Removal of Urban Gravestones in Culiacan Stirs Emotions Among Its Citizens Adriana Zehbrauskas - The New York Times
go to original May 10, 2013

A six-foot marble memorial sits across two parking spaces at City Club, a  wholesale store in Culiacan, Mexico. Locals say Joaquín Guzmán Loera, better known as El Chapo – the most wanted drug lord in Mexico – had it built for his son, shot to death on that spot in 2008. (Karla Zabludovsky/The New York Times)

CULIACÁN, Mexico — The shrines have sprouted up virtually everywhere, scores of them, in front of universities, next to churches, on the main avenues — constant reminders of this city’s unenviable distinction as a cradle of narco-trafficking and drug violence.

... More than 500 of these urban gravestones — often featuring a cross, a nook for candles and a photograph of the victim — have been built here over the past five years. As with the impromptu memorials that pop up along Mexican highways, some of Culiacán’s shrines honor people who died in car accidents. But many others pay tribute to victims of drug violence, and the sheer number and grandeur of them provide a testament to the sweeping loss visited on Culiacán and its residents.

It is all simply too much for Mayor Aarón Rivas.

The gravestones “don’t let us send a positive message,” said Mr. Rivas, a member of the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party, led by President Enrique Peña Nieto, whose continuous emphasis on Mexico’s economic health has muffled the attention to violence.

One by one, the city is replacing these shrines — their technical term, unbeknown to most of their builders, is cenotaph — with discreet, ground-level marble plaques.

Despite the delicacy of dismantling memorials built by grieving families, the project has received a guarded welcome, with the main concern being that the plaques will get stepped on. At least 45 families have given the city permission to take down their loved ones’ shrines since it began the effort in March.

Read the rest at The New York Times

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