May 25
In Mexico in the year 2010, San Judas Tadeo (San Juditas, as he's called by followers) is the most popular male saint in Mexico.
San Judas: The Cult
Millions of followers - more than for any besides the Guadalupe - now celebrate the patron saint of lost causes.
Santa Muerte
San Juditas, Malverde, Santa Muerte... a canon of holy figures recruited by petty thieves, prostitutes and drug dealers.
The downtrodden and oppressed, the ones without hope.
San Judas is the wretched street urchin who vomits his guts in a dark alley, an impoverished teenage streetwalker with bad ovaries and bulging veins.
San Judas is the worst it gets and yet - after you've been down - you realize that the journey wasn't for naught.
The Character
San Judas was the man who brothered Jesus Christ, close friend and servant.
Perhaps "son of god" is beyond human connection, for Christ is the Other.
Perhaps the Jews in their own abstract way avoided something Christians couldn't: raw embrace of the downtrodden.
In Mexico this intimacy is the most a saint can offer, which explains why millions of young followers arrive each month from the far corners of the country carrying sculptures of Juditas which they adorn with necklaces, stamps and flower rings.
And red roses, always red roses.
In the church of San Hipólite in the capital, and in chapels throughout the north, the alter has been adopted by San Judas, its walls and urns flush with requests, promises and thank you notes.
All too human
On the street hope is submerged where children abandoned by addict mothers live like rats in sewers.
San Judas is where the government never goes.
Someone who knew (like many here "know") that it's better to stare injustice in the face.
To see ourselves as we are: weak, greedy and unrepentant.
Whether a name for religion or spiritism or whatever else you call it - Juditas is what many Mexicans feel again after all hope has been taken.
