Without – one assumes – papal consent, artists in two Mexico City neighborhoods have created and venerated their very own patron saint, Santa Mari de Juaricua, protectress against gentrification.
Santa Maria de Ribera and Juarez are two adjoining neighborhoods in CDMX, which have been hit hard in recent years by gentrification — victims, not unlike many neighborhoods in cities such as San Francisco and New York, of their own attractive attributes, which include centrality, historical significance and architectural pulchritude.
The saint first appeared at Calle General Prim 28, in 2016. In short order, locals flocked to it for protection against that tiresomely ubiquitous urban process whose implacability can seem glacier-like.
Among those fearing displacement are indigenous communities living mainly in the Juarez area; they’ve made their presence especially known in the processions that take place on the city streets, garlanding the saintly figurine with flowers and singing songs.
Often rising up from these processions is the murmur of prayer. But instead of “Give us this day our daily bread,” the chant born by the winds blowing down the streets of Juarez and Ribera might be, for example, “Save me from bad practices, from displacement and eviction, from excessive rent hikes, from skyrocketing property taxes, greedy landlords and bad real estate. Save us from gentrification.”
Santa Mari de Juaricua is about a foot-and-a-half high and wears a simple white dress with a purple sash tied around the waist, a wide-brimmed hat, huaraches and a pair chunky eye glasses. She is white and rosy-cheeked – an ironic reference, perhaps, to one of the most common features of gentrification: white-washing.
But Sandra Valenzuela, co-founder of the confraternity of Santa Mari la Juaricua, cautioned against racial scapegoating, in a statement made to Spanish daily El Pais.
“You always hear talk about the ‘malevolent rich, white people’ pushing out the poor, but it’s a much more complex problem that has to do with a lack of real estate regulations and government corruption,” Valenzuela explained.
Whether the city fathers take notice of this sly form of social protest against economic injustice remains to be seen.