If you were to look upon Jardines de Humaya from a distance, you might think you were looking at a tiny yet magnificent city, one whose residents are unfathomably rich.  You would be partially right.  The inhabitants of the elaborate structures were rich, but wealth doesn’t matter to the tenants of Jardines de Humaya because they are all dead; Humaya is a cemetery in Culiacán, Sinaloa. These aren’t the granite columned homes of famous movie stars or athletes; these are the mausoleums of dead drug traffickers.

The final resting place of Sinaloa’s traffickers, or narcos, is only one of many public examples of the region's acceptance of drug trafficking.  Culiacán is nearly geographically and politically predestined to be the narcotics capital of México.  The city is nestled in a valley where the Tamazula River and Humaya River meet to form the Culiacán River.  The surrounding mountains provide the optimal space for covertly growing large opium and marijuana crops, as well as hiding people, both alive and dead.  As if the geography weren’t enough to entice narcos to take to their trade, there exists a long-standing history of governmental support of drug traffickers in and around Culiacán.  As early as 1947, General Pablo Macías Valenzuela, ex-Secretary of War and Navy for the national government and governor of the state of Sinaloa, was suspected of leading a drug trafficking ring.  The godfather of modern narcos, the powerful and dangerous Felix Gallardo, was rumored to have been the personal houseguest of Sinaloa Governor Antonio Toledo in the 1980’s.

This widespread support has spilled over into pop culture, with local musicians popularizing narcocorridos, ballads that glorify the narcotraficantes.  This shunning of popular allegiance is rooted in the people of Culiacán.  “The Sinaloan ethos is that of proud, defiant individualists,” says Howard Campbell, border anthropologist at the University of Texas at El Paso.  Campbell adds that the “poverty of rural people with few options but to work for cartels” fuels the long line of those willing to lead a narco life. 

Everything dealing with the drug trade has been on the rise in Culiacán, including death.  Where only two funeral homes existed in the 80’s, today you have the choice of over 20. The prospect of death doesn’t seem to deter narcos, who in turn pay homage to la Santa Muerte, the revered Death Saint of Mexican folklore.  Jesus Malverde, the “Narco Saint,” has his own wildly popular shrine in Culiacán.  The reverence for slain traffickers is unabashedly prevalent in the region. Campbell says that, to the public, “dead narcos are not villains, they are martyrs or heroes and role models for many people.”

A stroll though Humaya cemetery is a walk between worlds.  The yard is a maze of scattered graves, most in the classic style of Mexico, a simple headstone. The  goliath, ornate stone narco-mausoleums, like an older brother looking down on a beaten sibling, overshadow the simple flat gravestones of common men and women, square and only slightly higher than the earth they rest upon.  Their growing numbers are the face of modern Culiacán, a city whose identity is wrapped tightly around a violent and fantastic lifestyle, a lifestyle that boasts tremendous rewards and fame, but often at a steep cost.  Many pay with their lives, only to be laid to rest in tombs begging to be recognized and revered.

“The mausoleums show how deeply embedded trafficking is in the low and high society of Sinaloa”, says Campbell.  Much of Culiacán seems to subscribe to the idea expressed in a narcocorrido; “I’d rather live like a king for 5 years, than live like an ox for 15.”  These dead kings rest in their Sinaloan palaces for eternity.

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