Bling Bang

"[The museum] is psychological prep," says Jose Luis Piñeyro, a military expert at the National Autonomous University of Mexico who has toured the facility. "It's a way for soldiers to see what's important to narcos and how their world works."

Indeed, Malverde represents just one aspect of narcocultura, the fashion, music and aesthetic that revels in gangster life. The exhibit has music CDs of narcocorridos, ballads that tell swashbuckling tales of drugs and guns. There is confiscated bullet- and knifeproof clothing, including a leather jacket worn by former Gulf cartel leader Osiel Cárdenas and made by Colombia's high-security tailor Miguel Caballero. A mannequin sports drug-lord attire, a pot-leaf belt buckle, gold bracelet and top-dollar cowboy boots that were especially popular in the 1990s. Today's kingpin doesn't dress like that anymore. "They're now more low-key," says Ayala. It's safer that way as President Felipe Calderón turns up the heat. Soon after taking office in December 2006, Calderón ordered tens of thousands of soldiers and special agents to try and crush the illicit business and its violence in Mexico's central and northern states.

But not all traffickers are so cautious. Narco bling on display includes a diamond-encrusted cell phone confiscated from Daniel Pérez Rojas, a founder of the Zetas, killers for the Gulf cartel responsible for beheadings and other gruesome acts throughout Mexico. And there's bling bang like gold-plated, initialed pistols featuring the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe. A golden .38-caliber Colt revolver, once held by Sinaloa druglord Alfredo Beltrán, captured in 2008, is inscribed with the motto favored by the Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata: "I'd rather die on my feet than always live on my knees."

Traffickers can also be showy when rewarding a job well done in a business that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency estimates is worth some $20 billion. A confiscated gold plaque honors "Comandante Tiburón" (Spanish for shark) for his successful maritime smuggling in 2007 on behalf of the Gulf cartel. Outside the museum, a small candle flickers under another plaque. It honors the 557 soldiers who have died on duty since 1976, when Mexico's military began fighting drugs. "It's one way to remember those fighting the bad guys," says Ayala. For all the captured high-powered weapons on display here, Ayala knows there are many more still out there--meaning more soldiers' names will likely be added to the memorial.

© 2008