Towards a Philosophy of Narco Violence in Mexico by Amalendu Misra

Author:Amalendu Misra
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan UK, London

One could mention a whole list of confirmed and unconfirmed gory goings-on surrounding offerings to La Santa Muerte. There have been regular reports of narcosatanicos carrying out human sacrifices across the country. A powerful criminal figure in the shanty town of Tepito in Mexico City (where she first appeared) is said to sacrifice virgins and babies to the deity once every year; there have been reports of various cartel members taking their rivals to her shrines and executing them as offerings; police in the north-eastern province of Tamaulipas have discovered a skeleton dressed as a bride at a La Santa Muerte altar in a house used to hold kidnap victims; and in the northern frontier province of Sinaloa, law enforcement agents have found 50 victims of a mass murder, all with tattoos and jewellery depicting La Santa Muerte.

Granted, the narcos and delinquentes have special needs. They inhabit contested and competing spaces of life and death. In such contexts the relevance of the Skinny Lady becomes all the more crucial. Perhaps extraordinary times require extraordinary measures (thus the justification of human sacrifice). But what about the masses? How does La Santa Muerte preside as a ‘master signifier’ in their daily lives? It is important that we focus on this ‘other constituency’ in order to explain the reach of La Santa Muerte at a much more general level.

G. is the chief persecutor in one of the southern provinces. Agnostic, of pure European blood, he has a doctorate in rational choice theory from a reputed Spanish university. I am his guest. I travel around the state as part of his entourage for one whole week. We rest in his country house for the weekend. In the middle of the night I wake up to the serial crowing of cockerels. In the morning I encounter many unfamiliar faces in the house. There is a shaman-like lady who has flown in from Mexico City the previous evening. She has prepared a makeshift altar in the living room. Bottles of tequila, cigarette packs, three separate coloured candles, flowers and a parchment of a book all sit in front of the image of the Skinny Lady. Later my host arrives dressed in pure white and sits before the altar with the shaman-like lady. One by one the lady who acts as the priestess slits the throats of the three cockerels who had been crowing outside my window the previous night. Silence. And then follows an elaborate ritual.

G. had enemies. His position made him vulnerable. Although he worked for the government the apparatus of the state did not guarantee complete safety. He needed protection. The religion he was born into, the religion of his forefathers, offered no protection against his detractors’ bullets. Thus his sister had to arrange this elaborate ritual for him. Thus the protection of La Santa Muerte had to be invoked through this sacrificial rite.

What do we make of all this in terms of a Girardian framework? What do we make of religion? ‘This means’,

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