Culiacán, between narcos and rivers

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Culiacán, capital and center of the Mexican state of Sinaloa —located between the Pacific Ocean and the Sierra Madre Occidental— is a place strongly characterized by contrasts: violent and full of life, welcoming and relatively dangerous, marked by drug trafficking and imbued with rich cultural and university activity. In the economy, the agricultural sector stands out, especially corn and horticultural products, which are exported on a large scale to other parts of Mexico, the United States, and Europe. In the second half of the 20th century, the tomato became red gold, as stated in the title of an interesting study by Eduardo Frías, and gave its name to Culiacán's baseball team: the Tomateros. The sociability and friendliness of the city's inhabitants, called culiacanenses or culichis, disarm fears and prejudices. Sinaloa captivates and disconcerts, wrote Juan Villoro. Behind some topical images forged about this region of northwestern Mexico and about Culiacán, in particular, there is another reality, more plural, more complex, more dynamic, and also, as Susana Luján maintains, more modern.

In Nombre de perro, a novel by Élmer Mendoza published in 2012 —belonging to the successful series of detective books starring agent Edgar Mendieta, better known as Zurdo Mendieta, inaugurated with Balas de plata (2008)—, one of the characters, Susana Luján, who has lived in the United States for a long time, states, during a brief stay in her native Culiacán: "How the city has modernized, despite what is said about the violence, I see it full of life." That is Culiacán, birthplace of Zurdo and Mendoza himself.

Culiacán has changed a lot, certainly, in the 21st century, but it had already done so profoundly in the 1960s and 1970s. Ronaldo González Valdés analyzed it in depth in Sinaloa: una sociedad demediada (2007), showing that at that time there was an authentic symbolic, normative, and moral disaggregation, which facilitated the implantation of drug trafficking and its subculture. From the cultivation of poppies and opium trafficking —sponsored by Chinese emigration and American pressure in World War II to obtain morphine— it ended up moving to large-scale distribution and transit of drugs, especially cocaine. The mountain gum producers would eventually give way to entities like the Sinaloa Cartel and figures like El Chapo. Among the factors that caused the transformations of the sixties and seventies are a large demographic growth, strong emigration from the countryside to the city, scarcity of services, agrarian conflicts, and also university conflicts, with violent phenomena such as that of the so-called enfermos of the Autonomous University of Sinaloa, which Sergio Arturo Sánchez Parra has studied. The breakdown of representations and principles of authority opened a door to violence that has not yet closed.

An ideal day in Culiacán, the city of the three rivers —the Humaya and the Tamazula, which form the Culiacán, and the San Lorenzo—, could start with a good breakfast, with coffee, papaya, and some eggs with chilorio —a Sinaloan specialty, although I confess my weakness, in this last area, for ranchero eggs—, followed by a walk through the center and a visit to MASIN, the Sinaloa Art Museum, which Minerva Solano directs successfully. Diego Rivera's 1906 self-portrait is one of the most notable pieces in the center. Around two or two-thirty is lunchtime. It can be at Los Arcos, my favorite, or at another restaurant, or at one of the many street seafood carts. This meal should not lack shrimp, nor the tasty and delicate pen shell scallops, nor zarandeado fish; all washed down, if possible, with Herradura reposado tequila and some bottles of Pacífico beer.

After a short break in the hotel room, in the afternoon I advise visiting the chapel of Malverde, saint of drug traffickers and humble people, whose image mixes features of Mazatlán native Pedro Infante and Jorge Negrete; not recognized by the Church, but of extensive and deeply rooted devotion. Perhaps you will be lucky and a band will play corridos as a thank you from someone for favors granted or promises made. It is an impressive spectacle, while also allowing one to understand some of the foundations of a widespread narcoculture. To end the day, nothing better than a good conversation with friends and acquaintances in a traditional cantina, such as El Guayabo, which, in addition to live music, offers extraordinary fried chicken, which I suggest accompanying with corn tortillas and hot sauce and pairing with Indio beer. If you manage to carry out everything I have just proposed, you will be able to affirm, like Élmer Mendoza's Susana, that Culiacán is full of life.