Mexican Spiritual Advisors

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-muerte7-2009dec07,0,4919726.story

The prayer in Spanish sounded like one from an ordinary Catholic Mass. But the man who led it wore a coyote-skin headdress and called himself the last of 13 generations of brujosbrujos -- witch doctors -- in his family.

The name the worshipers invoked was not that of the Virgin Mary but of Santa Muerte, or "Holy Death," a Mexican folk saint linked to narcotics trafficking, a kind of female grim reaper with a skull for a face.

About two dozen devotees recited a rosary and stood and sat on cue to offer praise to this unconventional icon one Sunday at a storefront shrine near MacArthur Park.

"Angel created by faith," they chanted, "allow the power in me to be released."

Santa Muerte is not a Catholic saint, and in recent decades her popularity in Mexico, especially among the poor and criminal classes, has led to clashes with church officials and government authorities. Her first adherents included Mexican prisoners, drug dealers and prostitutes, and those in legitimate but dangerous nighttime work, such as security guards and taxi drivers.

"It's sort of like the Virgin for people on the edge," said Patrick A. Polk, a folklorist and curator at UCLA's Fowler Museum.

But in and around Los Angeles, where Santa Muerte services are held in at least three storefront shrines, a dash of pop theology and Southern California sunshine seems to have given the movement a mild New Age flavor.

Followers, many of whom call themselves Catholics, talk less about death than about cleansing the spirit and developing inner strength.

"Everything depends on oneself," said Miguel Velasco, a former administrator and a "spiritual guide" at the 3-year-old Sanctuario Universal de la Santa Muerte on Alvarado Street. "You can believe in God, or a saint, or even a tree. But what really matters is the faith you have. Faith can move mountains."

Leaders here characterize the practice as benign, and devotees appear to draw from a broad cross section of people in immigrant neighborhoods -- manual laborers, public employees, couples with children, laid-off factory workers.



Despite the startling imagery, these worshipers say, their cult is centered on love and virtue and is becoming accepted.

"Years ago, they used this for witchcraft, to get certain things: money, revenge," said Santiago Guadalupe, who dons piles of wooden beads in addition to the headdress to give the weekly sermon at Sanctuario Universal. "Now it is more religion. It is about health, prayer."

Guadalupe wears a ponytail and possesses classic Aztec features: beaked nose, prominent brow, a wisp of a beard. He is from Catemaco, a town in Veracruz state where a Mexican subculture of alternative religion thrives. He said he began his training in the shamanistic arts as a child.

He helps run the sect from a pink office in the back of a tiny botanica up the street from the shrine. The walls are decorated with a sentimental painting of an Indian shaman in wolf skin, a sunset calendar and shelves containing incense and a bottle of Tapatio hot sauce.

From here, Guadalupe, who cited spiritual reasons in declining to give his age, works three phones at once, taking calls from clients all over the region seeking blessings or help with love affairs -- part of the all-inclusive spectrum of Santa Muerte devotion. There are also those requesting the more basic Shamanistic services: healing herbs, potions and readings of tarot cards and foreheads.

One recent afternoon, Guadalupe barked into one phone while reading the screen on a second, periodically cupping his hand over the mouthpiece to call out to customers in the botanica.

The customers wanted their fortunes told, and Guadalupe asked them to wait as he turned back to his phones, impatiently tapping a pen on the desk.

A large stack of tarot cards sat on the desk near him. Behind him, a large, glossy statue of the Virgin Mary caught the glare from the single lightbulb.

"People come for their jobs, for good luck at the casinos or for problems with a husband or wife," Guadalupe said.

"In Mexico, more came because they were having problems in their family. Here, they come because they feel alone."