THE BORDER REPORT

I've always been fascinated by Santa Muerte with her colorful robes, her contradictions and her hidden allegories. The Saint of the Holy Death has slowly been springing up in the northern states over the past few years and in Sonora, a Mexico City businessman they call El Chilango (guess there's not many chilangos in Nogales, so he can get away with it), built the first shrine back in 2003.

Then the shrines started springing up all around the original, until now there are five shrines just off Highway 15. The shrines have proven popular, Sonorans have taken to Santa Muerte like Aztecs worshipped Mictecacihuatl, the goddess of the underworld.

Some scholars believe Santa Muerte came from Mictecacihuatl, I hold to the other, more uncomfortable idea, that Santa Muerte is a variation of the Aztec goddess and the Virgin Mary.

The Catholic Church, predictably enough, dismisses Santa Muerte as devil worship even though followers pray for many of the same blessings they would ask of St. Michael or San Martín de Porres.

Unfortunately, so do Superior Court judges and drug cops in Arizona, a point which seems rather disingenuous considering all the Catholic churches that drug lords have built throughout Latin America.

Adding to the mystery, is this rather excellent little feature in the Chicago Tribune, a profile of Jonathan Legaría, the man who built a 75-foot statue of the Saint. He was gunned down three weeks later.

Catholic posturing or no, Santa Muerte is here to stay, her power only growing in Mexico and the United States.

I had a chance to enter her largest shrine in Nogales as it was being cleaned last week.