17.7: Pagan Saints of Mexico

For centuries, there was one primary saint Mexicans turned to for protection: the Virgin of Guadalupe. Then, beginning in the 1990s, the popularity of a new saint began to take hold: the skeletal Santa Muerte or Saint Death. The Catholic Virgin of Guadalupe overlapped with an ancient Aztec goddess in ways that blurred the boundary between Christianity and paganism. Similarly, Santa Muerte emerged as a liminal and uncertain figure on the edges of Mexican spirituality.