Parallel Worlds in Perspective: the religiosity and the narcos in Brazil and Mexico

Abstract

Santa Muerte, is a religious entity a symbol and an image of which, in Mexico, is venerated by subjects whose life was marked by social injustices. For this reason, it was appropriated by the cartels’ members, particularly among those exposed to the crime and violence the most. This articulation between religiosity and crime inserted in the drug dealing universe is also characteristic in Brazil. Harshly affected by a “war on drugs” of which, similarly to Mexico, does not stop, Brazil has experienced for over the past 40 years a neopentecostal evangelic movement’s insurgency, with its uniquely characteristic doctrines, principally at the big urban centres’ outskirts – slums – where the attested manifestation of the implicated reverberations of the “war on drugs” rhetoric renders the most destructive and lethal results. Exactly across these territories that the appropriation, resignification of motives, symbols and religious entities are also noticeable. That is the manner, therefore, of how the criminal syndicates strive to dislodge from the mayhem, violence and fear: by creating their own understanding over sacred utensils and beliefs alike, whether through its reaffirmation, or, simply, as a hunt for the survival maintenance in an evil world marked by the close proximity from the death.