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Mexico's Drug Culture Since the beginning of President Felipe Calderon's drug war in 2006, Mexican officials have held press conferences to show detained suspects. At the same time the violence persists -- with nearly 60,000 people killed through 2013. Also, an estimated 140,000 people have moved or been displaced because of security issues related to both the gangs and drugs. Some of these photos are very graphic. I personally find them disturbing. However, the truth must be shown. Ciudad Juarez, August 2009: Three young men died in this shootout in the parking lot of a shopping mall. In the first half of that year, more than 1,000 drug war deaths were counted in Juarez alone. The city of 1.3 million has been the center of a drug turf war between the Sinaloa and Juarez cartels. Mexico City, July 2009. Mexico's drug and gang culture has a strong religious streak. Thousands of devotees seen here attend a mass for Santa Muerte, Saint Death, a mythical figure condemned by the Catholic Church but embraced by many poor and criminal elements. This gathering is outside a shrine in Tepito, a neighborhood famous for its street markets brimming with pirated and stolen merchandise. It's home to the most popular Santa Muerte shrine, which sits outside a modest home. On the first day of every month, the shrine fills with followers who come bearing statuettes of the saint. Some pilgrims make their way from the subway on their knees; many smoke weed (la mota) or cigars with their saints. Devotees of Saint Judas Thaddaeus inhale glue out of plastic bags to get high as they gather outside San Hipolito church during the annual pilgrimage honoring the saint. Judas Thaddaeus is the Catholic Church's patron saint of desperate cases and lost causes, but in Mexico he is also known as the saint of both cops and robbers (and prostitutes), as well as one of the biggest spiritual figures for young people in Mexico City. He has become the generic patron saint of disreputable activities. This shrine in the Colonia Doctores neighborhood pays homage to both Santa Muerte and Jesus Malverde, reputedly a bandit killed by officials in 1909. He's revered by many as a Robin Hood who stole from the rich to give to the poor. Several dozen such shrines exist in this neighborhood and in Tepito, where the cults thrive. A shrine to Santa Muerte sits above a home in the notorious Colonia Libertad neighborhood. The shrine is walled in by the old border fence separating Tijuana from San Diego. The drug culture is often portrayed by Mexican cinema. Here director Antonio Herrera films a scene for "Vida Mafiosa," Mafia Life, a low budget film glorifying the culture. "This is the only thing selling at the moment for me," Herrera said at the time as he worked to complete his seventh narco film. Los Angeles gangsters (batos) hang out at the production of a narco film. One of the gang members (not pictured) was an extra in the film. Alfredo Rios, better known by his stage name "El Komander", walks down a street just outside the studio of his agent and music producer. From Sinaloa, El Komander is one of the hottest singers/composers of "Narcocorrido" songs, which glorify the drug culture. The Jardines del Humaya Cemetery hosts many grave sites dedicated to drug traffickers. Some are two- and three-stories tall; many have bulletproof glass, Italian marble and spiral iron staircases. A young man makes his way to the shrine of Jesus Malverde. Culiacan is the capital of the northwestern state of Sinaloa, long a hot bed of drug cultivation. For decades traffickers have worshipped at the shrine, helping to spread Malverde's fame. Santa Muerte worshipers gather in a creek just outside Los Angeles, California. Mexico's military shows off the results of a raid on a party in Tijuana, Mexico; assault weapons and the arrests of 58 people. Women spread flour to soak up blood where a young man was murdered in Juarez. The Culiacan prison is notorious for violence and riots. This inmate kisses his wife goodbye as their daughter cries. A drug addict sits in a tent where he lives along the border canal with Mexico and the the U.S. Neither country will do anything for those along the border like this. They simply suffer. Note: The usual ending for a lifestyle of drugs and devil worship is one of misery, prison or death. God warned us that his people were destroyed by a lack of knowledge. We are all his offspring and children. The god of this world has blinded the eyes of many with doubt, hatred or through some other evil way. His mission of destruction is threefold. Satan has come to kill, steal and destroy; but Jesus came to bring us abundant life. God sacrificed him in our place to buy us back from the penalty of sin or imperfection, which is death. Everyone will one day fail on their own to completely follow the perfect will of God. Yet those who trust and obey his word by their baptism in the name of Jesus, will obtain forgiveness of sins. One must only continue in the word of God thereafter. All those who hate God love death. The wicked walk on every side when the vilest, the most evil of men become exalted and respected, as if they were movie stars. Save yourself from this perverse and evil generation or suffer the consequences of disobedience. Warning: These final photos show death frequently and vividly. The bodies of seven men arranged in chairs are pictured in Uruapan, in the Mexican state of Michoacan. The men were shot in the head with threat messages nailed to some of their chests using ice picks. Suspect Erika Garcia, a police officer, is presented to the media after she was arrested by troops in Uruapan, on February 27, 2011. Garcia was arrested after soldiers stopped a convoy of three luxury vehicles carrying her and suspected drug traffickers at a military checkpoint, according to local media. Delivery trucks from the Mexican snacks company Sabritas burn after assailants set them on fire at a warehouse in Lazaro Cardenas, in the Mexican state of Michoacan, on May 26, 2012. At least three warehouses and 28 vehicles were damaged in a series of coordinated arson attacks against the company in the towns of Lazaro Cardenas, Uruapan and Apatzingan. Drug cartel members posted banners saying the snack company let law enforcement agents use its trucks for surveillance, a charge the company denied. Workers unearth the bodies of three unidentified people whose killings are believed to be related to drug trafficking, according to the state police department, in Uruapan on Janurary 4, 2007. Police walk near a victim of a shootout between the drug cartels La Familia and Los Zetas in Uruapan on December 14, 2009. A young man lies dead next to a skateboard and a bicycle after unknown gunmen opened fire in the eastern part of Saltillo, Mexico, on December 7, 2011. According to the state attorney general, three young men were killed in the attack. Pictures of victims of violence are hung on the facades and walls of houses in the neighborhood of Cerro Gordo in Ecatepec, outside Mexico City, on March 7, 2012. The Murrieta Foundation opened an exhibition called "Giving face to the victims in Ecatepec" with 15 giant photographs placed on houses as part a campaign against violence (rape of women, kidnappings, murders and robberies). Blood flows near the arm of a killed boy, on the pavement in Acapulco, Mexico, on August 15, 2011. Two men with their hands tied behind their back and with their faces covered with duct tape lie by the side of the road as police secure the area in the city of Veracruz, Mexico, on December 6, 2011. A total of 4 men were found killed in separate incidents in the Gulf port city, which has recently suffered growing violence as drug gangs battle for control of the region. A truck burns on the road in Guadalajara, Mexico, on March 9, 2012. Drug criminals set 25 city buses and other vehicles on fire in 16 different places, spreading fear throughout Mexico's second-largest city after an army operation, according to officials. Police stand next to the body of a dead colleague in Ixtapaluca, on the outskirts of Mexico City, on January 23, 2012. Municipal police were transferring two detainees when they were ambushed by gunmen, who shot dead all five police officers and one of the detainees, according to local media. A skeletal corpse lies in Betania neighborhood, Acapulco, on March 27, 2012. During a recent wave of violence lived in Acapulco, eight people were killed, three of them found decomposed in the outskirts of the City. The body of a young man who was shot several times, reflected in a mirror next to an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe inside a bus in Acapulco, on August 1, 2011. The body of a man killed in a suspected drug-related execution lies along the path where he was shot on March 1, 2012 in Acapulco. Medical workers stand next to the bodies of 10 men and one woman, discovered in a pile near a well in Valle de Chalco, Mexico. A forensic technician sweeps blood off a street at a crime scene in Monterrey, on February 8, 2012. A taxi driver was shot dead by gunmen as another group of hitmen attacked three taxi drivers in a different neighborhood, killing two and injuring one, according to local media.

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