When you visit a Catholic church in Latin America today, you will notice that a statue or altar of a particular saint is literally covered with all manner of votive offerings from the faithful -flowers, photographs, religious medals, handwritten notes, holy cards, rosaries, and invariably, tiny silver or gold body parts, animals, plants, and domestic articles. These miniatures are known in Spanish as milagros which literally means “miracles”.
Because milagros are primarily offered to a saint in thanks for his or her answering a petitioner’s prayer, these miniatures commemorate a “miracle” -a baby cured of its illness, a pig that has farrowed many healthy piglets, a soldier-son returned home safely from a war, a crop saved from insects, and so on.
While milagros have traditionally been fashioned from a variety of materials, such as wax, wood, bone, or a variety of metals, they are most typically made of silver (or silver like metal) and occasionally gold. In Latin America one may also see milagros -like miniatures used to adorn one’s clothing, jewelry, or personal items or as attributes fro a saint; although sometimes indistinguishable in form from the milagros used as votive offerings, these miniatures are not really milagros but rather dijes (charms), amulets, talismans, or simply objects of decoration. It is the manner in which a miniature animal or body part is used, rather than merely its form, that
determines a milagro.
-Martha Egan, “Milagros, Votive Offerings From the Americas”
