Shrines

Shrines are everywhere in Baja. From the simple cross dedicated to the passing of a loved one, to the elaborately adorned mini chapels dedicated to saints – you can’t travel more than 5 kilometers along Highway 1 with out seeing one. Often there are clusters of them along the road marking particularly “unlucky” spots where many people seem to have died. The highway shrine itself is not at all foreign to me, as you see them from time to time in the US marking the spot where someone lost their life, but these are different. The elaborate detail with which they are constructed, the continued care they are shown, and most of all, the sheer number of them along the highway are like nothing I have ever seen.

We visited a shrine dedicated to the Virgin of Guadalupe (one of many) right off the highway. It was in the midst of a sea of graffiti covered boulders and cactus, surrounded by large piles of broken, discarded prayer candles in decorated glass jars. There were several candles burning in the shielded compartment below the shrine, and new silk flowers around the alter. The old faded flowers lay scattered along the desert floor, intermixed in the piles of shattered candle holders. The fragmented glass showed vibrantly colored images of the virgin, cartoonish looking children, and even the pope.



I wondered about the people who visited this shrine. Did they make a special trip to this out of the way location, or were they travelers who carried prayer candles with them stopping at the shrines as they came to them? What did they think as they removed someone else’s prayer candle to make room for theirs? Did they see it as a revered object of someone else’s prayer and place it carefully on the growing pile outside, or did they toss it nonchalantly? Seeing intense reverence and the blatant disrespect in such close proximity was not unusual in Baja, but this was probably the place where I was first intensely aware of it.



The shrines to loved ones killed in accidents range from extremely simple to outrageously fantastic. Each of the towns we visited had shops were memorial wreaths were well stocked in vibrant silk flowers of all different hues. Some of these shrines have been constructed on very narrow dangerous curves and I wonder how the people managed to get there and build the shrine in the first place without being killed themselves. And how do they visit these shrines in dangerous places?

One of the most common forms of shrines is a spirit house like the one pictured here. They come in all different shapes and sizes and usually have prayer candles inside. This particular one had a jug of water (maybe for the plants?) and a candle.



This shrine is kind of a combo – it is to memorialize someone who died, but features a prominent statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Notice the locked storage area underneath. I wonder if the people who visit this shrine also visit the person’s grave site. Is the site where they died more important because that is where they believe the spirit left the body?





This is one of the strangest shrines I saw – a cement cactus. This one left me with a lot of questions too.