The Buzzard and the Artist: death in Cualicán

There is a widespread feeling in Mexico that it’s not such a bad thing for Mexico that the gangsters are bumping each other. Nobody particularly likes the situation, although Alejandro Almazán, found a few people that manage to turn the problem into an opportunity. My translation is from “Los buitres de Culiacán” appearing originally in yesterday’s Milenio (Derechos Reservados © Grupo Editorial Milenio 2007).

Cuernos de chivos, “goat horns” are short-barrelled high calibre rifles, or sawed-off shotguns — an essential tool of Mexican hitmen.

Funeral parlors make a killing from executions. The other day, half a family was wiped out at a small ranch in Salada, shot – so the detectives say – for crossing someone in the narcotics underworld. While forensic teams probed the massive impact of the high-calabre cuernos de chivo, three other teams of death specialists were arguing over the cadavers.

Each group made its own pitch to the crime’s survivors. A fat man from Emaús undertakers, pushed his company’s expertise. It was his firm that had buried Amado Carrillo, our Tony Soprano, and he had a portfolio of before and after photos of mangled gangsters the undertakers had reconstructed and buried.

Another, who wasn’t going to deal with them by Nextel (the cellular service), suggeted the departed would be taken by Saint Martin directly to heaven. He also recounted his exquisite funerals for various legendary hitmen. And the Moreh representative guaranteed dignity – price including a cedar casket with the image of Jesus Malverde carved in the wood, and perfect reconstruction of the bullet-destroyed faces.

In the end, the Emaús and Moreh were left empty-handed. The survivors chose another undertaker, who is called Buitre (the Buzzard) – because he is abhored by all, but so very necessary. I asked the luxury corpse hunter how he’d found out about the remains.

“I listen to the police radio,” he answered. “It never fails that they’re ratteled, and when I hear the word “dead,” it means I need to go to work. An execution means a shitload of money. When Amado Carrillo died, the family spent, not including the casket, flowers, tents and attendants, close to a million and a half pesos.

Everyone says the living in Sinaloa are devoted to their dead. And in Sinaloa, there are 1.9 deaths per day. Death is never-ending, the undertakers, never idle.

In Culiacán, on Zapata Boulevard, there are Moreah, San Martin and Emaús Funeral Parlors. At times, it seems that the owners have studied all the funeral homes of the Pacific. They built facades of smoked glass, in steel and concrete buildings, without a stone out of place, and palms that seem more at home in the entryway than on a each.

In each funeral parlor, I was shown caskets in varied colors and ornamentation. There are black, gray, maroon, gold, and silver caskets. There are small white caskets, for children. There are the traditional ones with brass fittings, the completely modular and the baroque. There is one in gold with an AK-47 sillouetted on the lid, and another with a marijuana leaf carved in the wood. Several has a spur, to represent sudden death. And, they tell me, the latest fashion – and the face of Malverde carved on the lid – comes from the Sierra de Mororito. Other styles are available by catalog.

I ask what all this will cost.

“The most expensive are in cedar with gold ornamentation. They run a half million pesos.”

Asked if many of these are sold, I’m told, “The buyers aren’t who you’d expect. One day a cabrón from the Sierras walked in, wearing huaraches and all stinky. ‘What caskets do you have,’ he asked. I showed him the cheapest, in stainless steel. ‘No, I want something more expensive for my departed.’ I showed him one that cost 30,000 dollars, and he took it. He paid cash, in sticky dollars he pulled out of his pocket.

Another undertaker had a full-color sample book of crucifixes. They have plastic ones without a Christ, and bronze Christs that speak. Wooden Christs being proclaimed King of the Jews. Silver Christs with a crown of thorns in gold and briliants; and a Christ of inspired suffering… raised on his rigid knees, but not yet with the lance thrust in his side… Christ asking his father to forgive the on-lookers.

The living are extravagant with the dead, a friend of mine said.

Buitre explained the business.

“A few years ago, we realized that there were a lot of poor sons of bitches left behind by the dead. You saw their pain, but we fortified ourselves to it. A Public Minister named Nelly was the one who made this thing take off. It’s crazy. He thought big funerals would calm things down. Now that there is a government forensic team, we’re no longer kidnapping the dead. It happened, ok? A gangster’s corpse would go from stretcher to stretcher from the various undertakers. It was fucked up.

“But now, we work to attract the mourners. And you see the results. Our basic operating equipment is radios. The undertakers pay a premium to the police to get us word and so they tip us off. And you have to have a good patter, and throw in something about salvation. And common sense. You can take a sales course, but there’s no way to learn feelings. We’re well paid because we get recommendations. We hustle. How do I say it? We run on adrenalen.”.

“You see a lot of really bad guys, and even wanted killers, so you keep your mouth shut. We live off them. If you or I are dead, we aren’t worth five or ten thousand dollars. You and I are not good business.”

Buitre, the managing samaritan, introduced me to an preparation specialist, who had no complaint about being called “el Artista.”

El Artista admires the work of Rogelio Casillas, according to his peers, the best preparation man in Sinaloa. They say that Rogelio returned to their original form faces that had been eaten by dogs. One was Camilo, a famous killer who used to bring his seven year old son with him when he was on a hit. El Artista wants nothing of his own biography made public, but agrees to reveal that the capos, hitmen and buchones – the metrosexuals of the narcos — pay him up to ten thousand dollars if the deceased is restored to the condition of a photograph provided to him.

“You do it, and you don’t argue. There’s always someone saying he doesn’t look like that. You say yes, but that he is very similar to the photo. Then they say, ‘no, the person looked different, and bring you more photos. are batos that say to you that it does not look like. And you allege yes to them that, that he is igualito to the photo. Then they say to you that no, that in person one was different and bring more photos and you do some more work, until they say ‘he looks almost alive.’” .

On the radio, we heard a “4-4”, police lingo for a shooting death. Buitre was out the door like a bullet. I wanted to know if he was successful, and tagged along.

On the way out the door, I heard Chalino Sanchez singing about leaving Tijuana on a plane for Culiacán, where death is waiting, and every morning there is a funeral.