El Narco

by Ioan Grillo

  Valentín’s music was also super-danceable thanks to the brass section of the Banda Guasaveña. Another great tradition in northern Mexico is Banda music, characterized by blaring trumpets and trombones. The sound came from German immigrants who set up beer breweries in Mazatlán port in the nineteenth century. Traditionally, no singers could shout loud enough to be heard over the wail of the Banda. But as norteño incorporated electric instruments and speaker stacks, crooners sang through microphones over the din.

  Many of Valentín’s songs were not even about gangsters. His most famous hit, “Como Me Duele” (How It Hurts Me), was a catchy dance number about amorous jealousy. But the Golden Rooster also wrote some of the hardest-hitting narco lyrics. One tune, “118 Balazos” (118 Bullets), chronicles a mafioso who survives three assassination attempts. As the song begins (above the sound of horns):

  Now three times I have been saved,

  From a certain death,

  From pure Goat’s Horns,

  That have shot close to me,

  118 bullets,

  And God took them away.

  Shortly before his murder, Valentín had a hit with a song called “A Mis Enemigos” (For My Enemies). The words had a vengeful tone, although to whom Valentín was talking was ambiguous. Was it another musician, a rival gangster, or even some politician? Videos appeared on the Internet with the song and images of murdered members of the Zetas gang. Some people interpreted the record as a taunt by the Sinaloan Cartel at their rivals. The tune became popular at the height of violence between the Sinaloa Cartel and Zetas, and some of the films were particularly brutal, including one snuff video of a Zeta who is tied to a chair and shot in the head.

  As this video collected hundreds of thousands of hits, Valentín played in Reynosa, the heartland of the Zetas’ territory. The concert was rowdier than ever and ended with the rain of bullets.6

  Photographers arrived to take photos of the handsome twenty-seven-year-old lying on the car seat, riddled with lead. He is wearing a beige suit and black shirt, his eyes slightly open. The driver was also killed in the hit. Tano Castro’s survival was a miracle. “I thank God every day that I am alive,” he tells me.

  Even in death, Valentín’s enemies didn’t leave him in peace. A video was taken of him lying naked in the autopsy room. Gaping bullet holes can be seen in his chest, his eyes are still slightly open, his tasseled jacket and cowboy boots beside the table covered in blood. The video was posted on the Internet with laughter dubbed over it. Police said they arrested two autopsy workers over the incident.

  Following Valentín’s murder, assassins killed a string of other musicians across Mexico. A band called Los Herederos de Sinaloa stepped out of a radio interview in Culiacán and were sprayed with a hundred bullets. Three group members and their manager died. In one week, three entertainers were killed in different incidents: a male singer was kidnapped, throttled, and dumped on a road; a trumpeter was found with a bag on his head; and a female singer was shot dead in her hospital bed. (She was being treated for bullet wounds from an earlier shooting.)

  The Mexican public was particularly shocked by the slaying of Sergio Gómez, who founded his band K-Paz de la Sierra while he was an immigrant in Chicago. He shot to fame for a love hit called “Pero Te Vas a Arrepentir” (But You Will Have Regrets), a song so catchy that half of Mexico was singing it. Assailants abducted him after a concert in his native Michoacán state and tortured him for two days, burning his genitals with a blowtorch, before strangling him with a plastic cord. Sergio Gomez was also posthumously nominated for a Latin Grammy, competing with the deceased Valentín Elizalde for the prize in 2008. Neither of the dead men won.

  In the vast majority of the musician slayings, police made no arrests and named no suspects. That is typical of the dismal clear-up rate of about 5 percent of murders during the Mexican Drug War. The killings had “all the marks of organized crime,” police say in their standard comment after every murder. Why are they killing musicians? reporters asked. Quien sabe (Who knows).

  However, police did make arrests in the Valentín Elizalde case. In November 2008, federal agents stormed a house and nabbed regional Zetas commander Jaime González, alias the Hummer. In press statements, officers said the Hummer organized and personally took part in silencing the Golden Rooster in retaliation for the music videos. The incident is still a little murky. While the Hummer was sentenced to sixteen years in prison for drugs and weapons charges, he has still not officially been charged for Valentín’s killing.

  As with with Jim Morrison, Tupac Shakur, and Kurt Cobain, the celebrity of the Golden Rooster grew with his death. Knowing his end, his songs sound sweeter, his melancholy voice sadder, his talk of killing more sinister.

  “His presence is so strong. He still comes back to me in my dreams,” Tano says. “And other people meet me all the time and say that Valentín is still with them. They are very sad that he is gone.”

  Corrido lovers from California to Colombia visit Valentín’s grave in Sinaloa, keeping it covered in flowers.7 And to keep the star alight, younger balladeers have even written tales about the life of the Rooster. Just like the kingpins he crooned about, the Golden Rooster has been immortalized in song.

  CHAPTER 11

  Faith

  And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.

  And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.

  And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.

  —REVELATIONS 20:13–15, KING JAMES BIBLE

  The corpse of arch-gangster Arturo “the Beard” Beltrán Leyva lies below a two-story mausoleum in the Humaya Gardens cemetery on the southern edge of Culiacán. Nearby is the tomb of another powerful mobster, Ignacio “Nacho” Coronel, who was shot dead by soldiers in July 2010. Nacho Coronel was said to be close to Chapo Guzmán and fought against Beltrán Leyva. Thus in life, Nacho and the Beard were on opposite sides of the war; but in death they share the same earth.

  Humaya Gardens has hundreds of other narco tombs in its sun-beaten soil. It is one of the most bizarre cemeteries in the world. Mausoleums are built of Italian marble and decorated with precious stones, and some even have air-conditioning. Many cost above $100,000 to build—more than most Culiacán homes. Inside are surreal biblical paintings next to photos of the deceased, normally in cowboy hats and often clasping guns. In some photos, they pose in fields of marijuana; in other tombs, small concrete planes indicate the buried mafioso was a pilot (transporting the good stuff).

  As well as capos, many lieutenants or mere foot soldiers boast magnificent monuments. An alarming number are under twenty-five—and have died in recent years: 2009, 2010, 2011. On every trip I make to Culiacán, the graveyard expands exponentially, with new tombs appearing that are even more grandiose than the last.

  One time I visit the Humaya just after Father’s Day. Mountains of flowers fill the cemetery next to banners made by grieving wives. Photos of the young fathers are printed colorfully on the canvases with messages in the voices of their children. WE LOVE YOU, PAPA, YOU WILL ALWAYS BE WITH US says one banner. For these youngsters, the spectacular tombs are the best memory they will ever have of their fathers.

  On several occasions, I find people visiting their loved ones. They often bring bands and sit with their whole family sipping beer and singing along to the dead person’s favorite ballads. One time, I sit with three brothers mourning their father. One of them has brought along a voluptuous girlfriend dressed in jewels and revealing clothes. “Our dad was a farmer. And he grew the good stuff,” the youngest brother tells me with a smile and a wink. They put bottles of the old man’s preferred whiskey on his grave, in line with Mexican tradition. The deceased may have moved on, but they still have a presence.

  But to what place have these dead traffickers traveled to? Did they ask God for forg
iveness? Have they been allowed into heaven? Is there a special “gangster’s paradise”?

  Mexico’s top Roman Catholic clerics say no. Violent narcos excommunicate themselves from God, the robed men shout from pulpits. They will not sit beside the lamb and the lion in the afterlife. Some priests in the countryside say otherwise. God forgives the sins of anyone who kneels down and makes his peace before death, they argue. And especially when capos give such generous donations to their country parishes—gifts that have historically been so common they even have their special term: narco limosnas, or narco alms.1

  But as the drug war has escalated, many kingpins have said they don’t care what Catholic cardinals say. If they are not allowed in Rome’s house, they howl back, they will make their own.

  The most virulent expression of narco religion is by La Familia Cartel in Michoacán. La Familia indoctrinates its followers in its own version of evangelical Christianity mixed with some peasant rebel politics. The gang’s spiritual leader, Nazario Moreno, “El Mas Loco,” or the Maddest One, actually wrote his own bible, which is compulsory reading for the troops. This sounds so nuts I thought it was another drug war myth. Until I got my hands on a copy of his “good” book. It is not an easy bedtime read.

  But La Familia is only the most defined voice in a chorus of narco religion that has been rising in volume for decades. Other tones of the choir include some morphed rituals of Caribbean Santeria, the folk saint Jesús Malverde, and the wildly popular Santa Muerte, or Holy Death.

  Many who follow these faiths are not drug traffickers or gun-toting assassins. The beliefs all have an appeal to poor Mexicans who feel the staid Catholic Church is not speaking to them and their problems. But gangsters definitely feel at home in these new sects and exert a powerful influence on them, giving a spiritual and semi-ideological backbone to narco clans. Such a backbone strengthens El Narco as an insurgent movement that is challenging the old order. Kingpins now fight for souls as well as turfs.

  Jesús Malverde is the oldest religious symbol associated with El Narco. The real Malverde is renowned as a Sinaloan bandit executed a century ago. Images of his saintly face adorn amulets and statuettes from marijuana fields in the Sierra Madre to prison cells in San Quentin, cattle ranches in Jalisco to migrants’ shelters in Arizona. But the most revered shrine of all is in the heart of Culiacán, right across the road from the grandiose state-government palace. Analysts have long observed this symbolism: the twin powers of Sinaloa—political and narco—are side by side.

  The shrine lies inside a simple brick building painted dark green and decorated with green tiles. Malverde in Spanish literally means “bad green”; in Sinaloa, verde can also refer to the green of marijuana, as well as the green of dollar bills. The shrine’s walls are plastered with photos of visitors that meld together like a mosaic wallpaper. The snaps show newlyweds and newborn babies, girls in white Communion dresses and tattooed teenagers with shaved heads, as well as plenty of rugged men in cowboy hats. Visitors also stick placards on the wall with messages of veneration. JESÚS MALVERDE. THANKS FOR THE FAVORS YOU HAVE GIVEN ME says one plaque from Ventura, California. THANK YOU JESÚS MALVERDE. FOR ILLUMINATING AND CLEANING OUR PATHS says another from Zapopan, Jalisco. Many plaques illustrate how the faithful mix the folk saint with orthodox Catholic symbols, addressing messages to Malverde alongside the Virgin of Guadalupe and San Judas Tadeo, both popular Catholic icons in Mexico.

  In a small inner room of the shrine sits the main attraction: a painted bust of Malverde surrounded by white and pink roses. He has pale skin, jet-black hair, a finely trimmed mustache, and a traditional white Mexican suit. His face looks sad, in the godly, wise, suffering way that many images show Jesus Christ looking sad. Visitors wait in the outer rooms drinking and singing before praying silently next to the bust and touching Malverde’s despondent face.

  Shrine owner Jesús González has a room to one side jumbled with crucifixes and Malverde paintings. He is in his thirties, the son of the founder, who built the holy place with his own hands back in the 1970s. I catch González on a summer afternoon so hot that the street feels like an oven. He is sweating profusely in a white vest. We drink Coca-Cola from plastic bottles and he tells me about the meaning of Malverde.

  “Jesús Malverde loves and cares for the poor, for the humble. He knows about their struggles. The rich exploit and the poor suffer today as they did in the time when Malverde lived. Malverde understands what people have to go through. He knows they have to fight. He doesn’t discriminate against those that are marginalized.”

  Again, a symbol of El Narco is associated with the idea of struggles of the poor, of social rebellion. Gonzalez goes on, “Every country has its Robin Hood. I’m sure in your country you have—”

  “Robin Hood,” I finish his sentence for him. “My country is where Robin Hood comes from.”

  He smiles knowingly. “So you understand then.”

  Jesús Malverde was born in Sinaloa in 1870, González tells me. In that time, the dictator Porfirio Diaz ruled Mexico with an iron fist, his friends building huge haciendas in Sinaloa, while poor Indians were driven from their ancestral land. In those wretched days, González goes on, Malverde’s parents were so poor they died of starvation. The young orphan struggled to survive, taking dangerous jobs building railroads. After brushes with cruel bosses and police, he was forced to be an outlaw. Malverde ran to the hills and led a band of merry men who robbed from the rich and gave to the poor. But the ruthless governor of Sinaloa put a price on his head and one of his own men betrayed him for gold. Malverde fell before a firing squad in 1909, his head hung from a tree as a warning to other rebels.

  The same story, with a few details changed here and there, can be heard far and wide in Sinaloa. The years Malverde reportedly lived coincide almost exactly with the reign of Don Porfirio, and the bandit saint died right before the Revolution. Typical of a saint story, documents confirming Malverde’s life and death cannot be found, and it is not certain if he ever really lived at all. What is corroborated is that throughout the twentieth century, poor Sinaloans attributed miracles to the spirit of Malverde. The village cow was dry until people prayed to the bandit and suddenly the animal gave milk; a young boy was blinded, then one day woke up with the gift of sight; a man was dying of cancer and was unexpectedly cured. Stories spread from village to village, breeding more stories of miracles, and Malverde became a legend.

  González plays down the association of Malverde with narcos, rightly pointing out that all kinds come to pray. On one visit, I find the owner of an Arizonan building company who is the son of Sinaloan immigrants. He tells me he drove fifteen hours to ask the bandit saint for the success of a medical operation on his son in Pheonix. On another occasion, I meet an elderly woman praying for her dying husband.

  But drug traffickers certainly do venerate Malverde. Symbols are found in the hands of arrested kingpins and on corpses of gunslingers shot down on the street. On weekends, young buchones pack the Malverde shrine and hang outside in cars and trucks, narco corridos blaring out of stereos.

  The Catholic Church does not recognize Malverde, but priests do not rail hard against him either. Folk saints have long been tolerated throughout Christiandom as a way for the faithful to reconcile their beliefs with local traditions. Malverde is just one figure rather than a new religion. Most Malverde believers still consider themselves Roman Catholics as they kiss the mustachioed bust.

  Inside the shrine, a band plays ballads to the faithful for $5 a tune. I pay to hear as many Malverde corridos as they can remember and record them with a tape recorder, but I soon run out of money, and they say there are dozens more I haven’t heard. Several ballads they play tell tales of the bandit fighting the governor’s men. Others talk explicitly about gangsters praying to Malverde and becoming rich smuggling drugs. As one goes:

  My hands full of gum [opium paste], I greeted Malverde,

  Making promises to him, and he put his trust in me,

  God
doesn’t get involved, he won’t help you with the bad stuff.

  I know drugs aren’t good, but that is where the money is,

  Don’t blame Sinaloa, blame the whole of Mexico,

  The business is growing, and in the whole world, my friends.

  Today, I am going to Culiacán, driving a brand-new truck,

  I’m going to a shrine because there I have a date,

  It is with Jesús Malverde, to sing him happy birthday.2

  The Santa Muerte, or Holy Death, is physically a much more aggressive symbol than that of Jesús Malverde. While the bandit is just a mustached man in a white suit, Santa Muerte looks like the grim reaper. The skeletal figure has hollowed eyes, sharp teeth, and a head-chopping halberd in its right hand. However, one marked difference from the reaper is that Santa Muerte is a woman, referred to by her devotees as she. She dresses up in a variety of clothes, from black capes to frilly pink dresses and often sports a colorful wig.

  Catholic critics say veneration of Santa Muerte is the work of Satan. They accuse it of being a cult led by narcos and argue this diabolical figure has driven Mexico’s orgy of violence. Assassins hack off craniums, they claim, in tribute to the death incarnate. But defenders of Santa Muerte retort she is just a popular spirit who cares for the poor and downtrodden. She existed in Mexico before the Spanish conquest, they claim, and is featured in the Bible. Her faithful also call her the Niña Blanca, or White Girl.

  A big part of Santa Muerte’s attraction is simply the power of her image. Statuettes and paintings of her cannot help but grab attention. There is now an entire art form of thousands upon thousands of images of the Santa Muerte, and they all look a little different. She is in huge statues and in tiny earrings; on the end of necklaces and tattooed on chests; printed on T-shirts and painted into murals; and even made into clocks and incense burners. But as well as being an art and fashion accessory, she has also become an influential religious figure, adorning street altars, shrines in houses, and her own special churches.