Badiraguato, the land of ‘El Chapo,’ wants to build a drug museum to attract tourism

[Stevicus]

Jose Paz Lopez: Badiraguato, the land of ‘El Chapo,’ wants to build a drug museum to attract tourism | International | EL PAÍS English Edition (elpais.com)

The mayor of Badiraguato, José Paz López, is proposing to build a drug trafficking museum in order to attract tourism. The town is already known for being the birthplace of notorious drug lords such as Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán and Rafael Caro Quintero, among others. The mayor says that the idea of putting together a collection for public display “should not scare anyone” and he is asking people to look at “the positive side” of the project.

In a video published on Thursday in Milenio, Paz López defended the need to recognize the history of the municipality. “No one should be denied. There are many, and we are not going to deny anyone,” he said, stressing that people should accept the fact that several well-known capos were born in Badiraguato.

Sources from the local government told EL PAÍS on Thursday that López’s statements were taken “out of context.” They said that a museum is indeed being built, but denied that it will contain exhibits related to drug trafficking.

In the video, the mayor of Badiraguato said that this initiative would give people “the perspective that it is not good to be involved in this activity” and how “harmful it is to use drugs.” He added that it is possible to create a museum around this topic, and noted that he would seek advice from experts at other cultural centers. “I am not clear about which figures are going to be included, we are going to listen to the specialists so that they can guide us,” said López.

The creation of a public space around drug trafficking figures would not be a complete novelty in Mexico. In Culiacán, also in the state of Sinaloa, the Chapel of Jesús Malverde was built 113 years ago, a space honoring the bandit who bore that name and who is venerated in some places as the saint of drug traffickers. The figure of Malverde was incorporated into popular religious belief along with other characters such as Santa Muerte (Holy Death), whose representations can also be found alongside images of the bandit.

Badiraguato, located 50 miles (80 km) from Culiacán, was the birthplace of other well-known drug traffickers such as Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, Ernesto Fonseca, Arturo Beltrán Leyva, Alfredo Beltrán Leyva and Juan José Esparragoza.

The town is located in the Mexican state of Sinaloa.

Their statements suggest that they're not trying to glorify drug traffickers, but instead, the museum will show how harmful drugs are. I think there's a Mob Museum in NYC to commemorate that city's history of gangsterism.

On the subject of museums, it occurs to me that there could be a museum dedicated to the War on Drugs, focusing on the corrupt motives behind it and the brutality of the police who have been involved in it.

 

[Estro Felino]

Heartbreaking. Utterly heartbreaking. Tourists go there to visit the most ancient civilizations in the new continent.
Aztecs and countless Native Mexican civilizations.
They do not need such alternative museums.

 

[Stevicus]

Heartbreaking. Utterly heartbreaking. Tourists go there to visit the most ancient civilizations in the new continent.
Aztecs and countless Native Mexican civilizations.
They do not need such alternative museums.

It is kind of odd, I'll admit. Apparently this town in Mexico was the birthplace of numerous cartel figures. Given the intensity and the number of deaths from various cartel wars and battles with police and civilians, I can see that some kind of memorial to all the victims might be appropriate.

I was mistaken in my earlier post. The Mob Museum is actually in Las Vegas, not NYC. NYC has the Museum of the American Gangster.

This Mobster Museum Was Once One of New York City's Most Notorious Speakeasies | Travel| Smithsonian Magazine

“We’re caught between two concepts that make America what it is: moral certainty and liberty,” says Otway. America’s craving for moral order is in constant, dynamic tension with its desire to break its own laws “joyfully, defiantly,” says Otway—like the flappers and bootleggers did. Governmental crackdown and organized crime are, for Otway, two sides of the same coin.

He sees the world of smugglers, bootleggers, pirates and loan sharks as the story of “power on the margins”: Robin Hoods seizing opportunities from the wealthy. After all, Otway says, the Eighteenth Amendment, which prohibited the sale of liquor between 1920 and 1933, represented an “explosion of middle-class expectations.” For the first time, Otway says, one-fifth of the American economy was “released into illegality, into democratic anarchy.” A 1932 study estimated that Prohibition dodgers created up to $5 billion a year in economic activity—the equivalent of $64 billion today. It wasn’t a free market, says Otway, but rather a “direct-action free marketplace” where ordinary people could lay claim to a piece of the pie.

Sympathy for the criminal underworld might seem like a strange position for Otway, who is a committed Quaker, to take. But Otway finds plenty of parallels between his own Quaker tradition, with its emphasis on civil disobedience, and the community structure of organized crime. “We Quakers are much more organized crime than organized faith,” he laughs. “Very little we do we do efficiently. Except break the law.”

Otway isn’t alone in this interpretation of organized crime in American society. Harvard sociologist Daniel Bell coined the term “the queer ladder of social mobility” to describe the phenomenon. This “queer ladder,” said Bell, was a way people could advance outside of the white, Protestant cultural mainstream. For Bell, organized crime had a “functional role” in society.

 

[Viker]

It would be better if these were memorials to the victims of organized crime syndicates instead. These types of museums ARE honoring, veneration and glorification of criminals.

 

[Debater Slayer]

It would be better if these were memorials to the victims of organized crime syndicates instead. These types of museums ARE honoring, veneration and glorification of criminals.

I'm not sure how they would glorify criminals any more than torture museums (e.g., in the Netherlands) glorify torture. Cartel history is an interesting topic for many people around the world, but none of the ones I know who have that interest endorse drugs or their dealers at all.

I think such a museum, if done with the proper amount of awareness so as to avoid glorification of crime, sounds like a smart idea to attract tourists and might even highlight Mexico's struggle with cartel violence.

 

[The Hammer]

I think such a museum, if done with the proper amount of awareness so as to avoid glorification of crime, sounds like a smart idea to attract tourists and might even highlight Mexico's struggle with cartel violence.

I agree, and done right it can help bring money into a community that has been affected by the cartels.