Drugs, Guns and Bling: A Look Inside Mexico's Secret Narco Museum Ioan Grillo - The Daily Beast
go to original January 29, 2016

A look inside the Mexican Army's Narco War Museum with author/journalist Ioan Grillo (BuzzFeed Central)

Hidden in the smog-ridden north of Mexico City, inside the headquarters of the Ministry of National Defense - or Mexican army HQ - sits one of the most fascinating museums on the planet.

The army humbly calls it the Museo de Enervantes, which can be roughly translated as the Museum of Stupefacients. But this boring technical title underplays the incredible collection of artifacts on display, the highlights of what Mexican soldiers have nabbed from drug traffickers.

Some seized narcotics themselves are in the cabinets, but these are the least interesting items. A lot of people already know what marijuana, crystal meth, and heroin look like (although the black cocaine on show is a novelty). The drug lab machinery is more enthralling, including sprawling shiny contraptions to cook meth on an industrial scale. Pieces from trap cars, the vehicles used to smuggle drugs over the border in gas tanks, tires, and false seats, also illustrate the ingenuity of narco engineers. More frightening is the heavy weapons room of captured cartel firepower; you see that narco thugs don’t only use belt-driven machine guns and grenades, they even possess shoulder-held rocket launchers, such as the RPG-29, or “Vampire,” which can take out tanks.

But the museum’s main attraction is undoubtedly a room under the title narco cultura. The narco culture cabinets display the ostentatious bling that drug lords buy with their billions of bloodstained bucks. Some pieces are worth high five digits in the stones and metal alone.

Read the rest at The Daily Beast

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