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 News from Around the Americas | February 2008 
Mexican Robin Hood Figure Gains a Kind of Notoriety in U.S.
 Kate Murphy - NYTimes
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| | A statue of Jesús Malverde (C), called the patron saint of drug dealers, sits with religious figures at Mystic Products in Compton, Calif. (J. Emilio Flores/The New York Times) | | |
Houston — Jesús Malverde has been revered for almost a century in northwestern Mexico. According to folklore, he was a Mexican Robin Hood who took from the rich and gave to the poor until he was killed by the police in 1909.
Now, immigrants have brought his legend to the United States. His image, which is thought to offer protection from the law, can be found on items that include T-shirts and household cleaners.
Malverde is widely considered the patron saint of drug dealers, say law enforcement officials and experts on Mexican culture. A shrine has been erected atop his grave in the remote city of Culiacán in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, which has long been associated with opium and marijuana trafficking.
“The drug guys go to the shrine and ask for assistance and come back in big cars and with stacks of money to give thanks,” said James H. Creechan, a Canadian sociologist and adjunct professor at the Autonomous University of Sinaloa in Culiacán.
But Dr. Creechan, who presented a paper on Malverde to the American Society of Criminology in 2005, added that the poor also pray to Malverde for money and safe passage across the border into the United States.
An influx of immigrants from the Sinaloan region in recent years has made Malverde’s image increasingly visible on this side of the border, particularly in the Southwest and in California. His legend has spread among Hispanics, Dr. Creechan said, inspiring many to build altars to Malverde in their homes, as well as to wear Malverde cologne.
His image, which looks suspiciously like that of Pedro Infante, the Mexican matinee idol of the 1940s, appears on T-shirts and patches sewn on jackets and backpacks. Busts of Malverde can be seen next to cash registers at restaurants, bars and discos.
Manuel Simental, a Sinaloan immigrant, has an altar to Malverde in his restaurant, El Paisa, in Lynwood, Calif. It brings him good luck, Mr. Simental said. His customers leave dollar bills and loose change on the altar, which he said he collects and distributes among the poor when he visits Mexico.
Five years ago, Indio Products, a manufacturer in the Los Angeles area that distributes mystical products, did not carry any Malverde merchandise. Today, it has a full line of Malverde items including candles, rosaries, trading cards, stamps, hair oils and bathroom cleaners. The company’s president, Martin Mayer, said Malverde’s popularity was spreading.
“I just shipped an order of Malverde busts to Italy last week,” Mr. Mayer said. “I joked that they were probably going to the Mafia.”
Malverde items are typically sold at botánicas — alternative-medicine pharmacies found in Hispanic neighborhoods that sell herbs, ointments and assorted good luck and black magic charms and potions.
“People say Malverde helped me do this or that; mostly it’s people into drugs who think he’ll shield them from the police,” said Raul Gonzalez, owner of a botánica called Mystic Products in Compton, Calif. “It’s the power of the mind, you know. They believe it, so they take chances and get away with it, but they will eventually get caught.”
Indeed, drug enforcement authorities in Mexico and the United States said Malverde statues, tattoos and amulets can be tip-offs to illegal activity.
“We send squads out to local hotel and motel parking lots looking for cars with Malverde symbols on the windshield or hanging from the rearview mirror,” said Sgt. Rico Garcia with the narcotics division of the Houston Police Department. “It gives us a clue that something is probably going on.”
Courts in California, Kansas, Nebraska and Texas have ruled that Malverde trinkets and talismans are admissible evidence in drug and money-laundering cases.
“It’s not a direct indication of guilt, but it would definitely be used in combination with other things” like piles of cash, baggies and scales, said José Martinez, a special agent with the federal Drug Enforcement Agency.
Last month, Cervecería Minerva, a Mexican microbrewery in the central-western state of Jalisco, introduced a beer called Malverde. Company officials said they chose Malverde’s name and image for its label because he was the most recognizable and admired figure in focus groups.
“Drug smugglers drink it like holy water,” Sergeant Garcia said.
Pervasive in Hispanic culture, Malverde has crossed over into mainstream television shows, movies and plays. Shrines to him were featured in a recent episode of the CBS television series “CSI” and in the 2003 movie “A Man Apart,” starring Vin Diesel.
Malverde was the subject of a play called “Always and Forever” that premiered last year at the Watts Village Theater in Los Angeles. And there is a hip-hop artist who performs under the name Malverde.
“The appeal of Jesús Malverde is that he was a nonconformist,” said Guillermo Avilés-Rodríguez, artistic director of the Watts Village Theater. That the Roman Catholic Church does not recognize Malverde as a saint fits his outsider image.
“There’s a beauty to that, because it was the people who decided he was a saint,” Mr. Avilés-Rodríguez said. “He represents the belief, power and will of the people.” |
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