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Short lives, violent deaths in Mexico drug capital If the dead could talk, then a cacophony of voices would rise from the Jardines del Maya cemetery to tell of violent lives and deaths. Jardines del Maya is where drug traffickers from the small city of Culiacan in northern Mexico's Sinaloa state bury their dead, most of them taken in the prime of life by gang feuds or shootouts with police. And drug trafficking is as much a part of Culiacan as the taco is of Mexican cuisine. Inscriptions on the row upon row of often gaudy tombs indicate many had lifespans of between 20 and 40 years -- a testimony, locals say, to their criminal lifestyles. Mexican President Vicente Fox has pledged to root out the drug trade in Sinaloa, but he has a long way to go before he can change a culture in which many local lawmen are said to be as involved in it as the drug traffickers themselves. "Drug trafficking has become a part of the culture in Culiacan. It is a way of life and it is indisputable," said Elmer Mendoza, whose book "Janis Joplin's Lover" has been described by critics as one of the truest portrayals to date of Mexico's narco-culture. Newspapers in this sun-baked town carry daily reports of drug busts, shootouts and killings. The airwaves are saturated with "narcocorridos," songs that glorify the lives and feats of real and fictional local drug lords. The authorities have tried to ban them as a bad influence on the local youth, but the music plays on. Mendoza, himself a Culiacan native, said traffickers of drugs to the United States are the idols of the youth. "They have nobody else to look up to," Mendoza said in an interview in Los Mochis, another town in Sinaloa. HUMBLE BEGINNINGS Culiacan is Mexico's drug capital, and not a day goes by without residents being reminded of that by some gruesome murder or another. Police recently captured a hired killer alleged to have worked for the vicious Tijuana drug cartel. But that victory lasted only as long as it took to get him into a high-security prison, where he hanged himself last month. Spanish author Arturo Perez-Reverte came to Culiacan to research his critically acclaimed novel "The Queen of the South" ("La Reina del Sur") about a simple city girl who sprang from humble beginnings to become a powerful drug dealer. The drug lords of Culiacan descended from peasants in this agricultural state who began growing drugs 50 years ago after they became fed up with one poor farming season too many. The first powerful drug lords were opium producers, but they soon moved into marijuana and cocaine trafficking. Culiacan's most infamous son was Amado Carrillo Fuentes, who built a fortune in the 1990s transporting cocaine to Mexico from Colombia aboard jumbo jets. The innovative and daring trafficking techniques at the head of Mexico's powerful Juarez Cartel earned him the nickname "lord of the skies." Carrillo, brought into the business by an uncle, died in 1997 under mysterious circumstances during plastic surgery in a Mexico City hospital. His country villa, or finca, still stands, immaculate, its gardens well tended, in a small village outside Culiacan and just a few miles from the state's beautiful beaches. A year ago in Guamuchilito, where the villa stands, local police blocked off access to the village while his brother, now said to lead the cartel, threw a wedding reception for his niece. NARCO SAINT The La Buelna market, in downtown Culiacan, is unlike any the casual tourist will stumble into in Mexico. It is reputed to be a black money market, a place where criminals from petty thieves to powerful local drug lords come to exchange ill-gotten dollars for pesos or vice versa. La Buelna also sells gaudy, ostentatious gold jewelry, the kind seen hanging from the wrists and necks of movie gangsters. Goods are often adorned with a grainy photograph of a young, dark, mustachioed man, usually alongside an equally grainy image of the Virgin Mary. The man is Jesus Malverde, the unofficial patron saint of Mexican drug traffickers. A mysterious figure whose existence has never been confirmed, he was to some a kind-hearted thief who, like Robin Hood, stole from the rich and gave to the poor. He was supposedly hung by the state governor in May 1909. The lack of proof that Malverde ever existed does not stop thousands of people from making pilgrimages to Culiacan to what is rumored to be his grave site. Just a mile away from the La Buelna market, and just steps away from state government buildings, there is a shrine built to him. The Catholic Church refuses to recognize what many people in this town have called the miracles of Malverde, but that does not stop the constant flow of worshipers. One recent Saturday afternoon, as the day faded into dusk, a polished black jeep pulled up to the shrine and five men got out, two carrying accordions and one a case of beer. The lead man, dressed in pressed jeans, a white T-shirt and cowboy boots, entered the shrine and knelt in silence before the bust of the narco-saint as his companions played and sang to Malverde. A plaque to his right read, "Thank you Malverde, for bringing me home safely," an apparent reference to a safe return from a drug run. When the song finished, the man carrying the beer entered and laid it at the foot of the shrine and left.
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