EL PASO--- At El Paso's El Bronco flea market, NewsChannel 9 searched for La Santa Muerte.
It didn't take us long to find her.
"Do you find her popular?" I asked one jewelry shop keeper. "At times," he said. "People ask for her."
There, we found her in rings, necklaces.
We found her in rows of figurines, both small and large.
We saw her image amongst a pile of T-shirts.
And on those shirts, prayers like these:
"In the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Immaculate Being of Light, I implore you: grant the favors that I ask of you until my last day, hour and moment," it read.
It's all evidence the culture of Santa Muerte is here in El Paso.
HERE... BUT UNKNOWN.
"The way I always looked at it, death was life's equalizer. You know, we're not born equal, but we're all going to die," said Roger Martinez, a Central El Paso man who just learned the statue that stood in his kitchen for the past six months, was all along the Saint of Death.
Martinez said he won the statue in August, oddly enough, at a church bazaar game in Clint, TX.
"It was a roulette wheel and it landed on number 75," he said. "Someone had to throw a dart and it was red, and I had red 75 and I was a winner!"
But Martinez had no idea what he, and nearly 75 others had been vying for. What he had won.
"I was like what did I get? And then they showed me this thing, and I was like, oh my God, what is that?" he said.
When he tried to trade her in, the game leaders wouldn't let him.
And when he tried to sell her, everyone told him they wouldn't buy her. All he was told was she was supposed to bring good luck, that she would bring him longer life.
"But now that I know what it is, I think she's leaving tomorrow," he laughed.
BELIEVERS IN EL PASO
"Well actually they're pretty popular. They're part of a lot of beliefs down in Mexico."
Jesse Torres, a manager at Sunland Park Mall's Mexican Sound store, sells paper mache models of the Saint of Death at this store in West El Paso.
He said, for a good reason.
According to him, his store has sold more than a 100 of the Santa Muerte models in the last two months.
"I think maybe there's a lot of people who just like them, and then there's people who actually believe in it," he said.
Torres is one of those believers.
He said he doesn't normally tell people about his faith because his saint, whom he calls "La Nina Blanca," has such a negative image. He even doesn't wear many of the charms bearing her image, because he doesn't want to scare customers away.
"I take it almost as a saint. I don't take it as something bad," he said.
According to Torres, there are two sides to Santa Muerte, a good, and a bad.
But, he said, it's all on how the believer wants to use her; for good, or for evil.
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