Devotional Practice: Altars, Colors and Petitions

Santa Muerte devotion centers on the home altar and, increasingly, on public street shrines, the best known of which is the one Enriqueta Romero established outside her home in the Tepito neighbourhood of Mexico City. Devotees petition her using a system of coloured candles and robes that vary somewhat between households and regions but follow broad conventions: red is associated with petitions concerning love, white with protection and purification, gold or yellow with money and prosperity, and other colours are used for more specific requests, a system that draws on the wider Latin American Catholic custom of colour coded candles for different saints and intentions.

Prayers and a rosary said in her name adapt Catholic devotional form closely, often reworking familiar prayers with her name substituted, which is part of why the devotion reads to many observers as continuous with popular Catholicism even though the institutional church has never recognized her. Public gatherings at the larger shrines, including a well attended monthly rosary at the Tepito shrine, function socially as well as devotionally, drawing a mixed crowd of regular devotees and visitors that scholars studying the movement describe as resembling the social atmosphere of a popular saint's feast day more than a marginal or secretive practice.