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but we can say that these are the days when the spirits of the dead return to earth to commune with the living. On these days the children will pester their parents to buy them chocolate skulls. They also wander the streets dressed as ghostly figures clutching a hollowed out pumpkin with a candle inside. It is probably from this tradition that the Americans acquired their Halloween customs.

A second factor concerns the people amongst whom the cult began. It seems to have begun amongst the gentusa, the common people of Mexico. Street traders, prostitutes, and above all the drug dealers, it is there that we find the earliest worshippers of this new goddess.

All the literature refers to the drug dealers as being the most vociferous proponents of the Santa Muerte. They, and other members of the gentusa, are keen on body tattoos, and the grim reaper is a favourite image. Is it too fanciful to suggest that someone took the Mexican obsession with death, added the grim reaper imagery, and came up with the Santa Muerte cult? The cult was probably not fully formed in that way, but pending further investigation, a tentative conclusion must be that it is a fusion of these two.

That the drug dealers popularised it is beyond doubt. Theirs is a dangerous world, with the threat of betrayal ever present. They are famous for their superstitions, and probably decided that having death, their ever present fear, on their side made sense.

This rather begs a question: why did a superstition amongst the urban gentusa spread so quickly? One can understand its attraction to drug dealers, but why are adherents to the cult now found amongst the ranks of the gente decente, the respectable class? Mexicans have always been a superstitious bunch, so that has not changed. Witchcraft of various kinds has long co-existed alongside mainstream Catholicism, but none of these beliefs ever grew into a new religion, still less one that could grow so quickly. What has changed in Mexico to make this growth possible?

The answer could be that what has changed in Mexico is the economy. Since 1988 the country has had a succession of Neo-Liberal governments who have opened the country up to outside forces. Globalisation, in other words, now affects Mexico as much as it does anywhere else. It is not just that the country is divided into rich and poor because that has always been the case. Rather, it is that all the certainties that the old, closed, economy provided now no longer apply. Given this the Santa Muerte

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