Santa Muerte statues removed from Nuevo Laredo

March 25, 2009 | 9:18 pm

More than 35 statues dedicated to Santa Muerte, or Saint Death, have been removed from around the border city of Nuevo Laredo by officials, reports the Associated Press.

The statues, most depicting a robe-covered skeleton resembling the Grim Reaper, lined highways and roads in and around the Mexican city on the border with Texas. One of the statues was located at the base of an international bridge linking Mexico and the U.S. But soldiers stood guard Wednesday as city workers were seen taking down statues. The effort started before dawn Tuesday.

We reported back in 2004 that:

"Though La Santa Muerte is disdained and barely recognized by the Catholic Church, she's one of a number of unofficial folk 'saints' who've been taken to heart by the Mexican people in the centuries since the Spanish conquest. Death cults and death worship have deep roots in Mexico's pre-Columbian past, and in Mexican culture death doesn't carry the morbid taint that it does in other societies. And while La Santa Muerte embodies a certain fatalism about life's inevitable end, her all-too-human form makes ordinary Mexicans feel that, in some mysterious way, she is like one of them, that she feels their sufferings right down to her bones."

Read that full report, by Reed Johnson, here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Photo: Mexico City residents at a shrine to La Santa Muerte in 2004. In some places, the Death Saint's popularity rivals that of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Credit: Chris Vail / For The Times