Secret Narco Tours Springing Up In Mexico

Proving that Mexicans are nothing if not resourceful, taxi drivers there have begun giving tours, on the down-low, of famous narcoterrorist locations from Mazatlán to Matamoros. They’re not advertised and you have to ask for them, but if you’ve got $15, a cold Pacifico and a boombox playing the latest, banned narcocorrido can accompany you, along with a driver, to the resort home of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera in the seaside resort of Mazatlán or the spot in Matamoros, Tamaulipas where Osiel Cárdenas was arrested after a 2003 shootout with Mexican soldiers. Silvestre Flores is a Sinaloa academic who has written about such tours in Mazatlán:

Mr. Flores views the underground tours as not unlike the guided visits that stop at ground zero in New York or the favorite haunts of Al Capone in Chicago. People are intrigued by crime and death, he said.

Interestingly, it’s not Americans who are asking for these tours, but almost always Mexican citizens from other parts of the country who seem to idolize the bandits as some kind of folk heroes. And, in an economy that is always desperate for stimulation, taxi drivers are more than willing to play up the drama. Especially one named Juan (who declined to give his last name for fear of death) in Mazatlán:

“Boom, boom, boom,” he said, getting out of the taxi and dodging and weaving on the sidewalk as he recounted the automatic gunfire that rang out.

Both his hands were in the shape of pistols as he told how Ramón Arellano Félix, a brother of the disco owner and co-leader of the family cartel, had shown up to kill his rival Ismael Zambada, known as El Mayo, but had instead been killed himself.

When the photographers and flower vendors start showing up at these places, we’ll really be sad.