Santa Muerte’s promise of prosperity

Every morning before opening her shop to customers, Cristina Perez says “buenos días” to a green-cloaked, three-foot skeleton covered in dollar bills — offerings folded in triangles and taped to the statue.

 

Perez, a 45-year-old immigrant from El Salvador, follows the greeting with a prayer directed to the Mexican folk saint known as the Santa Muerte, or Holy Death.

 

“In the name of the Father and the Holy Spirit, I invoke your spirit to be present here today. I ask you to bring us abundance, work, health and family unity,” Perez says in Spanish as she stands before an altar inside her folk-medicine and esoteric store, Botica El Angel, in a quiet corner of a shopping strip in Richmond.

Read More: Santa Muerte’s promise of prosperity – The Washington Post.