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Street Shrine to Satan and Santa Muerte Removed in Mexico

Street Shrine to Satan and Santa Muerte Removed in Mexico

Last updated on: January 16, 2025 at 3:52 pm by Andrew Chesnut

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Street Shrine to Satan and Santa Muerte Removed in Mexico 2025-01-16T15:52:06-05:00 Andrew Chesnut

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In my four decades of research, travel, and living in Mexico I have seen hundreds of street and roadside shrines across the country. As you might imagine in a country that is 77% Catholic, the great majority of the shrines are dedicated to Catholic saints, especially the Virgin of Guadalupe, Saint Jude, Patron of Lost Causes, and various advocations of the Christ Child. However, since the folk saint of death, Santa Muerte, is the fastest growing new religious movement in Mexico (and across the planet), public shrines to the Bone Mother have mushroomed across the country over the past two decades. In my 16 years of research on Santa Muerte and other Mexican folk saints, what I had never ever seen was a public shrine to the Devil.

There are dozens of effigies of the Adversary at the Catedral de la Santa Muerte, founded and administered by Oscar Pelcastre, the “Black Bishop” of Pachuca, Hidalgo. And a few years ago one of his disciples opened a small satanic temple in Tepito, just a few blocks away from the iconic Santa Muerte shrine of devotional pioneer, Enriqueta Romero. But it all changed last week when I saw, for the first time, a street shrine dedicated to both Lucifer and the Skeleton Saint featured in viral Mexican news videos. The viral videos generated much indignation, especially among residents of the Mexico City neighborhood where it was erected.

The unique shrine, standing on a public median, was made mostly of glass and housed two life-size effigies. Satan in the form of The Black Angel, an advocation of Lucifer created and patented by Oscar Pelcastre, the “Black Bishop” of the Catedral de la Santa Muerte, was really the statue that caused most of the controversy. After two decades of being public in Mexico, folk saint Santa Muerte is a regular fixture at street shrines across the country. Both the Skeleton Saint and the Devil were dressed to the nines and had been regaled with impressive floral arrangements.

After complaints from neighbors, municipal authorities came to remove the altar, which caused great debate on social media as some applauded the government’s prompt action to remove it from public property while others spoke out on the freedom of worship, arguing it was not right to remove the shrine when there are Catholic ones on public sidewalks and medians across the city (and country).

The owners of the shrine protested vociferously on social media and revealed that they have the effigies in safekeeping. They promised that the polemical shrine will be re-erected, although they didn’t reveal the new location. In what many Catholics will regard as intentional provocation, the shrine owners announced that it will return somewhere in the Mexican capital on February 2, Candlemas Day, when the presentation of the Christ Child at the temple and the purification of the Virgin Mary are celebrated.

The announcement has already caused a heated exchange of comments on the Facebook page of the shrine owners foreshadowing the coming maelstrom once the controversial shrine is re-erected. I imagine that this time municipal authorities will mobilize with even greater celerity to dismantle the re-erected shrine. Nonetheless the Satanists will have pulled off a major publicity stunt giving greater visibility to a religious movement that is already in rapid expansion across the country.

Pagan

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