Inside El Mencho’s altar: faith amid cartel violence Marc Ramirez, USA TODAYSun, June 7, 2026 at 11:00 AM UTC 0 As bullets flew during the fateful shootout in which the Mexican drug kingpin known as El Mencho would be fatally wounded, did he seek help in his final moments by murmuring desperate prayers to St.
Inside El Mencho’s altar: faith amid cartel violence
Marc Ramirez, USA TODAYSun, June 7, 2026 at 11:00 AM UTC
0
As bullets flew during the fateful shootout in which the Mexican drug kingpin known as El Mencho would be fatally wounded, did he seek help in his final moments by murmuring desperate prayers to St. Jude?
Among Mexico's most wanted fugitives before being killed in February in a Mexican military raid, Nemesio Oseguera, co-founder and head of the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG), had spent his final days in a high-end Jalisco villa featuring a makeshift shrine topped with Catholic saints and a handwritten copy of the Bible's Psalm 91.
The brutal cartel is the country's most prolific trafficker of cocaine, heroin and meth ― and, according to the U.S. State Department, a pipeline for fentanyl onto American soil. And yet, on El Mencho's homemade altar, there they were, icons of a typical Catholic upbringing: Figures of the Virgin of Guadalupe, patron saint of Mexico; St. Martín Caballero, patron saint of soldiers and travelers; and St. Jude Thaddeus, patron saint of desperate situations.
"It couldn't have been more orthodox Catholic," said Andrew Chesnut, professor of Catholic studies at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond and an expert in Latin American Catholicism.
How could someone steeped in narcoviolence reconcile such a life with Catholic devotional practice? Chesnut said El Mencho, raised in the deeply Catholic Mexican state of Michoacan, echoes other criminal actors who've balanced villainy and veneration, bypassing traditional religious frameworks to absolve ― or even justify ― the deeds that reap their daily bread.
"It's completely divorced from the moral compass of Christianity," he said. In that sense, he added, El Mencho and other narco traffickers are not unlike Italian mafiosi who've relied on Catholic saints for protection, prosperity and justification for their own activities.
A makeshift altar with Catholic saints and a handwritten psalm stood inside the house where Mexican drug cartel leader Nemesio Oseguera, better known as 'El Mencho', spent his final hours before he was injured in a military raid and subsequently died while being transported in a helicopter, outside Tapalpa, Mexico, February 24, 2026. REUTERS/Liberto Urena
Along with the saints found on El Mencho's altar, another saint embraced in narco culture is the Santo Niño of Atocha, a childlike Christ figure known as the patron saint of prisoners and those in danger, said Robert Almonte, a law enforcement trainer and consultant in San Antonio, Texas. Ovidio Guzmán, the drug lord son of notorious Sinaloa kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzmán, sported a pendant bearing the Holy Infant's image when he was detained in 2019, Almonte said.
The most popular saint among Mexican drug traffickers, he said, is St. Jude Thaddeus, first embraced by Colombian narcos. As the patron saint of lost causes or difficult situations, St. Jude is who Catholics beg for help with, for example, a terminally ill relative ― but for cartels, Almonte said, "if they're traveling down the highway in a vehicle loaded with drugs, they're calling on St. Jude to help the drugs reach their destination."
However, experts note it's often Mexican folk saints unrecognized by the Catholic church to whom narcos direct their prayers ― figures such as Santa Muerte (Holy Death) or Jesus Malverde, whose followings reach far beyond the criminal underworld.
That's one of the advantages of folk saints, Chesnut said: Because they operate outside the confines of Catholicism, one can ask them for anything. "They don't operate within Christian morality, so if you want to ask them to bless a shipment of fentanyl to Atlanta, it's kosher," he said.
People celebrate the 110th anniversary of folk saint Jesus Malverde's birth, in Culiacan, state of Sinaloa, Mexico, on May 3, 2019.
Folk saints fill a void in a largely Catholic country where most saints, many with olden European roots, don't always resonate. Jesus Malverde, for instance, a Robin-Hood-like figure based on a fabled, green-clad Mexican bandit who shared his plunder with the poor, found favor among the feared Sinaloa cartel.
"If you're dissolving bodies in vats of acid, your weekly job doesn't square well with attending Mass on Sunday," said Robert Bunker, an international security and counterterrorism consultant who studies cartels. "You're not living a good Christian life. You can only say so many Hail Marys and it still doesn't clean the slate for you."
Alignment with Jesus Malverde has added powerful symbolism for narcos who've funded local improvements where government has not, as the journal Cultural Geographies once noted. One such kingpin, it said, had "built a church, a kindergarten and a volleyball court in his hometown of Guamuchilito."
As Almonte puts it, "Mexican cartel members often see themselves as doing the right thing."
The rise of Santa Muerte
The other folk saint tied to narco culture is Santa Muerte, whose Grim Reaper appearance and relative obscurity prompt assumptions of malevolence. News reports dub her "the cartel patron saint," while a Texas governor's office news release noting a Santa Muerte altar found at a stash house bust in 2023 said it indicated "a connection to Mexican cartels."
A table with a bible, an image of Jesus Christ and a figurine of Santo Nino de Atocha stand covered in dust and debris in the luxury apartment complex where drug lord Arturo Beltran Leyva was shot in Cuernavaca in December 2009. Beltran Leyva, a cartel chief dubbed "The Boss of Bosses," was felled in a spray of bullets by elite navy troops. REUTERS/Valente Rosas/El Universal
Chesnut said the demonization of Santa Muerte began with former Mexican president Felipe Calderón, whose military-led clampdown on cartels, starting in 2006, included the razing of numerous Santa Muerte shrines.
"He fingered Santa Muerte as public enemy number one," said Chesnut, author of "Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, the Skeleton Saint." "There's no denying that Santa Muerte has a robust following with the cartels. If you're wanting to bring death to your enemies, or if you're looking for protection from death, who better to ask for more grains in the hourglass than death herself?"
Santa Muerte, often depicted with a crown and scythe, a globe in hand and an owl at her feet, is the product of religious overlap dating to the Spanish conquest. Scholars say 16th-century Catholic missionaries introduced Europe's Grim Reaper figure to Mexico's indigenous population, believing fear of death would instill a desire for salvation and convert them to Christianity.
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Instead, Chesnut said, indigenous people linked the figure with the death deities of their own ancient belief systems. The fusion gave rise to what would eventually become Santa Muerte despite church efforts to stamp her out, and by the 1940s, she was seen mainly as a love sorceress, called upon by women to bring back wayward partners "under punishment of being whacked with a scythe."
Then, in 2001, a devotee in the Mexico City barrio of Tepito set her life-sized Santa Muerte effigy on the sidewalk outside her home because she no longer had room for it, unintentionally sparking what Chesnut calls "the fastest growing religious movement on the planet." The figure is now in a glass case attached to the woman's home, he said, the most famous Santa Muerte shrine in the world.
A devotee wears a medal depicting Santa Muerte, or Holy Death, at a shrine in the Mexico City barrio of Tepito in November 2007. At the time, Santa Muerte's following in Mexico was estimated at about 2 million people.
Chesnut now estimates Santa Muerte's following at between 13 and 14 million worldwide, the vast majority in Mexico and the American Southwest.
Most tend to be practicing or cultural Catholics who look to Santa Muerte for her reputation as a quick fixer, according to University of Michigan professor William Calvo-Quirós. In his book "Undocumented Saints: The Politics of Migrating Devotions," Calvo-Quirós said veneration of Santa Muerte is a form of spiritual pragmatism "less concerned with the afterlife than the afflictions of the present."
In Mexico, Santa Muerte has found appeal among the poor and marginalized, especially those subject to narcoviolence or other dangers, who look to "The Bony Lady" for protection. As the Institute for Economics and Peace's Vision of Humanity reported earlier this year, Mexico's homicide rate nearly doubled between 2015 and 2019 from 15.1 to 28.2 deaths per 100,000 people, an uptick that coincided with the national expansion of El Mencho's CJNG cartel.
"She's particularly popular for people for whom death might be right around the corner," Chesnut said. "That includes Mexican law enforcement and soldiers. I call her the patron saint of the narco wars, writ large."
A man carries a statue of Santa Muerte during the folk saint's feast day celebration in Mexico City's Tepito neighborhood on October 31, 2025.
Temples devoted to Santa Muerte have sprung up from Guadalajara and Los Angeles to villages in Michoacan. Adherents share offerings and prayers on Reddit while Santa Muerte statues, medals and bracelets are commonly found at botanicas ― Latino-oriented spiritual goods stores ― throughout the American Southwest; in Dallas, Botanica La Luz held a "Noche de Santa" in December to celebrate the folk saint.
"It's a belief for Catholics too," said shop co-owner Zennia Vitela, who though not a Santa Muerte adherent herself, stocks the items for those who are. "My tías were believers."
The Catholic Church is not pleased. When Pope Francis addressed Mexico's bishops in 2016, he referred only vaguely to Santa Muerte and her cartel ties but expressed concern "about those many persons who, seduced by the empty power of the world, praise illusions and embrace their macabre symbols to commercialize death in exchange for money."
A statement issued the following year by the Catholic bishop of San Angelo, Texas, called Santa Muerte worship "spiritually dangerous" and "a perversion of devotion to the saints."
A devotee places her hand on a figure of Santa Muerte (Holy Death) in reflection during the main celebration in a market in Mexico City's Tepito neighborhood on November 1, 2012. Santa Muerte is a folk saint venerated primarily in Mexico and the southwestern United States, a syncretism between Mesoamerican and Catholic beliefs, although strongly condemned by the Catholic Church.
Such declarations mean little to devotees like Marta Azcona, proprietor of Botanica La Fe a la Santísima Muerte in Fort Worth, Texas, whose shop is a warren of Santa Muerte statues, candles, bracelets and figurines. Occasionally, she holds potluck-style Santa Muerte gatherings in the parking lot with a bonfire under the full moon.
Azcona, 47, said those who visit her botanica for blessings and spiritual cleansings have felt shunned in traditional religious settings, either because of their sexuality, tattoos or other factors. Some hide Santa Muerte altars at home from relatives and friends because of the negative connotations.
"They've gone to church, but they feel like they're being judged," said Azcona, who was raised Catholic. "Here, there's no judgment. People who come to her feel everybody has turned their back on them. Where are they going to run to? To somebody who feels the same pain."
Azcona extends her forearms, revealing tattoos of Jesus on one and Santa Muerte on the other.
"With God and the Santa (Muerte) by my side, who could be against us?" she said. "No one."
Marta Azcona, owner of Botanica La Fe A La Santisima Muerte in Fort Worth, Texas, displays arm tattoos of Santa Muerte and Jesus Christ. Azcona's spiritual goods shop is entirely devoted to Santa Muerte, a folk saint that despite condemnation by the Catholic church has millions of adherents in Mexico and the American Southwest. The Grim Reaper-like figure has also found appeal among Mexican cartel members.
That sort of mentality worries people like Bunker, who said such devotion can become perilous when what's permissible under Santa Muerte is malleable and she becomes seen not as an intermediary but "a goddess in her own sense. That's when it turns into something totally different. It's like a meatball. You're making stuff up."
Almonte, the San Antonio consultant, agreed.
"Cartel members believe no matter how much criminal activity they're involved in, as long as they pray to Santa Muerte she's going to take them to heaven," Almonte said. "That makes them that much more dangerous. Because they're not afraid to die."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: For some narcos, saints both aid, justify life of violent crime
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Published: June 7, 2026 at 07:54AM on Source: PRIME TIME
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