San La Muerte. The non Saint Saint JfCR.pdf

8/17/2019 San La Muerte. The non Saint Saint JfCR.pdf

1/22

This article was downloaded by:[Carassai, Sebastián][Carassai, Sebastián]

On: 26 March 2007Access Details: [subscription number 770384234]Publisher:RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

J ournal for Cultural ResearchFormerly Cultural ValuesPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713684902

San La Muerte: The Non-Saint Saint. Identity, Ideology,and Resistance

To cite this Article: , 'San La Muerte: The Non-Saint Saint. Identity, Ideology, andResistance', J ournal for Cultural Research, 11:1, 75 - 95xxxx:journal To link to this article: DOI: 10.1080/14797580601149775URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14797580601149775

Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf

This articlemaybe usedfor research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction,re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expresslyforbidden.

The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will becomplete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses should beindependently verifiedwithprimarysources. The publishershall notbe liable foranyloss, actions, claims, proceedings,demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with orarising out of the use of this material.

©Taylor and Francis 2007

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713684902http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14797580601149775http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdfhttp://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdfhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14797580601149775http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713684902


2/22

JOURNAL FOR CULTURAL RESEARCH VOLUME 11 NUMBER 1 (JANUARY 2007)

ISSN 1479–7585 print/1740–1666 online/07/010075–21© 2007 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/14797580601149775

San La Muerte: The Non-Saint

Saint. Identity, Ideology, andResistance

Sebastián CarassaiTaylorandFrancisLtd RCUV_A_214906.sgm10.1080/14797580601149775JournalforCulturalResearch1479-7585 (print)/1740-1666 (online)OriginalA rticle2007Taylor&Francis111000000January 2007Sebastiá[email protected]

I analyze in this article the relationship between San La Muerte (a pagan saintworshipped still today) and the official Catholic institution, the specific charac-teristics taken up by this devotion, and the way the belief in this saint is linkedwith the social relations that worshippers establish among them. In the firstplace, I intend to show that although San La Muerte represents an aboriginetradition blended within Christianity, the cult has healthily survived and grownout of the scope of any official control by the Catholic Church. Secondly, I believethat the subjectivity of San La Muerte’s followers is strongly associated with theiridentification with such ancestral belief, and that they contribute, at the sametime, to generate the specific characteristics attributed to the saint. Thirdly, Ipropound that the worship and respect enjoyed by San La Muerte are reflected

in social relations whose terms and codes turn into an expressly blatant challengeto the universal values consecrated by bourgeoisie morals.

Introduction

Let us start by the obvious: Latin America is a Catholic continent. Among themost powerful weapons used by Spaniards and Portuguese to crush the aborig-ine people, evangelizing was one of the most skillfully manipulated. In themid-sixteenth century, the efforts made by Bartolomé de las Casas to prove

that Indians had a soul were successful, and the task of converting them toCatholicism took on a methodical and systematic practice. It was at that timewhen the so-called “missions” of several religious orders started; among them,those run by the Jesuits stood out. In many regions of the South Americancontinent, but especially those where the Tupí and Guaraní tribes lived(currently, Northern Argentina, Southern Brazil, and Eastern Paraguay), theJesuits set up permanent “reductions” where the aborigines learnt not only the“divine Word of God” but also the skills of craftsmanship. However, not every-thing was under the control of these Catholic orders. The aborigines’ beliefs

penetrated Jesuit art, the Cosmo vision of the Tupi-Guaraní aborigines


3/22

76 CARASSAI

reappeared under Christian forms, and the stories of magicians and wizards oftheir traditions mingled with Jesus Christ. A clear expression of this syncreticprocess is San La Muerte (Saint Death), pagan saint worshipped still today, inthe same area where the Jesuit reductions of the sixteenth and seventeenth

century were located.It is my aim in this paper to analyze the relationship between this cultural arti-

fact and the official Catholic institution, the specific characteristics taken up bythis devotion, and the way the belief in this saint is linked with the social rela-tions that worshippers establish among them. In the first place, I intend to showthat although San La Muerte represents an aborigine tradition blended withinChristianity, the cult has healthily survived and grown out of the scope of anyofficial control by the Catholic Church. This has compelled Church representa-tives to tolerate it as a religious practice against which they can do very little.

Secondly, I believe that the subjectivity of San La Muerte’s followers is stronglyassociated with their identification with such ancestral belief, and that theycontribute, at the same time, to generate the specific characteristics attributedto the saint. Thirdly, I propound that the worship and respect enjoyed by San LaMuerte are reflected in social relations whose terms and codes turn into anexpressly blatant challenge to the universal values consecrated by bourgeoisiemorals. However, this challenge does not necessarily imply questioning the socialorder in force or any kind of economic, sexual, or political exploitation, all ofwhich consequently proves that not all resistance is necessarily progressive orsocially liberating. Apart from specialized bibliography, I have used in this essay

interviews I carried out in the Argentine cities of Barranqueras, Mercedes, Corri-entes, Resistencia, and Misiones, and in Asunción (Paraguay), between 1998/2001.1

Nowadays there is a variety of images of San La Muerte. Some of them repre-sent him as an upright human skeleton, with a scythe in his hand; in others, theskeleton appears sitting, holding his head with his hands. There are images wherehe is depicted with a black cloak, naked and lying down. In the oldest of theseimages, he is represented squatting, as a skeleton figure in fetal position, andalthough the size varies, it is never larger than seven centimeters. The oldest

images of the saint that are presently kept date back to one century and a halfago, and they belong to the folk healers and sanctuary guardians, who haveinherited them from their ancestors. The material also varies. There are imagescarved in wood (especially, lignum vitae), metal, and bone. Those who practicethis cult assert that San La Muerte is much more powerful if it is carved in humanbone.Figure1. Figuringof theoldestimageofSanLa MuerteThe anthropologists who have researched his origins agree that the most wide-spread images of this saint bear a striking resemblance to the European Christ of Patience. Miguel López Breard writes that “his origin is preferably close to the

1. All interviews were carried out by the author. In order to keep the interviewees’ identityconfidential, they are mentioned only by their first names. In those cases where they are locallywell known, the name given is fictitious.


4/22

SAN LA MUERTE: THE NON-SAINT SAINT 77

Christ of Humanity and Patience because we have seen that many images of thisskeleton-like representation are in the same position as the Jesuit carvings”(López Breard 1973, p. 78). Félix Coluccio establishes a similar relationship whenhe states that “the rich calendar of Saints’ days of Corrientes [Province of Corri-entes, Argentina], which includes San Ceomo and San La Muerte, emerged after

the Society of Jesus was expelled in 1767. The Jesuits, devout believers in thesacred mysteries, found in the natives of Corrientes a remarkable artistic skillcoupled with an acceptable talent for craftsmanship; under the Jesuits’ guid-ance, the aborigines produced works depicting the main mysteries” (Coluccio1978, p. 43). Undoubtedly, San La Muerte was then possible as a religious symbolfrom the moment that the Jesuits taught aborigines the art of working wood andmetal. However, Jesuits did not sanctify “death”, and, in general, Christiansymbols do not pay any reverence to skeletons. So then, where does this pagansaint come from?

San La Muerte is not only the aborigine translation of the Christ of Patiencebrought by the Jesuits. The anthropologist Miranda Borelli (1976) proved thatthere were enough elements to link this cult with the Indian belief in the payé,the witch doctor or shamán of the Tupí-Guaraní tribe. According to the

Figure 1. Figuring of the oldest image of San La Muerte


5/22

78 CARASSAI

chronicles of several travelers, the tribes in that area believed that certain magi-cians ( payés) were skilled in certain arts whereby they could “cause death orhealing, cure, predict the future or remote events, attract rain, hail and storms”(Dobritzhoffer 1968, p. 224). The payé was, according to the aborigine Cosmo

vision, “the one who healed all evils”. The travelers of seventeenth andeighteenth century recorded in their log books that the payés sat under a tree,fasted for several days, lost weight until they were skin and bone, thus acquiringthat skeleton-like appearance, and attained the power of healing by imposingtheir hands three times on the sick person. When Miranda Borelli noted that thefolk healers of Resistencia (Province of Chaco, Argentina) used the image of SanLa Muerte and imposed their hands three times in the same way as those payés,he proposed the link between the indigenous and Christian cultures: through oralhistory passed on from generation to generation, the one who healed all illnesses

(the payé) was associated with Christ by the evangelized aborigines in the Jesuitreductions. From the standpoint of evangelization, aborigines were taught thatJesus healed all evils. Consequently, the aborigines synthesized in San La Muertethe need imposed by evangelization of worshipping saints with their ancientbelief in the payés. Both these payés and Jesus “healed all evils”, both wereplaced above death: the payés, according to the Indian tradition, overcamedeath and illnesses through their healings; Jesus, according to Christian tradi-tion, overcame death by reviving. Although it may seem surprising, San LaMuerte does not mean that “death” is sanctified; on the contrary, as I will intendto demonstrate throughout this essay, it is more related to the belief that life

succeeds over death. When death is symbolized, when it is embodied, when it isturned into an active agent (who to pray to, celebrate, praise, and make prom-ises), death is turned into someone who disposes not only of death but also oflife.

My interest in studying San La Muerte responds, on the one hand, to thispeculiar origin, and, on the other, to his peculiar fate. Due to the characteristicI will analyze in this paper, San La Muerte, as years went by turned into a mostadequate saint for the unprivileged in the social structure. Although I have foundbelievers in the middle sectors, the vast majority of worshippers belong to the

so-called “popular sectors” and part of them undoubtedly belongs to clearlymarginal sectors in the social spectrum such as prisoners, prostitutes, thieves,etc. Other two characteristics turn San La Muerte into a peculiar case: his insti-tutional orphanhood and his festive nature. As strange as it may sound, althoughall his followers are Christian, no Christian Church has ever officially recognizedhim in its calendar of Saints’ days. He is worshipped with celebrations, proces-sions, and prayers, but everything is organized out of the scope of and sometimesagainst ecclesiastic institutions. This may be the reason why he is worshipped notso much through introspective prayer, as by important community festivals. Oncea year, believers from distant areas travel to the most representative places ofworship (home altars under the custody of “guardians” of the saint) and take partin popular festivals where there is plentiful wine, music, dancing, and feasting.San La Muerte is, for many his followers, an opportunity to meet and celebrate.


6/22



7/22

80 CARASSAI

Figures2 and2.1. Mealandholidayinhonorto SanLaMuerte,Barranqueras,ProvinceofChaco,ArgentinaA Question of Image: the Catholic Church and San La Muerte

After centuries of Christianity in Latin America, it is not surprising to find thatall worshippers of San La Muerte are Christians and, most of them, Catholics(quantitatively, it is the most important Christian religion in the region). Some

of these followers even practice the Catholic religion: they are churchgoers,they observe Catholic feast days (Easter, Christmas, the Immaculate Concep-tion, etc.); they know and say prayers (Our Father, Hail Mary, etc.); they takecommunion and request blessings from Catholic priests. However, Christianchurches do not acknowledge San La Muerte as a legitimate religious symbol;conversely, at least at an official level, they consider him an amulet or afetish. On trying to fight the expansion of such cult, three decades ago, thediocese of the Province of Corrientes (Argentina) decided to excommunicatethose Catholics who worshipped him. But the ban was fruitless. San La Muerteremains in small sanctuaries built by his own worshippers, or in their homes at

their own expense, with many of those sanctuaries only a few blocks awayfrom Catholic churches. Several times a year, especially on 15 August, proces-sions are held in some cities; in those processions, groups of worshippers carry

Figures 2 and 2.1. Meal and holiday in honor to San La Muerte, Barranqueras, Provinceof Chaco, Argentina


8/22


an image on portable platforms, pray in his honor and celebrate a popularfeast in his name.

The division performed by the Catholic Church between saints and fetishes,holy and profane symbols, faith and superstition means nothing to San LaMuerte’s followers. The simultaneously pray to Christ and their “little saint”—ashis followers call him. In San La Muerte’s sanctuaries, his image is not alone: theVirgin Mary, St. Cajetan, St. Francis of Assisi, and others, are seen at his side.Thus, Catholic symbols are present in the cult to San La Muerte. But the symbolsare not the institution; the relationship with it is tense. Doña Porota, owner ofone of the most popular sanctuaries in Barranqueras, explained the relationshipbetween San La Muerte’s followers and the Catholic Church as follows:

Interviewer: Why do you say that you do not get along very well with somepriests?

Doña Porota: (…) Because priests should also be ‘mobile’ with us…I: What did you say they should be?DP: They should be kind. They should consider our ideas… I have my

own ideas; they have theirs.

Doña Porota is a Paraguayan old lady, daughter and granddaughter ofParaguayans who have lived in Barranqueras for several decades now. She learntfrom her great grandmother the task of “guarding” of the “little saint”, and, tofulfill a promise, she built a sanctuary in the garden of her house. She admitsbeing a Catholic, she attends mass, but above all, she believes in San La Muerte,

her “little saint”. Faith, for Doña Porota, is not the mere devotion to a Decalogueof absolute truths consecrated by an institution. Priests “have their ideas”; DoñaPorota has hers. However, the cult to San La Muerte is not equivalent to what wecould call a religion “à la carte”. One of the characteristics of post-modernity inthe field of religion consists in the fact that beliefs have become hybrid anddogmas and principles of faith have become relative. A great part of the Catholiccommunity (especially, the middle class) does not endorse the institutionalprecepts “en bloc” anymore, as if they were to be accepted or rejected in theirentirety; on the contrary, the community selects the dogmas or principles it is

willing to honor, it includes others, and relaxes some of the traditional ones. Thiskind of post-modern cult may be called a religion “à la carte” because it repre-sents an idea of a religious person who, out of a given religious menu, choosessome beliefs and rules out others, and if necessary, also modifies them so as toreconcile them with his own. Vis-à-vis this post-modern practice of faith, the cultto San La Muerte represents its antithesis. For Doña Porota, for instance, it is nota matter of taking from the Church what may be necessary or convenient for her;much on the contrary, the position is that the Church should accept what consti-tutes her identity. From this standpoint, San La Muerte is a “pre-modern” cultbecause his followers do not take from Catholicism what they please; conversely,

they confront the Institution with the intention to defend family traditionsobserved for several decades without which they would not know who they are.For the believers in San La Muerte, opposing the authority of Church is not a


9/22

82 CARASSAI

question of convenience but of identity.2 Those who practice this cult form animagined community although not in the strict sense proposed by BenedictAnderson,3 but as an ethical and religious community extended in space andtime. The followers’ identity is built up around the saint because through him

devotees are not only imaginarily linked with their relatives and friends at adistance but also with their ancestors, who in many cases they have not met, butthey feel linked with through this cult.4

As already mentioned, San La Muerte’s followers are Christians (and mostly,Catholics) so they thus claim the institutional blessing of what they consider holy(it is a usual practice among Catholics to bless images, valued objects, pets, andpeople). How do the Catholic believers in San La Muerte manage to have a priestbless their copy of their banned “little saint”? They do so through the strategy,not totally unknown to the Church itself, of concealing the image of San La

Muerte they want to have blessed. Doña Celia, the guardian of another sanctuaryof San La Muerte, revealed that worshippers are used to “hiding” their “littlesaint” beneath a pad on which they place a cross or another symbol recognizedby the Church and get the priest’s blessing. “When the priest is not watching us”,Doña Celia stated, “we turn the pad and the ‘little saint’ is thus blessed”. Butthe strategy is not fully concealed. Really (and some priests even admit it), theChurch ministers are well aware they are blessing San La Muerte. They are awareof it because they know the people; because in small villages like Barranqueras,Resistencia, Corrientes, or Mercedes, most people know each other and thus,who the “little saint’s” followers are. This means that, before the cult to San LaMuerte, the Catholic Church adopts a dual position. On the one hand, it deniesits legitimacy and condemns the cult as a superstitious heresy; on the other, itaccepts the practice as one more expression of popular religious feelings. Thisdialectic between the Catholic Church and the cult to San La Muerte is easier tonotice—as far as the Church is concerned—at some of the lower levels of theecclesiastic hierarchy (priests) and the secular community than at higher institu-tional levels. Bishops do not tolerate the cult; however, laypeople and somepriests do.Figure3. AltarofSanLa Muerteinthehouseof DoñaPorota,oneoftheguardianof thesaintSome of them were even born and brought up in the villages where the cult is

practiced and believe in San La Muerte. Actually, it is difficult to find people whodo not believe in him. Many of them, of course, do not worship or pray to him.

2. I am taking this concept in the sense defined by Stuart Hall. “I use the term ‘identity’”, hewrites, “to refer to the point of encounter, to the point of stitch between discourses and practicesthat attempt to ‘question’ us, say to us or put us in our place as social subjects with individualdiscourses on the one hand, and on the other, the processes that produce subjectivities, that buildus up as subjects capable of ‘saying to ourselves’” (Hall 1996, p. 7).3. That is, as “an imagined political community–and imagined as both inherently limited and sover-eign” (Anderson 2003, p. 6).4. The processes of immigration in Argentina and emigration from Paraguay during the twentieth

century (directed mainly to the large Argentine urban centers) dismembered (in some cases,forever) many families and groups of friends. Throughout many testimonies it is shown that devo-tees feel linked with their loved ones who are absent through their devotion to the saint in thecertainty that both parties keep their faith intact.


10/22


They know he exists, but they fear him. They do not praise him; they just makegreat efforts to avoid him. But in no case do they mock at the belief or disrespecthis worshippers. In my interviews of priests, for instance, some of them declaredthey would rather not speak about this topic. However, there is no need to speakabout something to believe in it. Mainly due to a “question of image”, the officialChurch of those places does not legitimize the cult; it is not allowed to do so (itwould go against the rules of the very institution). However, it does not fight iteither. Priests are aware that they have to coexist with San La Muerte. Not only

because of the existence of the sanctuaries; San La Muerte is carried in walletsand purses, in vehicles, tattooed on the skin, “embedded” in the body, printedon clothes.

An important difference between the Catholic Church and the cult to San LaMuerte is that the first is based on men (priests, bishops, etc.), while the secondis led by women (female sanctuary guardians and folk healers). All of the tradi-tional sanctuaries are managed by women. This phenomenon arises from the factthat during the war of the Triple Alliance (1864–70), Paraguay lost a huge part ofthe male population,5 and many roles performed by men or both men and women

5. According to data provided by the historian Rosa (1981), out of more than 100,000 members ofthe army when the war started, only 409 survived. Afterwards, the war against Bolivia for the GranChaco (1928–35) worsened this disproportion even more.

Figure 3. Altar of San La Muerte in the house of Doña Porota, one of the guardian of thesaint


11/22

84 CARASSAI

started to be carried out almost exclusively by women.6 At present, some follow-ers refer to San La Muerte also by the name of the sanctuary guardian (“DoñaPorota’s saint”, “Doña Celia’s saint”), as if the saint were these ladies’ property.This female monopoly of the management of San La Muerte’s sanctuaries clearly

contrasts with the male monopoly of ecclesiastic power. Anyway, the guardians’power is by far more limited than that of priests precisely because the femaleguardians do not take an institutional lead. Their power is restricted to openingtheir homes to those who make promises, receiving offerings, organizing commu-nity celebrations, and, in some cases, giving advice to the followers, like a motherto her children, as to what they can ask the saint and what they can offer him.Figure4. Letterofinvitationto thepartyinhonorto SanLaMuerte

A Saintly Respect

San La Muerte inspires deep respect7 not only among his followers and believersbut also among his timid critics. That respect takes on forms of worship andwisdom in the first group, and fear and distrust in the second one. Praying,making petitions, or promising something to San La Muerte is not the same asdoing so to any other saint. His worshippers do not conceive their prayers as an

6. The art of folk healing in the eighteenth century was an exclusive task of the wizard doctors ofthe tupí-guraraní tribes.

7. “Respect” is one more element that links San La Muerte with the payé because Pai is a respect-ful word with which to call respectful people. Although presently the term payé sometimes desig-nates a person and others, an object, a recipe or an illness, it is nevertheless in all cases used toname something that should not be played with, something to which respect should be paid.

Figure 4. Letter of invitation to the party in honor to San La Muerte


12/22


act of routine, unconsciously repeated; on the contrary, each prayer is based ona particular reason, each petition is destined to a specific person, and eachpromise has a limited and feasible content. These three characteristics have acommon denominator; the three of them indicate that the relationship between

the saint and the devotees is always based on “moderation”. This is related to anobligation that the believer in San La Muerte takes on seriously: “you have tokeep your word” to this saint. The guardian of one of the most importantsanctuaries in Resistencia, Doña Celia, phrased it this way:

People come here with a candle, for instance; they ask what they want andleave their petition at the foot; what they want; they give him a term of ninedays or whatever; but I never allow them to offer an expensive promise becauseit is a sensitive issue… You just have to promise to bring a simple flower, adoily, something you will be able to fulfill. And what you promise, you should

fulfill.

To what should this respect be attributed? What does this moderation inprayers, petitions, and promises–absent in the official Christian traditionalthough present in San La Muerte’s Christian followers–signify? It arises from theinterviews that among the virtues attributed by the followers to their saint themost relevant one is his strict sense of justice. Above all, “San La Muerte is fair”(interview to Evaristo). Other sources confirm this core element. There is alegend (told by some of the saint’s followers even today) that long ago there wasa king famous for administering justice who, upon leaving this world and encoun-tering God, was vested with the duty of ruling life and death of human beings. 8That famous king was San La Muerte.9 Another popular story speaks about a poorand underprivileged man who tried to find a godfather for his newborn son.During his search, this man found Saint Peter and Saint John, but he ruled themout because they were unfair. Saint Peter “opened the doors of Heaven to somesouls, but closed them to others”, and Saint John “was very happy, but did notgive happiness to everyone because there were too many sad people in theworld”. Finally, this man found a gentleman who introduced himself as San LaMuerte and said he is “the fairest man” in the world.10 The man decided this

saint would be his newborn son’s godfather because his strict sense of justicewould turn the child into an honest man. Finally, it should be noted that one ofSan La Muerte’s guardians (a Paraguayan lady who lives in Misiones, Argentina)organizes the saint’s annual celebration on August 20th, “because it is SaintJoust’s day, and San La Muerte is fair and necessary” (interview to Doña Alicia).

8. This legend may be consulted more deeply in Arcadio (1997, pp. 45–50).9. Even today many believers refer to their saint as ancient “king”.10. The quotations in this paragraph belong to version no. 7 transcribed in Miranda Borelli (1976,pp. 65–6). This work describes around ten versions of the origins of San La Muerte revealed to the

author in interviews to sanctuary guardians and folk healers who healed with this symbol. Many ofthese versions are incompatible among them, and others contradicting in themselves. However, itshould be noted that in many of them the fact of being fair is the main characteristic attributed toSan La Muerte.


13/22

86 CARASSAI

This attribute of being fair above any and all other traits is what moves hisfollowers to feel respect and non believers to feel fear. Not all believers knowthe mentioned legends or stories; however, they know they cannot play withSan La Muerte. Those followers who bring other people to pray or make a

petition warn newcomers about the need to fulfill what they promise verystrictly:

Miriam: She (a guardian) told me what it was like…; in other words, how he fulfillsthe petitions you make; but you have to keep your word too. She always told methat you shouldn’t play with the saint. She told me it was dangerous, and that iswhy I was afraid… because you can’t make any promises in vain.

The saint’s very name contains a component that arouses fear: the word“death”. Although the petitions and promises made to the saint are not related

to death, the name (especially for those who do not worship him) bears aspecific weight of his own. To this we should add that most of the times hisrepresentation consists of a skeleton. Finally, the idea that Death (or Godthrough it) claims disloyalties or unfaithfulness from human beings at somestage is part of the Christian religion. The Old Testament is rich in threats andrevenge from a God enraged with his children; in the New Testament, Judaspays his treason to Jesus with his own death. Thus, it is understandable thatthe combination of these elements with the saint’s name and representationon the one hand, and the tradition of the Bible on the other, make San La

Muerte’s followers to believe very naturally that their saint–who knows andsees everything, just as God does–will claim any failure if their promises arenot kept.

Justice or Revenge?

We have already seen that San La Muerte is, above all, “fair” for his devotees.But, what does “justice” mean in the context of this devotion? It mainly meansthat those who do not keep their word may or should be punished by San LaMuerte. One of the legends of San La Muerte narrates that one of his followersdecided to trap him in a bottle and bury him in a 30 meter deep hole out of thefear he felt. Thirty years later, in a visit that the gravedigger-believer paidevery decade, San La Muerte came out of the bottle and stated: “It’s your turnnow”.11 This “vengeance” or “revenge” taken by the saint on his devotee isexperienced by his followers as an act of justice. Moreover, several inter-viewees declare that San La Muerte does justice to those who do not keep theirpromises not by means of any kind of revenge but by taking away the mostprecious thing they have.

11. This narration is taken from version no. 2 transcribed in Miranda Borelli (1976, p. 67).


14/22


Evarista: There are many people who don’t listen to him; they don’t evenwant to hear talk about San La Muerte because they say he is an evildoer.Because you have to keep your word with San La Muerte; because if youdon’t, he takes away from you what you love the most. That’s why people are

afraid of him.Devotees believe that San La Muerte takes revenge very fairly on the unfaith-

ful. In this comparison between revenge and justice lies one of the clearest pre-modern aspects of this devotion. The famous difference between these actionsestablished by Hegel in his Elements of Philosophy of Right does not appear here.For Hegel, revenge demands a claim or a restitution of a right that only exists “initself”. This is why he characterizes revenge as a particular restitution related toan individual injury, although it is not fair in itself. It is the existence of law (amaterial manifestation of such right “in itself”) what allows the qualitative leap

from revenge to justice, since once the abstract right takes on the form of law,the universal infringement arises instead of a particular infringement. Europeanmodernity found in this distinction the philosophical foundation of law, guaran-teeing in this way that all injuries to an individual would constitute at the sametime a universal injury. In modernity, the one who acts against an individual(protected by a universal right) at the same time acts against the law, and thusthe right of restitution does not refer to the individual right but to the socialright.

San La Muerte’s followers do not experience such a distinction. The revengefor an unfulfilled promise amounts to justice; and justice can only be done byexercising revenge. Many testimonies reveal that, even highly painful events,such as the loss of a loved one, are fully justified when they are attributed torevenge from San La Muerte for an unfulfilled promise:

Ángela: To my sister, the saint took away her husband. He took the mostprecious thing she had…

Interviewer: Did he die?A: Yes. And of a dreadful cancer. Lots of suffering… But she didn’t

keep her promise. I always keep my promises for my petitions. Butshe didn’t.

Ángela kept her word; her sister did not. Ángela attributes the cancer sufferedby her brother-in-law to such infringement. She does not even doubt about thefairness of this revenge at any time. San La Muerte is fair because it is consideredthat he neither forgets nor forgives, because he punishes and takes revenge.However, this trait attributed to San La Muerte by his followers is also the waythey experience their relationship among people. One of the most popularprayers reads as follows: “Oh, Holy Spirit! Powerful skeleton / Stronger thanSamson / Unconjurable King of the times of danger and injustice / With your kindFaith of Almighty God / I beg you to do what I have come to ask for: / make [the

name of the person to who revenge is addressed to is included here] repent andsuffer every minute after minute, hour, day, week, month, and year of his/herlife / Don’t allow him/her to work in peace; make him/her think always in his/


15/22

88 CARASSAI

her injustice on me, / and let him/her be punished by me forever”.12 In thisprayer, the one who prays requests San La Muerte’s assistance to take revengeon someone, to punish the one who has offended through perpetual suffering(“every minute after minute, hour, day, week, month, and year of his life”). In

this way, although San La Muerte’s followers accept and even approve of therevenge taken by their saint on the offenders “by taking away from them theirmost precious thing” when they have failed to keep a promise, they also feel theyhave the right to punish those who have not kept their word with them (byrequesting their saint’s assistance). This second fact is a condition of the firstone. The relation or agreement of justice-revenge they establish with San LaMuerte is the religious translation of the social relation or agreement they expe-rience in their community (family, neighborhood, society).

The respect-fear prompted by San La Muerte among his devotees may be

compared to what Lacan calls ‘the quilting point’, that major and primordialsignifier around which all discourse and all practice should be analyzed. InRacine’s tragedy Athaliah, the example on which Lacan works, “the fear of God”replaces and also remedies “a world made up of manifold terrors […] To havereplaced these innumerable fears by the fear of a unique being who has no othermeans of manifesting his power than through what is feared behind these innu-merable fears, is quite an accomplishment” (Lacan 1993, pp. 266–7). In the worldfull of threats where San La Muerte’s followers live, this respect-fear they feelobeys to this sort of economy of fear described by Lacan, i.e., all fears of a multi-fariously threatening world are subsumed in just one: the respect-fear for San LaMuerte. The identity of the communities who worship the saint is constructedaround this signifier not because they stop fearing the threatening evils of theworld they live in but because they live those fears through this devotion.

In the world without lawyers or judges (or without a strong institutional pres-ence of the State) where San La Muerte’s devotees live, the promise enacts anethical-social agreement in personal relationships. A word is kept, threats arematerialized, and revenge is fair. It is not a mere coincidence that a largenumber of popular heroes of the region13 (some of them also worshippers of thesaint) are known as “avengers”. In the stage during which the Argentine Nation-

State solidified, they took the law in their own hands, many times confronting(or chased by) the legal institution. In many regions where the cult is practiced,

12. The prayers to San La Muerte may be consulted in Cerruti (1965). Most of the prayers implymentioning the person for whom a punishment or a favor is asked for. By mentioning the name of theperson to whom the prayer is addressed, the peculiarity of such prayer and the specific petition arestrengthened. In the prayers to San La Muerte there are no “us sinners, now and in the hour of ourdeath”, or faults are confessed “by my fault, by my fault, by my great fault;” in San La Muerte’sprayers no beliefs are mentioned, such as “the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, thepardon to our sins, the resurrection of flesh and eternal life”; no punishments whatsoever arementioned either (the quotations belong to official prayers of Catholicism). The prayers to San LaMuerte materialize the most terrible and bare desires of human beings, expressed bluntly, without

taboos, bereft of universal moral imperatives, as they are usually presented when no institutionmediate.13. Among the best known we find the gaucho Antonio Gil, the gaucho Lega, Mate Cocido, andFrancisco López.


16/22


justice as an institution exists only at a formal level. The Province of Corrientes(Argentina), for instance, is a typical example of what is usually called a ‘feudalprovince’, because economic and political power is vested in only a few tradi-tional families. The demands for justice in this context, more than once have no

institutional channels through which to be directed. The issue is not that thesepeople “do not believe in justice”; on the contrary, they believe in justice, butthey associate it more to their saint and what he symbolizes than the judicialmachinery. In the latter, there are judges; however, San La Muerte is fair. At thelaw courts, money is needed; San La Muerte only demands that the word givenshould be kept. One of the most popular prayers to the saint reads as follows:“Both at gambling and in business / My best lawyer I appoint you / Make whoeverturns against me / A looser forever / Oh! San La Muerte, my Guardian Angel.Amen” (Cerruti 1965, p. 49). San La Muerte is the judge who judges them and,

at the same time, the lawyer who defends them. Manuel, a fifty-year-olddevotee, refers to this attribution of San La Muerte as follows:

For me, he is my lawyer. We were at court; the others went with three lawyers.I took my sacred image of San La Muerte and I won.

An Amoral Saint or an Unsaintly Moral?

The fact that the cult to San La Muerte is not accepted by any institution implies

per se that it cannot be univocally controlled. If ideology is centrally (althoughnot exclusively) based on the ideological apparatuses of the State, as Althusserbelieves, regulating or manipulating the religious ideology that goes beyond ormoves relatively outside of institutions proves to be difficult. In Ideology State

Apparatuses, Althusser considers “the Christian religious ideology” to be anemblematic example of the operation of ideology. Christian ideology, Althusserstates, is addressed to individuals, it calls them by their first names (“You arePeter!”), and tells them that “God exists and that you are answerable to Him”.It orders them to observe morals and obedience: “This is what you must do!”, “ifyou observe the ‘law of love’ you will be saved”. When a Christian answers suchcall, when he says “Yes, it really is me!”, he acts as Moses did, he “recognizesthat he is a subject, a subject of God, a subject through the Subject andsubjected to the Subject” (Althusser 1972, pp. 178–9). Christian ideology thusoperates to the extent that it is able to make the subject it addresses accept theexistence of superior morals that should be respected, that there is a law of Godto be obeyed, and that only through this obedience may he belong to the retinuethat will deserve salvation.

But when the institution is absent or cannot control a religious phenomenon,ideology takes on a more diffuse development. Individuals do not feel addressed

by a God who speaks through an institution (or vice versa). San La Muerte offersan interesting example of a cult whose ideology has ample effects on the life ofhis followers (to such an extent that the saint speaks through them or they are


17/22

90 CARASSAI

spoken to by the saint, as it could be analyzed in Althusser’s terms); however,these effects cannot be controlled or administered by Christian ideology or itsinstitutions. Just the opposite to what Christian Churches demand from theirmembers, i.e. taking on a “new life” (baptism is, for Christianity, the second

birth), San La Muerte does not ask for credentials. In order to belong to the groupof followers there exist no abstract or a priori morals to be observed but specificand social ethics, whose respect is exercised at a community level.14 Thisbecomes evident in the reasons in the prayers: San La Muerte is not asked foreternal happiness but “to turn those who are unfaithful in love to become losers”(Cerruti 1965, pp. 34–5). The difference between these prayers and those of anyChristian Church are evident. There are no prayers for love in general, but inparticular for Juana who has left or Juan who has not arrived. There are no prayersto achieve the affection, attention, or love of a lover, but to drive him or her

crazy of love. It is not that the lover who has left should simply return as if his orher only presence were enough; the petition is to make him or her return desper-ately, surrendered, subdued, crying.15 There are no prayers for general matters(for the peace of the world or for poverty in abstract terms) but for a specificsituation of violence or an individual condition of poverty or unemployment.Devotees do not feel that San La Muerte demands exemplary behaviors or altru-istic attitudes; they do not feel they have to honor him with huge donations ofmoney (which most of them lack) or with excessive sacrifices. For his followers,San La Muerte only demands that they fulfill their promise. Thus, devotees feelthat they feel accepted just how they are.

However, it is not pertinent to associate this cult with an individual or socialpractice of resistance against exploitation or against the established socialorder.16 The resistance present in this cult is not related to the “war of posi-tions”, in a Gramscian style; it does not obey a counter-hegemony strategydestined to dispute or obstruct economic domination. In this sense, this cultrepresents a good example that resistance does not necessarily have a progres-sive shade or a horizon of social transformation but may be regressive or, as inthis case, indifferent to the change of the status quo on many occasions. If the

14. The difference I establish herein between moral and ethics refers to the Hegelian distinction.For Hegel, the former is autonomous and individual, universally necessary but imprinted a priori inhuman reason (it is Kant’s categorical imperative). The latter, however, is heteronomous and social,contingent (it depends on a given community placed in space and time) and it is derived fromspecific behaviors (Hegel 1993).15. This may be clearly seen in the following prayer: “Oh, powerful Lord of the good Death/ victorof marriages and single people / dominate the invincible heart of [the lost lover’s name ismentioned here] / make him/her feel terribly desperate, make him/her come back to me / andmake him/her follow me lovingly up to making him/her crazy. / I pray you to take care of me andhelp me / and to bring [the lover’s name] crying back to me, totally subdued to me. Amen”, quotedin Coluccio (1978, p. 47).16. I thank Vanesa Mancinelli who, when asking about the revolutionary possibilities of this devo-

tion, helped me develop far better all the elements invalidating any such interpretation. As I intentto show, the question of resistance could only be thought in terms of a resistance against a givenmoral order but not a social order (since any horizon of political change is totally absent in thiscult).


18/22


cult to San La Muerte represents resistance it does so with respect to a certainscale of values.17

What the devotees of the cult to San La Muerte resist is to accept the idea,established by bourgeois modernity, of impeccable and abstract morals, where

supreme values (love, forgiveness, peace, democracy, etc.) are universallyimposed over and above social relations. On the contrary, the ethics operatingaround San La Muerte emerges from these relations. It is not imposed over orabove them; it is their outcome. The rewards that devotees consider havingreceived from their saint are not abstract. The prize received by the faithfuldevotee is not eternity or heaven when he/she ends up his/her life on earth, butthe lover’s love, here and now; it is bread for him/her and his/her family, hereand now; or it is punishment to his/her enemy, here and now.Figure5. TattooofSanLa MuerteIn one of the interviews I conducted in Barranqueras, someone who had made

a promise told me how his life had undergone a radical change from the momenthe had met his saint. Before this, he declared, his wife was compelled to prosti-tute herself to feed the family, and their children had temporary jobs every nowand then that prevented them from attending school. As a whole, “everythingwent backwards; everything went wrong, extremely wrong” in his life. A femalefolk healer of Northern Argentina gave him a San La Muerte, and from thenonwards, he had his stroke of fortune: “he [San La Muerte] pulled me out of thedepths, and he made everything change. In three years, I thank him for what Ihave. What he has given me is impressing; not only what he gave me, but whathe made me do. Whatever I ask him, he fulfills it” (interview to Carlos). With the

improvement of his situation, his wife had left the street and his children hadgone back to school. The narration was moving, and somehow or other, Iexpected a Hollywood-like ending to the following question.

Interviewer: But, for instance, what did you do? Did you change jobs? Did youlook for a job? How did you achieve all that?

Carlos: I changed. I changed. I committed myself, and I committed myselfin all senses.

I: How did you commit yourself?C: By looking for women. By going out to look for women…I: By going out to look for women?

17. The specific practice of this resistance may be compared to what Baudrillard (1993) refers to as“symbolic exchange”. It is absolutely clear that San La Muerte’s current followers do not belong tothe primitivism analyzed by him; however, in their “life given to death”, they show some connectionwith it through the restitution of the symbolic. In the cult of San La Muerte, the exchange does notcome to an end with life. “GIVING, RETURNING, EXCHANGING” (Baudrillard 1993, p. 139) are theterms that govern this devotion. What would this government resist to?: to the way in which theWestern bourgeois culture deals with death and constructs an edifice of values there from. “Ourwhole culture is just one huge effort to dissociate life and death, to ward off the ambivalence ofdeath in the interests of life as value, and time as the general equivalent. The elimination of death

is our phantasm, and ramifies in every direction: for religion, the afterlife and immorality; forscience, truth; and for economics, productivity and accumulation” (Baudrillard 1993, p. 147). To thelogic of equivalence, which is hegemonic in the so-called developed Western world, the cult of Sanla Muerte poses an opposing logic of reciprocity.


19/22

92 CARASSAI

C: Women to open a night club. Then, I committed myself to the taskand I went out to look for them; I went to Córdoba, to Buenos Aires,

to Salta, and I spoke with the girls’ husbands. Then they sent mefive women from one place, five from another… and I had around 30women.

I: And did you open the night club?C: A sort of night club, a kind of night club; not a real night club, but

a kind of night club… It is called a “casa de pase”. And I opened a“casa de pase” and I changed. And everything went alright, every-thing progressed, everything was ok.

I: And did your wife keep on working?C: No, not any longer. She was already 30 years old and younger girls

appeared, around 17 and 18. So this was no longer for her. It is

unbelievable what happened to me. Everything improved. Andeverything I asked for and I ask for he fulfills.

The situation of Carlos and his family improved, but they did not (essentially)change. Just the opposite to Althusser’s example, where the subject acknowl-edged who he was from the moment he felt that God called him by his name andhe accepted the need to submit himself and, if necessary, to change his life (tobe born again, as in baptism), the cult to San La Muerte is compatible with anykind of life or practical behavior, even with those rejected by Christian morals.Devotees do no feel their little saint demands from them essential transforma-

tions. Their saint is not there to condemn them or indoctrinate them from amoral standpoint but to protect them and, upon an unfulfilled promise, punishthem. A prostitute does not ask to be forgiven but prays for more clients; those

Figure 5. Tattoo of San La Muerte


20/22


who have participated in an armed confrontation, do not beg mercy for the deaththey have caused but thank him for being alive; compulsive gamblers do notmake any petition to give up gambling, but to win; the thief does not commendto the saint to access the world of law but not to be caught. Carlos, who

“committed himself” to take his wife away from the streets, did so at theexpense of driving other 30 women to prostitution. Maybe this is what mayexplain the closeness between San La Muerte and his followers. They do not needto change their lives to be accepted in his ranks.

Now then, this does not mean an absence of codes or lack of behaviorpatterns; on the contrary, although few and simple, some strict behavior arisesfrom this cult. The accurate limits defining the favors to be asked for and theirmoderation should be added to the value of the word given and keeping thepromises made. One thing is to pray for the lover that has left us to come

back, and something different is asking for women/men indiscriminately; onething is to pray for work, and something different is to ask for becoming amillionaire. San La Muerte, his followers believe, awards what is necessary andpunishes the disproportionate promise makers. For example, Ernesto, afollower who travels every year far more than one hundred miles to worshiphis saint, explains:

I’m going to tell you a story of my youth, of what my father said “cha’ migo”—we speak this way—“don’t ask the saint for women or for money. You have to winover women’s hearts and you have to work to get money.”

Both from this and other interviews and the behavior of devotees during thecelebrations and processions a kind of ethics of austerity may be inferred. Theethical codes that join this saint’s followers are always related to questions ofform more than content. For San La Muerte’s devotees it is important to complywith the word given and not to have disproportionate personal ambitions than tobe peaceful or violent, loyal to one’s couple or an adulterer, law abiding or not.In my interviews I spoke, for instance, with prostitutes, thieves, prisoners, andyoungsters addict to alcohol who never asked the saint to change what they “were”or the content of what they were; they simply asked to be lucky in what they did.

Toward a Conclusion

If identity is, as stated by Hall, that point of encounter between discourses andpractices that attempt to question individuals on the one hand, and on the other,the processes that produce subjectivities, the cult to San La Muerte should beplaced at the core of the question of identity of his devotees. Their subjectivityhas been produced by an ancestral belief transmitted from generation to gener-ation to which, at the same time, they have contributed and still contribute to

produce the specific characteristics attributed to the saint. This becomesevident in the prayers, which cover a variety as vast as the specific needs thatdevotees express. Although the saint’s followers may call themselves Christians


21/22

94 CARASSAI

or Catholics, the institutional orphanhood of this cult allows its contents not tobe defined or manipulated by any Church. In the vast majority of San La Muerte’sdevotees there is a rank of beliefs; first of all, their saint; then, the remainingreligious symbols, and finally, the ministers of the Church. Remaining outside of

the institutional power, however, does not preclude the cult to San La Muertefrom having an ideology. As Eagleton states about “all successful ideologies”, thiscult “works much less by explicit concepts or formulated doctrines than byimage, symbol, habit, ritual and mythology”18 (Eagleton 1994, p. 23). My analysis(compatible with Althusser’s theory, wherein “ideologies are carried out in insti-tutions”, Althusser 1972, p. 184) intended to show that when religious ideologiesdo not fall under the scope of an institution (or any organized group that mayreplace it), practices that may challenge or contradict a certain order of thingsare enabled and even promoted.

However, this does not mean that the challenge or contradiction should betranslated to questioning the prevailing social order or an economic, sexual, orpolitical exploitation. In this sense, my research confirmed the resistance thatthis cult promotes is less social than moral and thus, not all resistance has ahorizon of radical transformation of society, not even progressist content.Resistance, in this cult, means the possibility of making one’s own life compati-ble with religious faith without the need of undergoing an essential change ineveryday practices or in the values that build up those practices. Prostitutes,thieves, prisoners, corrupt police officers, drug traffickers, all of them have aspace there. Of course, also those who lead a life according to Christian morals

have a space too. But in this work it was my intention to emphasize the specificelements of this cult. Quite different from the “Luján Virgin” or the cult to“Christ the King”, San La Muerte’s devotees go to him to improve the same lifethey lead, not to change it.

San La Muerte, the non-saint saint, enjoys a holiness achieved not through theVatican but throughout centuries of being there, in the dangers and pleasures ofeveryday life, together with those who suffer for love or those who fear theirenemy, side by side in their everyday anxiety and in community celebrations, inthe need to love or take revenge. If the tradition of the cult has survived for

centuries without sponsorship from any power whatsoever, it is because theidentity itself of the subjects questioned by San La Muerte is built up in suchdevotion. It is for this reason that I have suggested that his devotees form animagined community not only in space but also in time, gathering not only friendsand relatives geographically apart, but also them with their ancestors. This cultis inserted within the religious ideology of this region, a mixture of Christians and

18. However, conversely to what Eagleton states, religion is not always “an extremely effectiveform of ideological control” (Eagleton 1994, p. 23) It is difficult to make this idea of religion as an

effective tool of ideological control compatible with the history of Christian religion in the secondhalf of the twentieth century in Latin America. In fact, during the 60s and 70s, the interpretationthat the theology of liberation made of the Gospels was turned into a nursery of revolutionary mili-tants.


22/22


indigenes. However, the Church cannot control every name of God. In thisregion, San La Muerte is one of those names.

Acknowledgements

The fieldwork on which this study is based was performed within the framework

of the research project “Symbols and fetishes in the construction of popular

subjectivity”, led by Professor Rubén Dri, from the University of Buenos Aires. I

wish to thank Purnima Bose, Alfio Saitta, and Vanesa Mancinelli, from Indiana

University, for their readings of previous versions of this article. Many thanks

are due to Professor Jeffrey Gould and the Journal of Cultural Research’s anon-

ymous reader for their suggestions and encouraging comments.

References

Althusser, Louis (1972) ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses’, in Lenin and Philos-ophy, and other Essays, ed. L. Althusser, Monthly Review Press, New York.

Anderson, Benedict (2003) Imagined Communities, Verso, London.Arcadio (1997) El culto a San La Muerte: el santito, Alberto Bellanza, Buenos Aires.Baudrillard, Jean (1993) Symbolic Exchange and Death, SAGE Publications, London,

Thousand Oaks, New Delhi.Borelli, J. M. (1976) San La Muerte: un mito regional del nordeste, Facultad de

Humanidades, Resistencia.Cerruti, Raúl (1965) ‘San La Muerte’, in Selecciones folklóricas, ed. R. Cerruti, Codexs,

Buenos Aires.Coluccio, Félix (1978) Fiestas y celebraciones de la República Argentina, Editorial Plus

Ultra, Buenos Aires.Dobritzhoffer, Martín (1968) Historia de los abipones, UNNE, Resistencia.Eagleton, Terry (1994) Literary Theory: an Introduction, University of Minnesota Press,

London-Minneapolis.Hall, Stuart (1996) ‘Who needs Identity?’ in Questions of Cultural Identity, eds S. Hall

and DuGay, Sage, London.Hegel, G. W. F. (1993) Fundamentos de la Filosofía del derecho, Libertarias / Prodhufi,

Madrid.Lacan, Jacques (1993) The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book III. The Psychoses 1955-1956,

Norton & Company, New York and London.López Breard, Miguel (1973) Devocionario Guaraní. Ediciones Colmegna, Santa Fé.Rosa, José María (1981) Historia Argentina, Oriente, Buenos Aires.

Documents

San La Muerte. The non Saint Saint JfCR.pdf