Covering The Coverage: The NY Times Thinks Jesus Malverde Is So Hot Right Now

The New York Times reports that Jesus Malverde, known as the “Mexican Robin Hood” and the “Patron Saint of Drug Dealers,” is gaining more and more popularity in the U.S. thanks to immigrants and their drug-dealing-thief-worshipping ways:

[I]mmigrants have brought his legend to the United States. His image, which is thought to offer protection from the law, can be found on items that include T-shirts and household cleaners.

Malverde is widely considered the patron saint of drug dealers, say law enforcement officials and experts on Mexican culture. A shrine has been erected atop his grave in the remote city of Culiacán in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, which has long been associated with opium and marijuana trafficking.

“The drug guys go to the shrine and ask for assistance and come back in big cars and with stacks of money to give thanks,” said James H. Creechan, a Canadian sociologist and adjunct professor at the Autonomous University of Sinaloa in Culiacán.

He’s totally smuggled his way into our hearts. As well as into the minds of law enforcement:

“People say Malverde helped me do this or that; mostly it’s people into drugs who think he’ll shield them from the police,” said Raul Gonzalez, owner of a botánica called Mystic Products in Compton, Calif. “It’s the power of the mind, you know. They believe it, so they take chances and get away with it, but they will eventually get caught.”

Not with Jesus on their side, ese.

Indeed, drug enforcement authorities in Mexico and the United States said Malverde statues, tattoos and amulets can be tip-offs to illegal activity.

“We send squads out to local hotel and motel parking lots looking for cars with Malverde symbols on the windshield or hanging from the rearview mirror,” said Sgt. Rico Garcia with the narcotics division of the Houston Police Department. “It gives us a clue that something is probably going on.”

Courts in California, Kansas, Nebraska and Texas have ruled that Malverde trinkets and talismans are admissible evidence in drug and money-laundering cases.

“It’s not a direct indication of guilt, but it would definitely be used in combination with other things” like piles of cash, baggies and scales, said José Martinez, a special agent with the federal Drug Enforcement Agency.

First quinceañeras, now a so-called saint dedicated to drug smuggling. Guys, can we please be more selective in which of our little “cultural touchstones” makes it into the mainstream? Let’s stick to stuff like cumbia, dulce de leche and chongas pooping into cups.

Mexican Robin Hood Figure Gains a Kind of Notoriety in U.S. [NY Times]
Earlier: Mexican Patron Saint Of Drug Lords Gets His Own Beer