Drug gangs in Ecuador turn to "death saint" for protection — and allegedly human sacrifices

Sporting gloves and a red ribbon to ward off evil, Ecuadoran police raiding a drug den apprehensively inspect an altar to Santa Muerte -- a Mexican "death saint" adopted by local gangs as their own talisman.

The eerie statue of a skeleton shrouded in a cape — a scythe in her right hand and a globe of Earth in her left — is the latest in a fast-growing number of Santa Muerte shrines found in criminal hideouts in the western city of Duran.

Offerings of money, tobacco, alcohol, figurines and religious paraphernalia were piled up at her feet by gangsters seeking the saint's protection.