Conclusion

The concluding chapter synthesises the book’s core arguments, positing that the rise of Santa Muerte signals a radical disintegration of the traditional Hispano-Christian God-image in Mexico. It argues that Santa Muerte functions as the return of the repressed dark, feminine, and chthonic aspects of the divine, particularly as a shadow of the Virgin of Guadalupe. The phenomenon reveals a society where the death drive ( mortido ) dominates the psychic landscape, leading to a de-differentiation of good and evil in response to overwhelming criminality and state failure. The author frames this transformation as an “apocalypse process” in the Jungian sense: the violent shattering of an old worldview and the emergence of a new, paradoxical divine image that is both saviour and beast. Ultimately, the devotion is presented as a psycho-spiritual response to a society grappling with its own shadow.