Sanalona, Sinaloa: The Holy Death Highway for Fervent Worshippers

 “ Sol Prendido” for Borderland Beat

Every day it is populated with chapels and cenotaphs that are well visited

Tell me she doesn’t look tough as fuck…! boasts a young man dressed in black who sanctifies himself again and again before the Holy Death and offers her “I will idolize you all of my life by putting your image as many times as necessary for this place, because you have helped me and my friends.”

He assures that in addition to the six chapels that exist in less than 14 kilometers he will install more “every time my girl supports us, we reward her. We want people not to be ashamed and follow Holy Death, so we have to place her image everywhere.”

The street is gradually populated by chapels that together with the dozens of cenotaphs are part of the road landscape before the fervor that is increasing,

By the road that leads to Tamazula, Durango and that is part of the Golden Triangle, the chapels are becoming an obligatory place to stop, some do it out of curiosity, others out of devotion

The cenotaphs and the Holy Death compete in the exaltations that are lived daily in those places, it’s a practice of challenge, there death is combined that is the physical representation of the transition that occurs when leaving life and the cenotaph where they are finally part of the world of the dead.

WITH STYLE

Chapels and cenotaphs compete in their structure, for example there is a cenotaph that emulates the Parthenon, an icon of ancient Greece. The replica of the crown jewel of Greek architecture is lost on the wild road, a few meters from the dam.

Believers indicate that they have a perception of death as inevitable, so they do not consider it incorrect to establish conversations or practices in honor of the deity who is in charge of it.

“I come to ask you to move away from all those negative vibrations that try to harm my destiny and my life … just like that,” details a fervent admirer of Holy Death.

Police authorities and the Catholic Church itself assure that the followers of the Holy Death are people who live outside the law, but that to date in Sinaloa there are no statistics on how many criminals venerate the Holy Death.

According to police authorities, they say that when they have searched the homes and vehicles of some criminals, statues, altars and other objects have been found that pay tribute to the Holy Death.

Holy Death is represented as a skeleton dressed in a dark robe that covers it from head to toe and that also has other elements.

One of the chapels of the Holy Death that is at the fork Sanalona-El Coyonqui, at that moment is being renovated, now, the seven different colors are being painted in reference to all kinds of requests.

The painter says that he takes care of the place at the request of its owner “I come from a rehabilitation center, the boss supplies us with the painting and we are gladly painting, we do it little by little because there are many people who come.”

The colors are white to achieve peace, harmony and success. Red means love. Blue is to achieve success. Yellow means the solution to problems for all those who do not find the way out of what afflicts them. The golden color, allows economic tranquility.

The “guardian” of Holy Death, at this moment, assures that lately the statues are being stolen.

“People are stealing from the Niña, here they recently took the scythe of one of the images we have…” he details.

He assures that lately people are going more to these places “we have to remove twice a day the candles, the flowers because the truth is they don’t fit, the truth is unusual how men arrive, older males, everything, they come here.”

HOMICIDE

In another of the chapels, precisely where about a month ago a man was murdered, the traces of the event are still present, blood sprinkled on the feet of the Holy Death, just like in the photograph of an individual who is on one side, give an account of what happened there.

“We come to leave flowers in memory of the friend who killed him here, not even Holy Death saved him, the good thing is that it was at her feet,” says an 18-year-old boy who has a huge tattoo on his left arm “The girl close to my heart.”

He points out that “Mahami N” was a friend of his brother and that obviously he knew him very well. While snooping inside the place, he takes out beer cans, even assures that they left a joint to the Holy Death. There are also bouquets of dried flowers, it seems that from that moment, this chapel is no longer as visited as the rest of them.

“Since she doesn’t smoke… I take the joint,” she jokes.

Another visitor says that he is Catholic, that he believes in the Virgin of Guadalupe and assures that she has done miracles for him, but that the Holy Death, fulfills another type of help.

“I dare not ask the little Virgen of Guadalupe to help me in my “business”, I always traverse in the jaws of danger … afterwards I come to visit her, she’s fucking cool.

El Sol de Sinaloa