cactus and sombrero

Mexico:



Narcostate Mexico:



Designer Narcostate Mexico:

culiacán

This is lovely Culiacán Rosales, hometown of the Sinaloa Cartel and cradle of Mexican narquitectura.





But nothing encapsulates the taste for flare and the constant nearness to death that are distinguishing features of the local drug-trade culture like the town's funerary architecture:












This is the tomb of the famous slain banda singer, Valentín "El Gallo" Elizalde

uruapan

This is Uruapan, a smallish town in the State of Michoacán. Same place where heads rolled (literally, on the dance floor of a dirty nightclub) in the little skit that just might mark the dawn of Narco-Statehood in Mexico.







For more of this ganster's paradise, see the Skyscrapercity thread "Uruapan. Paraíso Michoacano".