worry organizations like the government and the church. Too often it seems like their only goals are to collect money and control the minds of the public. It can be seen quite plainly then, why the government would try to pin this renegade faction of Catholicism as a bunch of terrorists, and why they have been persecuting her followers.

Luckily for Mexicans, it’s much easier to tear down a statue than to destroy an empowering idea.

*thanks Daniel Hernandez for all the links and info. Check out his blog for all the info on Mexico you can handle.