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A man carries a figurine of Santa Muerte or The Saint of Death during the first prayer of the New Year in Mexico City, Mexico January 1, 2017. Nuestra Señora de la Santa Muerte is a female deity of Mexican folk religion, venerated primarily in Mexico and the Southwestern United States. A personification of death, she is associated with healing, protection, and safe delivery to the afterlife by her devotees. Despite condemnation by the Catholic Church, her cult has risen to an unprecedented prominence in the 2000s and 2010s, as a continuation of the Aztec goddess of death Mictecacihuatl (Nahuatl for “Lady of the Dead”) clad in Spanish iconography. (Photo by Carlos Jasso/Reuters)
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