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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | January 2007 
Jesus Malverde Gets Shrine in Mexico
 Mark Stevenson - Associated Press
| | A full sized mannequin representing Jesus Malverde, the folk-saint worshipped by many drug traffickers in northern Mexico is seen at a glass encased street shrine in Mexico City Monday Jan. 22, 2007. A Mexico City's housewife has built one of the first public shrines in southern Mexico to Jesus Malverde, a figure throughout the country whose original shrine is located in Culiacan, northern Mexico. (AP/Dario Lopez-Mills) |
Prison cells are decorated with his image. Drug traffickers carry symbols of him. Now, he has a shrine in Mexico City.
Jesus Malverde, a legendary crime figure revered as a saint by many of the country's drug traffickers, has received plenty worshippers since the shrine went up in the capital's rough Doctores neighborhood, said Maria Alicia Pulido Sanchez, a housewife who built it two months ago.
Accounts of the true life of Malverde differ, with some saying he was a railway or construction worker who became a bandit before being hanged in Culiacan in 1909. Admirers say he robbed from the rich to give to the poor. Critics say he has become a symbol of crime.
The so-called "narco-saint" already had a shrine in the city of Culiacan in northern Sinaloa state, considered the cradle of Mexico's top drug clans.
Pulido Sanchez said she built her shrine because Malverde helped poor people.
"He wasn't a drug trafficker. He was what you might call a thief, but he helped his community," Pulido Sanchez said Monday.
The life-size mannequin wears Malverde's trademark neckerchief, a gold chain with a bejeweled pistol charm and a huge belt buckle with a gun motif.
The figure's pockets are stuffed with dollar bills, which Pulido Sanchez says have been donated by worshippers since she erected the shrine in November. They also leave candy, cigarettes and glasses of wine.
Malverde is not recognized by the Roman Catholic Church, but Pulido Sanchez says that doesn't matter.
"We make saints by the power of our belief," she said. "We can believe in anyone who fulfills our petitions."
She says lawyers, policemen and "men with big bunches of jewelry" visit the shrine, as well as housewives, secretaries "and people from every walk of life."
Pulido Sanchez said she was inspired to build the shrine after her son Marcos Abel recovered from injuries he suffered in a December 2005 car crash in just three days when she prayed to a Malverde statue a friend had given her. |
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