The Cult of Santa Muerte: The Mexican Lady Saint of Death

Templo Santa Muerte photos by Megan Rosenbloom

Everyone dies. Good morning! You are going to die. Hi, hello, we are all future corpses. It sucks, but embracing that awful fact might make all this bullshit a little easier. We Americans barely confront death, instead centering our entire culture around young people who refuse to acknowledge age, let alone aging's end result.

Megan Rosenbloom does just the opposite. She's a librarian who works with rare books, studies the history of medicine, and is the co-founder and director of Death Salon, which gathers writers, artists, and death professionals for public events and lectures around the world. This episode, she joined me and fellow VICE contributor Grant Pardee, plus our special guest comedian Cornell Reid to talk about the cult of the Mexican saint of Death, Santa Muerte.

Santa Muerte is so cool that the entire Catholic Church is afraid of her. Remember that scene in Breaking Bad when those insane and fucking awesome twin assassins were crawling like snakes to a shrine? That shrine was to Santa Muerte. Her modern-day renaissance was brought about by a quesadilla maker and you can pray to her with cigarettes. Both cops and gangsters worship her beyond all other saints because she refuses to take sides. We delve deep into the incredibly fascinating story of Santa Muerte, the only woman who brings your soul to the afterlife (other than Bette Midler).

For further reading on Santa Muerte, check out Dr. Andrew Chesnut's Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, the Skeleton Saint.

Producer: Sam Varela

Engineer: Jorge Reyes

Music: LA FONT

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