Voices from Inside a Black Snake, Part II: Sonoran Roadside Capillas‪.‬

On Saturday, May 19, 1999, we were chatting with Padre Guillermo Coronado, parish priest of Ures, Sonora. Padre Coronado remarked that if one encountered an elaborate (and therefore expensive) roadside chapel or shrine containing both the Virgin of Guadalupe and Saint Jude, it was in his opinion likely to have been erected by los narcotraficantes, or those in the drug-running business. This piqued our interest, and we started paying more attention to these common features of Sonoran roadscapes. Immediately on crossing the border from Arizona into Sonora, Mexico, one is confronted by a wide variety of roadside religious art. Crosses, tiny shrines, chapels, paintings of the Virgin on cement slabs and road cuts--all these add a human touch to the roadscape and remind one of Mexico's traditional status as a Catholic nation. The monuments for the most part serve either as death markers or as thanks offerings resulting from a vow (manda). (1) All of the free-standing crosses and nichitos, or miniature chapels, fall into the former category, along with a few of the larger chapels. Monuments intended as death memorials, be they crosses or buildings large or small, may be identified by the fact that they have the name and dates of the deceased marked somewhere on them. The majority of the chapels, along with the murals, occupy the second category--that of thanks offerings for perceived miracles. It is the chapels (capillas) that are the subject of this paper.