Burning Atlanta

Frightening. Who knows what kind of impact this may have on the US?

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The man honored by the shrine to Jesus Malverde in Culiacan, so often packed with locals, is no ordinary Mexican saint — Malverde was a Sinaloan bandit who has been adopted as a kind of a patron saint by the northern province's drug traffickers. Sinaloa is the cradle of Mexico's narco-trafficking industry, producing the majority of the nation's drug kingpins in recent decades. Unreal. A shrine to a drug dealer.

Many locals are happy to see the feds, hoping their presence will break the brutal grip of trigger-happy gangsters over life in the city. "We have grown up with violence here, but recently it has got totally out of control," says Humberto Olvera, a 30-year-old accountant. Olvera recounts how he recently crashed into the car of a minor trafficker, and was marched at gunpoint into his parents' house until he paid the man off in cash.

But for many others, the federal forces are seen as an invading force, come to disrupt a local way of life. The resentment is particularly strong in the mountain communities close to generations-old marijuana and opium fields. Here soldiers are insultingly branded "guachos," a slang term once used to describe Indians who served as messengers. "The soldiers are abusive and rude," complains Dolores Gamboa, 42, in the ramshackle mountain village of Santiago de los Caballeros. "But most of all they are dangerous." She proudly shows off a bush of opium poppies in her garden, which she says she planted for decorative purposes.