Fotografías de la serie La Santísima Muerte, © Fernando Castillo

The equalizer, the just one… death is the one and only truth for all of us… Why not sanctify the instant she releases us from suffering and sorrows, from fears and misfortune? She is known as Saint Death (Santa Muerte) by her devout followers, who are mostly the destitute, the threatened, the incarcerated, the daring. Dispossessed, unsafe, lacking prestige, and confidence, her faithful followers avail themselves of her tenderness and caress her under the name of The White Girl (La Niña Blanca).

For years Fernando Castillo has followed the proliferation of this cult. He has not only visited public and private altars, no matter how humble or lavish, located in traditional parts of the city, but also more intimate ones, which embody her emaciated body, the altars of skin. The offering of blood and pain that all tattooing implies would like to be a metaphor of life, but it isn’t. Blood and pain seem to be commonplace for anyone who carries on his back Saint Death with scythe, also a Christ divine face which still drips, a grotesque pig and presumably another death, in the direction of the tobacco smoke the ritual venerates her with. The parishioner and his accomplice switch places: one sustains the altar (it is the altar) and the other a humble censer spreading smoke.

Fotografías de la serie La Santísima Muerte, © Fernando Castillo

They say that she is jealous, very jealous, and that she demands absolute devotion, total fidelity and fresh flowers at all times, as well as a lit flame and that she should always have a glass of water. She has been provided with more than this and that’s why she appears so overpowering in her glass encased altar, due to her prominence and attired in a colored veil, a wig, and adorned with all kinds of necklaces. In her right hand she has gold offerings and in the left a bowl full of skulls, a portable tzompantli1 where she places her cigar and cigarette. Surrounded by smaller versions of herself, she bestows on all of them ceremonial staffs from pre-Hispanic times, adorned with quartz which crowns the globe which is our world.

Undaunted, in her space she tolerates the presence of a woman who is cleaning the showcase that isolates her and allows her to grow in stature in full luxury before the eyes of a father who is initiating his son in the ritual of offering her a puff of smoke.

Fotografías de la serie La Santísima Muerte, © Fernando Castillo

It is Castillo’s intention that there be play between the internal and the external, an understanding of the exposed and the unexposed (and I am not speaking of photography as such, but rather of the recourse of poetics and aesthetics) which make evident familiarity with places, dates, moments and people, and in turn leads to ups and downs in the prevailing atmosphere, situations and emotions.

Worshipped preferably during the afternoon and evening in rites that are closely related to those of years gone by refer to life as a lit flame which consumes short or long wicks as Destiny or the Moirai already know. People of all ages come to see her and the degree of their hope or despair will be captured by the look on their face: what is being hidden or revealed by the semi-darkness where the heads, the framed paper calendars, the images of tri-dimensional shapes, and the flowers come together anxiously awaiting a blessing. What is shown and what is occult in the self-engrossment of the Cholo2 who allows onlookers to observe the symmetry of her tattoos – comedy and tragedy in the extreme, the Cholo hats, which frame a legend, and the symmetry of her crossed arms embracing her chest, from where a silver chain hangs and the symmetry of the pistols and of life and death show themselves along the “me” axis.

The cult appears to go back some 80 years (a sanctuary in the county of Sombrerete in the State of Zacatecas, is supposedly the oldest one) and formed part of a type of underground movement only for those initiated in the cult – some in Veracruz, some along the northern border, but from some fifteen years back, it has gained force throughout the country.

Fotografías de la serie La Santísima Muerte, © Fernando Castillo

If evidence of the cult terrifies those of good conscience, the increasing number of followers knows that death can be found by following the paths of migration of Mexicans and Central Americans en route to the other side (drowned in the river, scorched of thirst in the desert), the drug trafficking routes (how many milliliters of blood does a gram of cocaine cost?), the routes of unemployment, drought, flooding, hunger, people trafficking (kidnapping, cheap labor and prostitution as euphemisms for slavery and the sale of organs), the routes of a nation plundered during many six-year presidential periods.

In such a sordid reality, it is better to resort to the saying “opposite poles attract each other” – in other words, venerating death will bring life. “It’s better to be devout than to have death on my heels”. Little by little the fervor catches on in a world without justice, where there are people who love the avenger. A colorful paraphernalia that include candles, tea lights, roses, prayer cards with a prayer or novenarios, framed paper, acrylic plastic, metal, paste and clay calendars in tri-dimensional shapes are placed in a niche or on a table. She can also be found out on the street or on dozens of Internet sites, always with her scythe. Saint Death is dressed in gold, red, green, amber, white, or black, according to the occasion.

The petitions range from the mundane to the spiritual. She knows about money and success as well, how to rehabilitate addictions and grant peace and harmony, how to protect you from pettifogging lawyers as well as bad luck.

Fotografías de la serie La Santísima Muerte, © Fernando Castillo

Dressed in a blue tunic, showing her sternum and ribs, she is carried by a woman with her arm tattooed in blue and tearful eyes to a place of honor. The huge canvas that has just been affixed is also in blue and points to the humbleness of faith in her look. Dressed in white, crowned by flowers and lace, she is embraced by a man who carries her on his chest, close to his heart, to invite her to a cigarette that she too should smoke, putting her dark skin in contrast with her snow-white bridal gown. The scythe has a flower ornament and thorns that harmonize with the nude man and his half-open mouth, making visible his lost tooth.

Dressed in gold, as dictated by the person who calls upon her to watch over his economic power and wealth, with red imitation gold leaf vessels and the globe in her hand, leads her to receive the offering from the weightless dancers, as weightless as the feathers that stem from their headdress dance with the rays of light filtering in. And then there’s the woman in chiaroscuro who approaches a window to listen to the mariachi music, more air from the wind instruments decked with lit flames, the flames of the lives of those who pray and sing to her and who believe in her bony existence.

Hanging from her thick phalanges is a rosary, in the form of a bracelet, the protected skull that does not hide her outright whiteness and plays with the profile of one who knows that “I see you as I was and as you see me you will be”, and, aware of this unique and real certainty, complies with the promise and exposes her to a puff of smoke coming from another profile. Total and semidarkness of existence, death and life together. n

Mexico-Tenochitlan, October, 2005
The Year of the Disastrous Hurricanes