Santa Muerte devotion at the Tepito shrine

Record summary

The public Santa Muerte shrine associated with Enriqueta Romero in Tepito became a major site for observing contemporary Mexican devotion to a skeletal saint or death figure. Since 2010, the shrine and its neighborhood networks have appeared in ethnographies, journalism, photography, and studies of pilgrimage, protection, healing, commerce, and contested legitimacy. It offers a comparison with Catholic saints, curanderismo, folk magic, and criminalized religious identities. Researchers should preserve disagreement over whether Santa Muerte is a saint, folk figure, occult entity, or media construction, and should avoid equating devotion with criminality.