August 18–24, 2017A12

Western-backed Syrian rebels said they had shot down a Syrian military jet and captured its pilot in a desert area in southern Syria near the border with Jordan, where the army had recently advanced and seized border posts.

Saad al Haj, spokesman for the leader of the Osoud al Sharqiya rebel group, told Reuters the rebels had shot down the Russian-built dMiG using anti-aircraft guns in the eastern countryside of Sweida province.

Haj, whose group is one of two major rebel groups operating in the area, said the pilot was captured and was being interrogated. He could not say if the pilot had been injured.

Rebels Say They Shot Down Syrian Military Jet

Iranian Court Freezes Assets of More Than 150 BBC Staff

President Emmanuel Macron has filed a legal complaint against a photographer, alleging harassment and invasion of privacy, while on vacation in the southern French city of Marseille, a source in the president’s entourage said.

Macron and his wife, Brigitte, were staying in the private residence of a local prefect, overlooking the Mediterranean and shielded from the public eye by a high wall dotted with security cameras. The presidential couple had kept their holiday destination a closely guarded secret, but the location was revealed by the weekly Journal du Dimanche.

A government minister blasted German companies for failing to add more women to their management boards, suggesting the government could impose quotas unless firms acted to boost the current rate of 6 percent.

Family Minister Katarina Barley, a Social Democrat, told the RND newspaper chain it was unacceptable that companies had failed to increase the percentage of women in leadership roles after years of promises.

“I give industry one more year to take care of the issue itself. If nothing has happened by then, we’ll have to take legislative action,” Barley said.

More than 150 Iranian current and former BBC staff and contributors have been barred from major financial transactions in Iran, in a fresh step against foreign media seen as hostile to Tehran.

The order bans 152 individuals from any transaction that needs to be registered, including buying or selling property or any “movable or immovable assets” in Iran.

France’s Macron Accuses Photographer of Harassment While on Holiday

German Minister Eyes Quotas for Female Executives

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Drug cartels and gangs in Mexico are altering religions and engaging in brutal crimes as forms of worship

JOSHUA PHILIPP

rug cartels and street gangs in Mexico are creat-ing their own religions and altering beliefs in existing Catholic saints, in a move to create a new “narcoculture” that tries to morally justify crime and violence.

Some of these new figures of worship are exist-ing Catholic saints, most of which have had their meaning altered for the narcoculture. Some are pulled from Aztec gods worshipped through hu-man sacrifice, while others are new creations altogether.

The two most popular figures of worship in Mexico are products of this new narcocul-ture. The most popular is St. Jude Thaddeus, also called “Saint Judas,” while the second most popular is a newly created folk saint called Santa Muerte, “Saint Death.”

What is taking place in Mexico is a form of “spiritual appropriation,” whereby the existing religion is being altered to justify a criminal in-surgency, according to Robert J. Bunker, adjunct research professor at the Strategic Studies Insti-tute at U.S. Army War College.

There is a spectrum of beliefs in Mexico that ties directly to the growth of crime. Bunker said at one extreme, there are those who adhere to traditional Catholicism and other morally based religions. At the other extreme “would be those individuals whom we consider to be ‘evil’ in their value system.”

Yet as the narcoculture continues to develop, it is becoming harder for people to differentiate the legitimate figures from the newly created “narco saints.” Bunker noted the case of Saint Judas, a legitimate Catholic saint now commonly worshipped for protection by smugglers, bandits, gangs, and drug cartel members.

He said a slightly more extreme case is the new “bandit saint,” Santo Niño Huachicolero, which is an alteration of a legitimate Catholic saint, Santo Niño de Atocha, or “Holy Child of Atocha.”

The Catholic News Service warned of the newly altered saint on May 12, noting that it was created by a gang of gasoline thieves known as “huachi-coleros” southeast of Mexico City who altered the image of the Christ child to show him holding a gas can and hose. It cites Father Paulo Carvajal, archdiocesan spokesman, as stating: “This image can never be accepted. Being a ‘huachicolero’ is practically a crime. The church cannot be in favor of this, much less be in favor that images are used in this way.”

Carvajal said the new saint is being used to “de-ceive” people. Locals following the new saint have even protested to defend the gas thieves from law enforcement.

Bunker noted the significance of the phenom-ena, saying, “A venerated 13th-century Catholic saint has just been ‘spiritually hijacked’ by crimi-nal elements in Mexico and recast as the patron deity of gasoline thieves before our eyes.”

With the creation of the new saint, “another de-mographic, albeit a relatively small one, has just further rationalized their criminal behaviors—which are at odds with state authority—by having someone to pray to in order to achieve success in their gasoline-stealing endeavors,” he said.

“From a Catholic Church and traditional Mexi-can societal perspective, another grouping of people just ‘jumped ship’ and went over to the narco and criminal elements of society in both their hearts and minds.”

‘Left-Hand’ SaintsThe cases of sanctioned Catholic saints relate to spiritual appropriation, according to Bunker, whereby people are altering religions to justify acts—such as theft and smuggling—that would traditionally violate the religion.

On a spectrum that classifies beliefs on a “left-hand path” as ones that could be viewed as purely evil and on a “right-hand path” as ones of tradi-

tional morals, these new saints and figures fall from the middle to the left.

Bunker describes the spectrum of narco saints in the book “Blood Sacrifices: Violent Non-State Actors and Dark Magico-Religious Activities,” published in 2016.

Many cartels and criminal organizations in Mexico can no longer be viewed as merely con-ventional criminal groups, since many of them use narco saints to try to justify, or even sanctify, their crimes.

The Familia Michoacana cartel and the Cabal-leros Templarios cartel, which are two of the larg-est drug cartels in Mexico, worship the newly created San Nazario, “The Craziest One.” Their crimes play a direct role in their worship of their manufactured saint, who they believe requires torture, ritual killing, and cannibalism.

The Sinaloa cartel worships an unsanctioned saint of drug traffickers, bandits, and outlaws that they refer to as “Jesús Malverde,” also known as “Generous Bandit.”

Even “Saint Death,” which carries the image of the grim reaper, has a strong criminal following. According to “Blood Sacrifices,” the new “folk saint” is worshipped by the Los Zetas cartel, the El Gulfo cartel factions, and by many other gangs. Their worship often includes ritual killing, of-fering of human body parts, and cannibalism.

Mid-sized Mexican gangs and criminal outfits also have their manufactured saints. The Mexican Mafia, the Sureños, and Barrio Azteca, for exam-ple, worship the Aztec war god Huitzilopochtli. Bunker notes that while the deity’s requirements are often less gruesome than the new saints wor-

Mexican Gangs Create ‘Narco Saints’ to Moralize Crime

D

GANGS

A statue of Jesús Malverde

(R), a folk saint of drug

traffickers, for sale next to

other religious figures, near

the U.S.–Mexico border

in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico,

on Feb. 22.

shipped by many cartels, it is still used to justify the ideology of violent crime.

A Social DilemmaFor the rest of Mexico, the growth in popularity of narco saints presents a moral crisis, since they are not only being used to alter the traditional, morally based faiths, but also to create a new system of morals that supports violent crime.

In the conventional view of crime in the United States, people in criminal gangs are often moti-vated by financial gain, are pulled into lives of crime due to poverty or poor education, or join the gangs for a sense of belonging.

Bunker noted that while this conventional under-standing of gangs and organized crime may still be largely accurate in the United States, it cannot be used to understand Mexican cartels or related Latin American gangs such as MS-13 and 18th Street.

These groups, he said, “are evolving into some-thing much more dangerous that blurs our un-derstanding of criminal activity and warfare.” He said they have become “challengers to the state” and have carved out their own territories in many countries where they can act with impunity.

The creation of new religions only adds to the severity of the threat. He said the groups’ crimi-nality is “no longer just secular,” since they have added a new spiritual component to their actions, and they are now spreading these new ideologies among the general population—creating warped, “criminalized” societies.

Bunker noted that Americans and Europeans often see the world through “utilitarian, rational-istic, liberal democratic and secular colored lens-es,” and these “perceptual biases” often prevent them from seeing that some groups may have perceptions completely different from their own.

“This is why—as a nation—the U.S. falls into re-current traps of our own making,” he said, noting the U.S. attempts at nation-building in countries like Afghanistan that have often overlooked the tribal and factional cultures in those countries and their illicit markets in opium production.

The same has applied to other areas, including with drug cartels and terrorist groups. He said this perceptual bias has prevented many in the United States from being able to understand that “some people, such as members of a specific cartel or a terrorist group, may kill for sport and pleasure—as in the case of Los Zetas—or truly believe that they are doing god’s work while beheading someone, as in the case of Islamic State adherents.”

For the rest of Mexico, the growth in popularity of narco saints presents a moral crisis, since they are not only being used to alter the traditional,

morally based faiths, but also to create a new system of

morals that supports violent crime.

A young man prays at the altar in the chapel of Jesús Malverde in Culiacán, Mexico, on July 12, 2011.

ALL PHOTOS BY YURI CORTEZ/AFP/GETTY IMAGES