16 Oct Brownsville Drug Warrant Turns Up Cocaine, Santa Muerte ‘Shrine’

Cameron County deputies arrested a 52-year-old Brownsville man Thursday after a narcotics warrant at his home turned up over 300 grams of cocaine, the county sheriff’s office said.

Gerardo Sandoval Martinez was taken into custody at his Autumn Sage Street home (2100 block) when the sheriff’s Special Investigations Unit served the warrant. The haul came to roughly 266 grams of cocaine plus 35 grams of crack.

Some of the drugs were in bulk and some were split into individual clear baggies, all inside a closet. The sheriff said resin statues linked to Santa Muerte, or Our Lady of the Holy Death, surrounded the bags in what the sheriff described as a “shrine-like display.”

Martinez faces charges of manufacture or delivery of a controlled substance in Penalty Group 1. The sheriff’s office said investigators also learned he was in the country illegally.

Homeland Security Investigations and U.S. Border Patrol assisted with the operation.

This isn’t the first time a similar shrine has turned up in an arrest in the Rio Grande Valley.

Santa Muerte, also called Santísima Muerte, is a folk saint usually shown as a skeleton in long robes, often holding a scythe. Her devotion has grown in Mexico and parts of the U.S. in recent decades, and followers pray to her for protection, healing, money and safe passage. Many see her as someone who doesn’t judge, which has drawn people who feel overlooked or work in dangerous jobs. The Catholic Church does not recognize her and has criticized the devotion. Most devotees have no ties to crime, though some traffickers have adopted her.