AP Photo

In Mexico, the blood and ecstasy are in your face. The blood drips realistically from each of Christ’s holy wounds, and the saints are depicted under graphic torture. God hasn’t yet retreated from the world, and miracles are a fact of daily life. A popular form of religious folk art is pictures painted on tin that depict ordinary people being saved from some calamity – a car accident, for example – by the intercession of a friendly saint.