Santa Muerte Devotion

Vulnerability, Protection, Intimacy

Wil G Pansters author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:27th Mar '25

Currently unavailable, currently targeted to be due back around 30th April 2025, but could change

Santa Muerte Devotion cover

Examining the voices and practices of devotees demonstrates that Santa Muerte devotion is about securing a good life.

This Element deconstructs mainstream views of Santa Muerte devotion by privileging the voices of devotees. Counterintuitively, Santa Muerte devotion is about assuring a good life in health, work, love, justice, and security. It also studies how gender, family, leadership, and political relations intersect with the cult.In recent decades the cult of Santa Muerte has become a remarkable phenomenon in Mexico's popular religious landscape, from where it has migrated abroad. Due to the uncommon iconography of the robed skeleton and the association with criminality, the Santa Muerte cult has been the object of public controversy. This Element deconstructs mainstream views of Santa Muerte devotion by privileging the voices and practices of devotees. Counterintuitively, Santa Muerte devotion is about assuring a good life in health, work, love, justice, and security. Notwithstanding the cult's rapid growth and public visibility since 2000, it is deeply embedded in Mexico's religious and cultural history. The analysis of material culture, theology, and ritual demonstrates the importance of devotional intimacy. This Element also studies how gender, family, leadership, and political relations intersect with the cult. Santa Muerte popular religiosity is examined in terms of socioeconomic vulnerabilities, ineffective social protections, exclusion, and existential insecurities.

ISBN: 9781009446617

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

88 pages