Jesus Malverde was a legendary thief in Mexican folklore, possibly a historical figure or an amalgam, whose image has grown from a modest shrine in rural Mexico to a larger audience, carried north by Mexican criminals who believe trinkets portraying the patron saint of drug smuggling will protect them. (A belief which is very helpful for police, incidentally.)

Mexican marketing experts recently chose Malverde for a new beer identity because he was “the most recognizable and admired figure in focus groups.” Apparently their research was accurate, since drug smugglers now swill the new Malverde beer “like holy water.” As a result of its growing presence, the Jesus Malverde image has been recognized as a genuine cultural icon by the New York Times.

What a long strange trip it’s been for the Narco Saint of Sinaloa: Mexican Robin Hood Figure Gains a Kind of Notoriety in U.S. (New York Times, Feb 8, 2008).

Now, immigrants have brought his legend to the United States. His image, which is thought to offer protection from the law, can be found on items that include T-shirts and household cleaners.

Malverde is widely considered the patron saint of drug dealers, say law enforcement officials and experts on Mexican culture. A shrine has been erected atop his grave in the remote city of Culiacán in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, which has long been associated with opium and marijuana trafficking.

“The drug guys go to the shrine and ask for assistance and come back in big cars and with stacks of money to give thanks,” said James H. Creechan, a Canadian sociologist and adjunct professor at the Autonomous University of Sinaloa in Culiacán. [...]

“The appeal of Jesús Malverde is that he was a nonconformist,” said Guillermo Avilés-Rodríguez, artistic director of the Watts Village Theater. That the Roman Catholic Church does not recognize Malverde as a saint fits his outsider image.

“There’s a beauty to that, because it was the people who decided he was a saint,” Mr. Avilés-Rodríguez said. “He represents the belief, power and will of the people.”

Only crime-loving Mexico could elevate a low-rent criminal to sainthood. Chicago admired Al Capone back in the day for his bootlegging acumen, but no one there ever suggested that he deserved a halo.

These days, Jesus Malverde shares the stage (and store shelves) with a mainline saint, the Virgin of Guadalupe (aka “patronness of the Americas”!), who shows up wherever Mexicans are marking territory.

Below, a Compton, California, store displays Mexican paraphernalia for sale.

If you’re planning to be in the Columbus, Ohio area, and you like watching debates on education policy, then you’ll have the opportunity to watch Peter Brimelow debate the issues raised in The Worm in Apple, on Tuesday, February 12, under the auspices of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute:

“Are Unions Destroying American Education?”

Event:	“Are Unions Destroying American Education?” Peter Brimelow, VDARE vs. Richard Kahlenberg, The Century Foundation
Date:	Feb 12 2008
Time:	5:30 PM - 7:00 PM ET
Location:	Ohio State University OSU Faculty Club Grand Lounge Columbus, OH
Description:	Cicero’s Podium Debate Series Free and open to the public
Contact:	Contact Chad Kifer at cicerospodium@isi.org for more information about this debate. Click here for more information on this series.

It’s Chinese New Year, and Slate has a piece about Communist China’s persecution of traditionalists celebrating Chinese New Year in the old style:

Gone from cities are rituals like kowtowing to elders and burning the Kitchen God. (As is also the case with the fortune cookie, large Chinese New Year parades like San Francisco’s are an American invention.) Almost every one of the Chinese New Year traditions has been banned at some point in recent decades. It’s as if the U.S. government outlawed and vilified Santa Claus costumes, nativity scenes, and Christmas lights.How the Grinch stole Chinese New Year. - By April Rabkin - Slate Magazine

Ahem! The U. S Government frequently does…oh, never mind. But Slate is correct that the Chinese Government goes further in its persecution of Chinese traditions than the American government does.

No one in America is prohibited from having a nativity scene in their home, where as Chinese aren’t allowed to have the traditional Kitchen God in their house.And as well as persecuting Chinese New Year, the Chinese government does persecute Christmas and Christians too. I wrote in the year 2000 that the War on Christmas is worse there:

Christmas Day, 1999 — Catholics in Nanguan Machi Village were arrested and fined the equivalent of 60-$120 for holding an illegal Christmas worship service in a vegetable shed.
Christmas Eve, 1999 — Three Catholic leaders and a 12 year old girl were detained in Liangzhuang Village, Hebei Province, and beaten with electric batons for holding an illegal Christmas Eve service. Injuries sustained caused the need for hospitalization.China–Christian Persecution in China.

Of course, the reason for all this persecution is that China is officially committed to being an authoritarian atheist Communist state, under the rule of the party. What excuse is there for the War on Christmas in America, which isn’t supposed to be like that?

Check out Nicholas Stix’s lengthy post on the Kirkwood Massacre, which, as reported here on VDARE.com involved a black guy shooting seven white people. The post , [Nicholas Stix, Uncensored: Mass Murderer was a “Hero,” Say Blacks] describes the local reaction, which includes local black residents who are mourning the murderer, not the victims.

.But the massacre wasn’t racial. It wasn’t racial. It wasn’t racial. Just repeat that to yourself a million times. And if that doesn’t work, sign up for some more diversity training—I’m sure you’ve already had some; haven’t we all?—so you can learn that white racism drove Charles Thornton to do what he did, even though what he did wasn’t racially motivated. And if that doesn’t work, try and wash away the contradictions, with a fifth of scotch.

Every white in the world could commit suicide, and blacks would still blame the “legacy of (white) racism” for all of their problems.

Perhaps the oddest thing about the experts and police chiefs and reporters and editors and tenured professors who constantly tell us that these black-on-white atrocities aren’t racially motivated, is that blacks don’t believe that for a second. They know that they are racially motivated, they say so, and they celebrate them for it.

Read the whole thing. And if you haven’t before, you can read Stix’s account of the Duke Rape Hoax, a “hate crime” that did attract the New York Times and similar mainstream journalists, even though it never happened.