Mexico probes family in ritual murders 3 dead, sacrificed to Santa Muerte
12:17 AM, Apr. 2, 2012
FILE - In this Oct. 1, 2009 file photo, a man carries two statues of the folk saint Santa Muerte, or Death Saint in Mexico City. Mexican prosecutors are investigating a family outside a small town near the U.S. border as alleged members of a cult who sacrificed three people to the Saint Death, a figure adored mostly by outlaws but whose popularity is growing across Mexico and among Hispanics in the United States. The first of the three victims was apparently killed in 2009, the second in 2010 and the latest in March 2012. (Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills, File) / Dario Lopez-Mills/AP
Written by Felipe Larios Associated Press
NACOZARI, MEXICO — It was a family people took pity on, one the government and church helped with free food, used clothes and farm animals. The men were known as trash pickers. Some of the women were suspected of prostitution.
Mexican prosecutors are investigating the poor family living in shacks outside a small town near the U.S. border as alleged members of a cult that sacrificed two 10-year-old boys and a 55-year-old woman to Santa Muerte, or Saint Death, a figure adored mostly by outlaws but whose popularity is growing across Mexico and among Hispanics in the United States.
The killings have shocked the copper mining village of Nacozari, on the edge of the Sierra Madre, and might be the first ritual sacrifices linked to the popular saint condemned by the Roman Catholic Church. Known as “flaquita,” or “the skinny one,” the figure known as Saint Death is portrayed as a skeleton wearing a hooded robe and holding a scythe, much like the Grim Reaper.
Authorities said the throats and wrists of the victims were cut with knives and axes; their blood was spread on a Santa Muerte altar. Their bodies were then buried near shacks where the alleged cult members lived.
“We never knew they were part of a Santa Muerte cult,” said Jorge Sanchez Castillo, a 54-year-old hotel owner who has a cornfield next to the house of the woman believed to lead the group. “This has been a tragic thing for all of us.”
Jose Larrinaga, spokesman for the Sonora Attorney General’s Office, said 44-year-old Silvia Meraz was the cult leader, and seven people related to her, were detained: her boyfriend Eduardo Sanchez, father, son, three daughters and a daughter-in-law. No formal charges have been filed pending further investigation.
battlecreekenquirer.com |
