A decapitated head is left at the base of a roadside shrine, candles still burning at the bony feet of Santa Muerte. Across town, DEA agents lift a gold-painted death saint out of a meth lab altar. In the Mexican drug war, death isn’t just an outcome. It’s a contract.
I. Santa Muerte Executive Summary
This report provides a strategic, behavioral analysis of the Mexican folk saint Santa Muerte and her entanglement with the culture and operations of modern narcocartels.
For millions of devotees across Mexico, Central America, and the United States, Santa Muerte is a legitimate new religious movement: a radically inclusive folk saint who offers protection, healing, and practical miracles to those shunned by the state and the Church.
At the same time, her cult has been selectively weaponized by drug cartels and criminal organizations. That appropriation has produced a distinct criminalized variant of Santa Muerte devotion—a narco-spiritual system that:
- Provides moral cover for extreme violence
- Frames torture, dismemberment, and murder as acceptable offerings
- Functions as a psychological force multiplier in an environment of constant mortal risk
- Escalates into ritual human sacrifice as both devotion and psychological warfare
The key to understanding this is Santa Muerte’s radical amorality. She does not discriminate between righteous and wicked, between the street vendor and the sicario. That neutrality is not a later corruption—it is embedded in her DNA as a death saint. It is also exactly what makes her so easy to weaponize.
Within the parallel cultural universe of narcocultura—a value system that glorifies money, violence, and defiance of the state—Santa Muerte is recast as a narco-deity, a spiritual asset in what can only be described as a spiritual insurgency against both the Mexican state and the Catholic Church.
Law enforcement analysis from U.S. agencies such as the DEA and FBI documents:
- Widespread adoption of Santa Muerte iconography by major cartels (Sinaloa, Gulf, Juárez, Los Zetas)
- Direct connections between Santa Muerte–themed shrines and ritualistic killings, torture, and mutilation
- Use of human sacrifice as a tool of terror messaging and psychological dominance
This fusion of transnational organized crime with a flexible, decentralized, and amoral spiritual system is not a curiosity—it is a persistent threat architecture with implications for regional stability and spillover risk across the U.S.–Mexico border.
II. The Two Faces of Santa Muerte: From Folk Saint to Narco-Deity
To understand how criminal organizations could so easily absorb Santa Muerte into their worldview, you first have to understand who she is outside the cartels. Her appeal to the poor, the queer, the undocumented, and the criminal is not a contradiction. It’s the same theological feature deployed in different directions: She accepts everyone. She judges no one. She delivers results in this life.
Syncretic and Contested Origins
Santa Muerte is not a neat, linear invention. She’s a collision product—born from:
- Pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican death worship
- European Catholic imagery
- Centuries of underground survival and syncretism
Her deepest roots tie back to Mictēcacihuātl, the skeletal Aztec goddess of death who, with her consort Mictlāntēcutli, ruled the underworld, Mictlān. In that cosmology:
- Death is a transition, not an end
- The bones of the dead are a source of new life
- Death deities represent a cycle of destruction and regeneration, not pure evil
That indigenous ontology—death as both an ending and a generator of power—feeds directly into Santa Muerte’s dual role as the one who can take life and preserve it.
With the Spanish conquest, this worldview crashed into European Catholicism. Spanish authorities and clergy tried to eradicate what they saw as pagan death worship:
- Indigenous shrines to skeletal deities were destroyed or driven underground
- The cult survived through disguise and substitution, not extinction
From Europe, Santa Muerte inherits the imagery of the Grim Reaper (La Parca):
- The scythe as the tool that severs the thread of life
- The hooded skeletal figure as a symbol of the inevitability of death
Spanish Inquisition records from the 18th century already reference indigenous groups worshipping a skeletal figure they call “Santa Muerte”, even threatening to whip the image if their petitions weren’t granted. That early snapshot already shows:
- A direct, transactional relationship
- A willingness to coerce the saint for favors
- A refusal to submit fully to Church control
For centuries, Santa Muerte devotion remained clandestine, a survival religion for those refusing to completely assimilate to official Catholicism. That long history of operating outside formal structures is exactly what makes her so adaptable today—to both the street vendor and the cartel lieutenant.
Patroness of the Marginalized
Santa Muerte’s public re-emergence started in the mid-20th century in Mexico City’s poor neighborhoods like Tepito, but it truly exploded in visibility from the early 2000s onward. She is now often described as the fastest-growing new religious movement in the Americas, with an estimated 12 million followers across:
- Mexico
- Central America
- U.S. Latino communities
Who comes to her altars?
- Urban poor and working class
- Undocumented migrants
- Sex workers
- Inmates
- LGBTQ people
- Police, soldiers, and yes—criminals
Her core selling point is brutal and simple: She does not care what you’ve done. She cares what you want.
Devotees come to her for immediate, concrete outcomes:
- Healing and protection from violence
- Finding work or money
- Help crossing borders
- Help beating charges or surviving prison
- Help in love, revenge, and everything in between
One Tepito devotee famously described her as:
“She was sent to rescue the lost, society’s rejects… She understands us because she’s a cabrona like us. We’re hard people and we live hard lives. But she accepts us all, when we do good and bad.”
That statement is the entire theology in one sentence. Santa Muerte is a non-judgmental death mother who will:
- Accept your devotion
- Enter your chaos
- Work on your behalf
Whether you sell oranges, your body, or meth is irrelevant. That’s not a later “narco corruption”; it’s the original operating system.
The transition from a street vendor asking for protection from poverty to a sicario asking for protection from a rival cartel is not a shift in theology. It’s just a shift in the level of transgression.
The underlying logic is identical: “I will give you offerings and loyalty. You will give me what I ask—no matter how dark.”
Table 1: Demographics and Motivations of Santa Muerte Devotees
| Devotee Group | Primary Motivations for Devotion |
| Marginalized & Dispossessed (urban poor, etc.) | Acceptance, protection from hardship, practical miracles (healing, employment), basic security |
| LGBTQ Communities | Radical inclusivity, validation, empowerment, protection in hostile social/religious environments |
| Undocumented Migrants | Protection on dangerous journeys, navigational luck, comfort in legal and social limbo |
| Sex Workers & Prison Inmates | Non-judgmental acceptance, survival in high-risk settings, hope for protection and eventual redemption |
| Criminals (cartel members, gang members, hitmen) | Moral absolution, supernatural protection from rivals and law enforcement, success in illicit activity, “good death” |
| Law Enforcement & Military | Protection in high-risk professions, neutralization of enemies, balance between duty and mortality |
III. The Culture of Death: An Anatomy of Narcocultura
The narco-variant of Santa Muerte doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It lives inside narcocultura—the culture of the drug trafficker. Narcocultura isn’t just a “criminal vibe.” It’s a parallel moral universe.
A Parallel Value System
Narcocultura is forged from:
- Poverty and inequality
- Corruption and impunity
- A state that often fails to provide security or opportunity
Its core values invert mainstream norms:
- Wealth must be seen—custom trucks, gold guns, designer clothes, Champagne, extravagant parties
- Violence is not just a means; it’s a language and a status marker
- Death is familiar, courted, mocked—a constant occupational hazard turned into identity
Violent death isn’t a bug in this system; it’s a feature. The phrase “flirting with death” is not poetic; it’s literal branding.
There’s also a familiar mafia-style code:
- Hyper-masculinity
- Loyalty to family and crew
- Ruthless vengeance against betrayal
Within this worldview, to die in bed is almost an insult. To die in a hail of bullets is proof that you mattered.
Table 2: Mexico’s Homicide Rate During the Drug War (2006–2021)
| Year | Homicide Rate (per 100,000) | Context |
| 2006 | 9.78 | Calderón deploys military; formal start of “Drug War” |
| 2007 | 8.19 | Initial dip before escalation |
| 2008 | 12.77 | Violence spikes |
| 2009 | 17.83 | Conflict intensifies |
| 2010 | 22.89 | Rate more than doubles from 2007 |
| 2011 | 23.84 | First major peak |
| 2012 | 22.43 | End of Calderón presidency |
| 2013 | 19.66 | Slight decrease |
| 2014 | 16.85 | Lowest point before renewed surge |
| 2015 | 17.28 | Violence climbs again |
| 2016 | 20.21 | Homicides up more than 22% |
| 2017 | 26.11 | Rapid escalation |
| 2018 | 29.58 | Peak; 33,000+ killings |
| 2019 | 29.31 | Still near historic highs |
| 2020 | 29.19 | Plateau at brutal levels |
| 2021 | 28.18 | Slight decrease; still over 30,000 deaths per year |
These numbers form the environmental backdrop for Santa Muerte’s rise as a narco-saint: a country where homicide becomes routine and death is a work hazard.
Cultural Expressions and Propaganda
Narcocultura sustains itself through music, spectacle, and terror.
Key instruments:
- Narcocorridos: Folk ballads that once praised revolutionary heroes now glorify drug lords. Lyrics celebrate smuggling, killing, and outsmarting the state. They function as recruitment and myth-making tools, painting traffickers as modern Robin Hoods.
- Narco-propaganda:
- Narcomantas: banners hung in public, delivering threats or claiming responsibility
- Corpse-messages: mutilated bodies displayed in public with notes, symbols, or cartel initials
These aren’t random acts of savagery. They are information operations—designed to:
- Undermine the state’s claim to control
- Show who really has power in a territory
- Terrify both rivals and civilians into compliance
This is what some analysts call “spiritual insurgency.”
Traditional insurgencies attack a state’s political and military structure. Narcocultura attacks its cultural and moral legitimacy. By elevating their own saints—Santa Muerte, Jesús Malverde, and others—cartels:
- Build a shadow religious system
- Offer counter-legitimacy against the Catholic Church
- Wrap their violence in a supernatural justification
Santa Muerte is not a prop in this war. She is one of its most effective spiritual weapons.
IV. The Unholy Alliance: The Emergence of a Criminalized Faith
The merging of Santa Muerte devotion with narcocultura is not a simple case of “bad people ruining a good saint.” It’s a symbiotic alliance.
A Symbiotic Relationship
Santa Muerte had long been present in marginalized neighborhoods before her criminal association went national. One of the first high-profile links came in 1998, when Mexican authorities arrested kidnapper Daniel Arizmendi López and found a large Santa Muerte shrine in his home. Media coverage helped cement the public association between:
- Santa Muerte
- Kidnapping
- Extreme violence
From 2001 onward—when the first public, semi-official Santa Muerte shrine was established in Mexico City—her growth accelerated dramatically. This timeline overlaps perfectly with:
- The escalation of the Mexican Drug War
- The militarization of anti-cartel operations under President Calderón
- The exponential rise in homicide rates
The drug war environment is:
- Saturated with sudden death
- Governed by unpredictable violence
- Defined by constant existential risk for everyone from cartel gunmen to local shopkeepers
In such a landscape, a death saint who accepts anyone, promises protection, and is perceived as having authority over death itself is going to explode in relevance—for civilians and criminals alike.
The “Narcocultura Variant”
Out of this convergence emerges what U.S. law enforcement and researchers describe as a criminalized or narcocultura variant of Santa Muerte worship:
- It retains all the core symbols and rituals
- It explicitly endorses and sacralizes criminal violence
- It is steeped in narco values: power, fear, money, dominance
This variant:
- Moves beyond asking for protection or luck
- Frames torture, murder, and mutilation as legitimate offerings
- Presents killing as an activity that can be spiritually rewarded
This is not the devotion of the street vendor or migrant. It’s Santa Muerte re-engineered as a religious operating system for the drug trade.
Reinterpretation of Iconography
Under narcocultura, Santa Muerte’s imagery is weaponized. Key symbols are re-coded:
- Scythe
- Mainstream: cutting negative energies, harvesting prosperity, acknowledging mortality
- Narco: cutting down enemies, divine endorsement of assassination
- Scales of Justice
- Mainstream: fairness in legal matters, cosmic balance
- Narco: vengeance, “justice” through execution and retaliation
- Globe
- Mainstream: death’s dominion over the world
- Narco: the global reach of trafficking networks
- Owl
- Mainstream: wisdom, guidance in darkness
- Narco: silent operation at night, covert movement and surveillance
Votive candle colors—common across all devotion—take on sharpened criminal meanings:
Table 3: Symbolism of Santa Muerte’s Iconography and Votive Colors
| Symbol / Color | Mainstream Interpretation | Criminalized / Narco Interpretation |
| Scythe | Cuts negative energy; harvest; mortality | Severs lives of enemies; tool of divine retribution |
| Globe | Death’s dominion over earth; life journey | Global scope of cartel operations |
| Scales | Fairness, justice, divine balance | Revenge, settling scores with rivals |
| Owl | Wisdom; ability to navigate darkness | Covert operations, night activity |
| White candle | Purity, cleansing, personal protection | Protection from police and rival cartels |
| Red candle | Love, passion, relationships | Binding loyalties, power in personal/territorial conflicts |
| Black candle | Warding off negativity | Curses, death magic, destruction of enemies |
| Gold candle | Prosperity, business success | Profits from trafficking and illicit enterprise |
| Green candle | Legal help, justice | Favorable outcomes in criminal cases, avoiding arrest |
| Purple candle | Healing, spiritual transformation | Gaining supernatural “edge,” flipping bad luck in war contexts |
| Blue candle | Spiritual harmony, study, focus | Gathering intelligence on rivals and law enforcement |
Santa Muerte’s toolkit has been retargeted. The spiritual hardware is the same; the software has been rewritten for cartel needs.
V. The Theology of Terror: A Psychological and Spiritual Framework for Brutality
To cartel members, the criminalized Santa Muerte cult is not decorative. It solves real psychological problems created by a life of violence.
It offers:
- Absolution without confession
- Control in a lethal environment
- A transactional faith that mirrors their economy
Absolution and Moral Neutrality
Traditional Catholicism is a problem for someone who tortures and kills for a living. If you ever actually believed it, your entire job is a mortal sin.
Santa Muerte offers an exit ramp:
- She does not judge their crimes
- She accepts petitions for acts that would be blasphemous in a church: Successful ambushes on police, Killing a rival boss, Escaping prison or surviving a massacre
For a narco, this is effectively: “I don’t have to be good. I just have to be loyal—to her.”
This creates a separate moral universe where:
- Conventional ethics do not apply
- There is no expectation of repentance
- Violence is spiritually normalized rather than condemned
They can keep killing and still feel spiritually “covered.”
Empowerment and Control in a State of Peril
The life expectancy of a low- to mid-level cartel gunman is often measured in years, sometimes months.
Reality: You can be executed by rivals, Disappeared by corrupt police, Betrayed by your own people, Caught in crossfire.
In that environment, Santa Muerte functions as:
- A psychological anchor
- The only supernatural entity perceived as having real authority over death
Devotees:
- Ask her to delay their death
- Bargain for a quick, “good” death rather than torture
- Wear her image as tattoos, pendants, or patches to feel like death itself is “on their side”
By constantly confronting her skeletal image, they desensitize themselves to death and personalize it—death is not random; it is someone they know. That familiarity blunts fear. A man less afraid to die is capable of more extreme things.
A Transactional Faith
The relationship is brutally simple: You give. She gives.
Narco-devotion is built on quid pro quo:
- Devotees make offerings, build shrines, perform rituals
- In return, they expect concrete protection, money, and power
Crucially, Santa Muerte is believed to be:
- Jealous – she wants exclusive devotion
- Vengeful – if you neglect her or disrespect her, she can punish you
That fear pushes adherents into ever more elaborate devotions and ever more intense displays of loyalty. This has created what can only be described as a spiritual arms race:
- One cartel ramps up devotions and boasts of her protection
- Rivals respond with bigger shrines, darker rituals, and bloodier offerings
- Bodies are left at each other’s Santa Muerte shrines as taunts and challenges
In this environment: Ritual murder stops being “just” a murder. It becomes a public bid for spiritual supremacy.
VI. From Offerings to Atrocities: Ritualized Violence and Human Sacrifice
The most disturbing edge of the narco-Santa Muerte cult is the escalation to ritualized human sacrifice. What starts as candles and tequila ends with throats slit at an altar, hearts cut out, and heads burned in circles around shrines.
The Escalation of Offerings
The devotional ladder looks like this:
- Level 1: Standard Offerings
- Candles in specific colors
- Flowers, food, tequila, cigarettes
- Blowing smoke over the statue or smearing it with narcotics to “activate” it
- All of this is normal across folk-devotional practice.
- Level 2: Blood Offerings
- Devotees make blood pacts, mixing their blood with alcohol or smearing it on the statue
- Bowls of animal or human blood placed on or around the altar
- Blood marks a shift from symbolic to visceral devotion.
- Level 3: Human Sacrifice
- Victims are explicitly offered to Santa Muerte
- Heads, hearts, and bodies are staged as ritual props
- Killings are timed, placed, and arranged to mimic formal sacrifice
- At this point, devotion and atrocity are fused.
Human Sacrifice as Psychological Warfare
Law enforcement analyses make an important distinction between crimes inspired by a belief system and crimes structured as rituals within that system.
In many Santa Muerte–linked killings, it’s both. The perpetrators genuinely believe they are making offerings, AND they are deliberately staging scenes for maximum terror impact.
Leaving a dismembered body at a shrine, hearts removed, candles lit, is:
- A devotional act (in their minds)
- A corpse-message that says: “We are beyond your morality.” “We have the backing of Death herself.” “We are capable of anything.”
The horror isn’t an accident. It’s the point.
Documented Cases
Below is a synthesized sample of documented Santa Muerte–linked ritual killings (primarily mid-2000s to early 2010s), drawn from law enforcement bulletins and media reports.
Table 4: Selected Santa Muerte–Linked Ritual Killings in Mexico (2004–2012)
| Date | Location | Group / Individuals | Victim Profile | Ritual Elements |
| 2004 | Tepito, Mexico City | Powerful criminal figure (alleged) | Virgins, babies (alleged) | Claims of annual sacrifices to gain magical protection and favor from Santa Muerte |
| 2006 | Tijuana | Cartel members | Rival cartel member | Victim dismembered; head explicitly presented as offering at a Santa Muerte altar |
| May 2007 | Monterrey | Gulf Cartel | Murdered rivals | Bodies left at public Santa Muerte shrine with candles, flowers, and taunting messages |
| 2008 | Nuevo Laredo | Gulf Cartel | Sinaloa Cartel members | Captured rivals taken to public shrines and executed; interpreted as sacrificial killings |
| Sept 2008 | Yucatán | Unspecified gang | 11 victims | Eleven headless bodies stacked; burn marks in a circle where heads believed to be burned; shrines found later |
| 2009–2012 | Nacozari, Sonora | Family cult led by Silvia Meraz | Two boys (10), one woman (55) | Throats/wrists slit; blood collected, poured around Santa Muerte altar in petitions for money and protection |
| Dec 2009–Jan 2010 | Ciudad Juárez | “Hillside 13” gang | Multiple individuals | Killings tied to apparent sacrifices; graffiti “Santa Muerte, cuídanos flaquita” at one scene; altar remains |
| Jan 2010 | Culiacán | Beltrán Leyva associate (suspected) | Unidentified | Decapitated head placed near cartel leader’s tomb; previous Santa Muerte items in leader’s residence |
| Apr 2010 | Camargo / Miguel Alemán | Los Zetas | Gulf Cartel members | Victims tortured and decapitated; “Z” carved into chests; heads placed on desecrated chapel roof |
| Jun 2010 | Cancún | Los Zetas | Rival gang members | Six bodies found in cave; three hearts removed; “Z” carved into abdomens |
These are not isolated one-offs. They form a pattern: Santa Muerte imagery, Ritual-like staging, Messages to rivals, state, and community. For a small but deadly subset of her followers, she has become inseparable from ritualized human sacrifice.
VII. Cartel Adoption and Operational Significance: A Law Enforcement Perspective
For law enforcement, Santa Muerte is not just a religious trend. It’s a threat signal.
DEA Intelligence
The Drug Enforcement Administration consistently flags Santa Muerte as:
- A spiritual icon frequently found in environments linked to the Gulf, Sinaloa, and Juárez cartels
- A symbol whose imagery of empowerment and terror resonates with drug dealers and traffickers
Seized evidence includes:
- Large Santa Muerte statues in stash houses and labs
- Gold-painted images used on altars associated with meth trafficking
- Statues used as hiding places for narcotics
To the DEA, these artifacts are indicators of cartel presence and mindset, and part of the “cultural kit” of organized crime in the region.
FBI Analysis
The FBI focuses on the narcocultura variant of Santa Muerte, clearly separating:
- Mainstream folk devotion (non-criminal)
- The narco-ritual offshoot that rewards extreme brutality
Their concerns include:
- The possibility that ritualistic, Santa Muerte–inspired killings could spread into the U.S. alongside cross-border cartel operations
- The intense psychological impact of investigating these cases—training on Santa Muerte has reportedly left some officers physically ill or fainting due to the horrific material
In FBI framing, this is not just crime; it is crime encoded as religion.
Adoption by Specific Cartels
Synthesis of U.S. law enforcement reporting links Santa Muerte to several major players:
- Gulf Cartel: Bodies of rivals left at public Santa Muerte shrines as both sacrifices and taunts; Executions at shrines interpreted as offerings.
- Los Zetas: Widely recognized as having embraced Santa Muerte as patron saint; Members frequently tattooed with her image; Linked to some of the most gruesome ritual killings, including heart removals and carving “Z” into bodies.
- Sinaloa Cartel: Identified by DEA as having significant Santa Muerte devotion among members; Seen both as victims and perpetrators of Santa Muerte–linked crimes.
- Juárez Cartel: Named as another major group whose members are followers; Ciudad Juárez has seen multiple killings with apparent Santa Muerte ritual elements.
Across enemy lines, one constant: The same death saint watches both sides.
Santa Muerte has effectively become the matron saint of the Mexican drug war—claimed by mutually hostile organizations engaged in a shared culture of death.
VIII. Conclusion: The Enduring Power of a Narco-Saint
The alliance between Santa Muerte and narcocultura is not a superficial aesthetic—it is a deeply integrated spiritual infrastructure inside the Mexican drug war.
Key conclusions:
- The criminalized variant of Santa Muerte devotion is not just a reflection of violence; it is a driver of it.
- It offers a moral vacuum where murder is spiritually neutral or rewarded, not condemned.
- It reinforces a cycle of escalation—as cartels compete not only in guns and money, but in ritual brutality and displays of supernatural allegiance.
This is a feedback loop: Hyper-violence and existential fear make a death saint uniquely appealing. The narco-variant of her theology rewards that violence. Each new killing can be reframed as both strategic and devotional. The more this framework spreads, the easier it is for the next generation of sicarios to step in.
Attempts to crush her cult by bulldozing shrines, issuing Church condemnations, or mocking her as “satanic superstition” are likely to fail—or worse, backfire.
Santa Muerte thrives in marginal spaces, illicit economies, and communities that already distrust the Church and the state. When the government destroys a shrine, devotees don’t stop believing. They simply see it as proof that:
- The state is corrupt
- The Church is hostile
- Their saint is theirs alone, against the world
From a security standpoint, the outlook is blunt: As long as the conditions that sustain the drug war persist—poverty, impunity, demand—and as long as cartels want supernatural justification for doing the worst things humans can do—Santa Muerte will remain in the game, standing calmly in the candlelight, scythe in hand, accepting offerings from both the desperate and the damned.
Bibliography / Further Reading
Law Enforcement & Government Sources
- FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin: Santa Muerte: Inspired and Ritualistic Killings (Robert J. Bunker, 2013) – The seminal FBI report detailing the difference between folk devotion and the criminalized variant.
- FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin: Epoch of the Sicario (Robert J. Bunker, 2014) – Analysis of the spiritual insurgency and the rise of cartel “holy warriors.”
- Small Wars Journal: Mexican Cartel Tactical Note #19: Santa Muerte Iconography – Detailed analysis of specific cartel incidents involving the saint.
- Congressional Research Service: Mexico: Organized Crime and Drug Trafficking Organizations (PDF) – Comprehensive data on cartel structures and territorial control.
Academic & Scholarly Works
- Andrew Chesnut: Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, the Skeleton Saint (Oxford University Press) – The definitive academic text on the history and rapid growth of the cult.
- R. Andrew Chesnut & Kate Kingsbury: Global Prayer: Santa Muerte – Ongoing academic tracking of the movement’s global expansion.
- Tony M. Kail: Santa Muerte: Mexico’s Mysterious Saint of Death – A guide often used by law enforcement to identify ritual items.
- George W. Grayson: The Executioner’s Men: Los Zetas, Rogue Soldiers, Criminal Entrepreneurs, and the Shadow State They Created – Essential reading on the paramilitary culture of Los Zetas.
Journalistic & Longform Reporting
- Ioan Grillo: El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency – Deep investigative work on the rise of narcocultura.
- National Geographic: The Cult of Santa Muerte (Video & Article) – Visual documentation of the shrines in Tepito and beyond.
- Insight Crime: Santa Muerte and the Mexican Drug Trade – Analysis of the intersection between organized crime and folk religion.
