An American man stormed this week in the Tepito neighborhood in central Mexico City. "They don't need Santa Muerte," he is heard shouting through a megaphone. The video, originally published on the YouTube account of the Ministry of the Torch of Christ, was picked up this Thursday on Twitter and placed Tepito as a trending topic in the afternoon.
The video was recorded in front of the altar of Santa Muerte, a space where the believers of this figure deposit offerings and go to pray. The man, identified as Philip Blair, leader of the Los Angeles-based Christian evangelical cult, confronts the faithful with an evangelical Christian predicament. “Repent of your sins, Tepito. Jesus is life and life conquers death, ”Blair tells the believers, who little by little swirl around him. "Respect," they tell him, while they push him out little by little with various insults.
The video, titled "Confronted in the sanctuary of Santa Muerte in the most dangerous neighborhood of Mexico City, Tepito," was uploaded on Sunday to the YouTube channel of this ministry, along with other materials where Blair is observed preaching in other areas of Mexico City, including public transport and the Chinatown, all in the center of the capital.
The Tepito neighborhood is known as the “brave neighborhood” of Mexico City. A colony with a long tradition in the capital, where historically drugs are trafficked and where various criminal groups such as La Unión Tepito have emerged. "Tepito is becoming outlined as a graveyard of ambitions, a congregation of thieves, a crossroads of the mota and the crooked, of the minimal drug and the artisanal robbery", wrote the writer Carlos Monsiváis in his book Days to Save.
But only drug dealing, the fayuca trade (contraband) and piracy have made this neighborhood famous. The cult of the figure of Santa Muerte is one of the characteristics of its more than 40,000 inhabitants. A figure that crosses the limits between the Catholic and the dark rites, faced by a skeleton wrapped in a robe, sometimes represented as a Catholic figure.
Although Blair was kicked out by the Santa Muerte believers, he came with his megaphone and two interpreters to share his predicaments in other neighborhoods, where he was also confronted. In the Mexico City Metro, several police officers remove him from the facilities, since its regulations prohibit religious congregations and the use of megaphones. Blair is also known for breaking into public events on behalf of the LGBT + community.
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