Of bandits and saints: Jesús Malverde and the struggle for place in Sinaloa, Mexico

Jesús Malverde, a bandit who was assassinated in 1909, crystallizes thestruggle for place-understood both literally and metaphorically-in northern Mexico.The socially and economically marginal people who revered him in the nineteenthcentury adore him as a lay saint today. Contention over building a chapel toMalverde in Culiacán, the capital city of the northern Mexican state ofSinaloa, distils broader tensions over the Mexican state’s persistentdeferral of the poor from inclusion in the official landscape of the nation.Malverde’s appropriation by Sinaloa’s narcotraffickers as theirpatron saint extends this symbolic and material claim to legitimacy to include thosewho exist outside the official boundaries. The border between the sacred and theprofane is often a site of social struggle, and the case of Malverde is noexception. While the legend of Malverde may well have been invented, its negotiationhas proven remarkably long-lived and powerful in shaping and reshaping theiconographic and material landscapes of social inclusion and exclusion. Malverdethus offers an empty signifier whose multiple interpretations yield a surplus ofsymbolic meanings and material production based on the circulation, negotiation,appropriation, and reinterpretation of those meanings