Long but interesting ^_^ Before this article I have never heard of Malverde.
Thank you for sharing this information.

Blessings,
Steven


--- In 1curanderismo@yahoogroups.com, "jonathanbogel" <jonathanbogel@...> wrote:
>
>
> Here is a very good article from a reputable source about Jesus
> Malverde. He reallyis a Mexican Folk Saint with more followers than just
> criminals. Check it out:
>
> http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/business/malverde.ht\
> ml
> <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/business/malverde.h\
> tml>
>
> Every third night Florentino Ventura can be found sleeping outdoors,
> guarding the large blue shrine that honors the belief in a lawless man.
>
> His faith keeps him there.
> The summer when Florentino was 23, he was working as an oyster diver in
> Mazatlan. One day he became tangled in his rope underwater. He wrestled
> with the cord and began to drown. Then suddenly the face of the bandit
> Jesus Malverde appeared to him. Florentino finally freed himself. He
> rose to the surface and came immediately to Malverde's shrine to give
> thanks. From the way Florentino describes it, the experience led to the
> kind of spiritual catharsis that makes people change their lives.
> Florentino changed his. He'd been on track for what would have been at
> least a minor political career. He had been a PRI youth leader and won a
> scholarship to study political science in Mexico City. He was taking a
> break from studying law when the diving accident happened. But he gave
> it all up and, now 36, he's been here ever since. "The Mexican political
> system is useless. It was false, pure lies," he says. Florentino found
> more truth in Malverde.
> Florentino Ventura is one of thousands of people who believe the bandit
> Jesus Malverde - "the Angel of the Poor," "The Generous Bandit" -- works
> miracles in their lives. And all year long they come to his shrine here
> in Culiacan, capital of the Pacific Coast state of Sinaloa, to ask
> Malverde for favors and thank him for those he's granted. They leave
> behind photos and plaques with grateful inscriptions: "Thank you
> Malverde for saving me from drugs," writes Isaias Valencia Miranda, from
> Agua Zarca Sinaloa; "Thank you Malverde for not having to lose my arm
> and leg," reads the dedication on a photo of a man in sunglasses
> identifying himself as Lorenzo Salazar, from Guadalajara. There are
> plaques from the Guicho Rios family from Mexicali; the Leon family from
> Stockton; the Chaidez family from North Hollywood, and many more from
> the great Mexican diaspora in Los Angeles.
> "Dear holy and miraculous Malverde," reads one letter to the bandit left
> at the shrine. "I'm writing this letter so that you'll help me with a
> problem I have with some friends I had, so that they won't look for me
> any more. Make them forget the problems we had. Make them please leave
> my parents and my sister and me in peace. This is what I ask of you,
> Malverde, that you do this favor. I promise that when I go to Sinaloa
> I'll go visit you and I'll bring you what I can because I live in Los
> Angeles, California. Malverde. Your son, Angel Cortez. Sept 15, 1992."
> Sinaloa is one of those places in Mexico where justice isn't blind and
> the lawless aren't always the bad guys. Having the government as an
> enemy can improve a reputation. So maybe, then, it's not such a stretch
> to understand how thousands of people could come to believe that Jesus
> Malverde, a renegade supposedly long dead, performs miracles in their
> lives.
> Nor, for that reason, is it hard to understand how over the past two
> decades, Jesus Malverde has also become what he's now best known as:
> "The Narco Saint," the patron saint for the region's many drug
> smugglers. Mexican drug smuggling began in Sinaloa. Here smugglers are
> folk heroes and a "narcoculture" has existed for some time. Faith in
> Malverde was always strongest among Sinaloa's poor and highland
> residents, the classes from which Mexico's drug traffickers emerged. As
> the narcos went from the hills to the front pages, they took Malverde
> with them. He is now the religious side to that narcoculture. Smugglers
> come ask Malverde for protection before sending a load north. If the
> trip goes well, they return to pay the shrine's house band to serenade
> the bandit, or place a plaque thanking Malverde for "lighting the way";
> increasingly plaques include the code words "From Sinaloa to
> California."
>
> The story of Jesus Malverde takes place during the reign of dictator
> Porfirio Diaz (1877-1911). The Porfiriato, as the era is known, was a
> time when big business, especially foreign-owned big business, was
> encouraged above all else. Diaz saw himself as the rest of the world saw
> him: as Mexico's modernizer. Yet progress passed by millions of
> Mexicans, who remained as impoverished as ever. As the century turned,
> the country fermented with the social anarchy that would explode in the
> Mexican Revolution. The hills and back roads of Mexico were alive with
> banditry, some of whom would become folk heroes to the country's poor.
> The legend is that Jesus Malverde was one of these, a bandit who rode
> the hills near Culiacan. They say Malverde robbed from the rich and gave
> to the poor. A Mexican Robin Hood. It must have been true, for they say
> the government hung him and left him to rot in a tree. That was on May
> 3, 1909. Every year on that day there's a great party at Malverde's
> shrine.
> Two movies and one play exist dealing with Malverde's life. But
> historians have found no evidence he ever existed; a likelier prospect
> is that Malverde's an amalgam of two bandits -- Heraclio Bernal from
> Southern Sinaloa and Felipe Bachomo, from the north part of the state.
> "If he lived, faith in him is a remarkable thing," says Sergio Lopez, a
> dramatist from Culiacan, who has also researched and written about
> Malverde. "If he never lived, it's even more remarkable because people
> have created this thing to achieve the justice that is denied them."
> What does exist is a rich and fluid body of lore about Malverde's life.
> Supposedly, his Christian name was Jesus Juarez Mazo, born sometime in
> 1870 near the town of Mocorito. In some versions he was a tailor. Others
> have him as a construction worker, or a railroad hand, who built the
> tracks that were just then extending through northern Mexico and that
> brought with them the opportunities that made some men wealthy and other
> men bandits.
> Some say Malverde began a life of crime after his parents died of
> hunger. Some versions say he was finally betrayed by a friend, who cut
> off his feet and dragged him through the hills to the police to collect
> a 10,000 peso reward. Others have him betrayed and shot to death. His
> betrayer dies three days later, and the governor who wanted him,
> Francisco Canedo, dies 33 days later, from a cold contracted after going
> out at night without slippers.
> Lopez believes Canedo may have invented the Malverde legend himself to
> keep the state's hacienda owners thinking twice before indulging in the
> more extreme abuses of their peons. But there's also a story that the
> governor challenged Malverde to rob him. Malverde, as a construction
> worker, slipped into the mansion, stole the governor's sword and wrote
> on a wall, "Jesus M. was here."
>
> Malverde's first miracle, according to one version, was returning a
> woman's lost cow. Eligio Gonzalez, whose work to keep faith in the
> bandit alive has earned him the nickname "The Apostle of Malverde,"
> tells still another story. "The rural police shot him in the leg with a
> bow and arrow," Gonzalez says. "He was dying of gangrene. He told his
> friend, ´Before I die, compadre, take me in to get the reward.' His
> friend brought him in dead and got the reward. They hung Malverde from a
> mesquite tree as a warning to the people. "His first miracle was for a
> friend who lost some mules loaded with gold and silver," is the way
> Gonzalez tells it. "He asked the bones of Malverde, which were still
> hanging from the tree, to find his mules again. He found them. So he put
> Malverde's bones in the box and went to the cemetery where the governor
> is buried. He bribed the guard to let him bury Malverde there. He buried
> him like contraband. No one knows where."
> Malverde's shrine stands near the railroad tracks on the west side of
> Culiacan, well-known to just about everybody in town. Nearby are
> Malverde Clutch & Breaks, Malverde Lumber and two Denny's-like
> cafeterias: Coco's Malverde and Chic's Malverde. Outside the shrine
> people sell trinkets, candles, and pictures. Inside the shrine are two
> concrete busts of the man. Malverde, supposedly a poor man from the
> hills, turns out to look a lot like a matinee idol -- dark eyes, sleek
> mustache, jet-black hair, resolute jaw. Near the main busts are stands
> of pendants, baseball hats, tapes with corridos to the bandit, countless
> picture cases with photographs of the bandit and a prayer to him in
> thanks, and rows of plaster busts wrapped in plastic. To one side sits
> Dona Tere, rocking the day away. She is a cheerful, plump woman, made up
> with bright red lipstick. She, too, has her tale of faith. Eight years
> ago, doctors diagnosed Dona Tere with cancer. She decided not to take
> medicine. "I said, ´Malverde, they say you do miracles. I'm going to
> ask you for a miracle. I don't believe in you. I know I'm going to
> die.'" Dona Tere's still around. "I have four Malverdes in my house,"
> she says. "One in the kitchen. One in the dining room. One going up the
> stairs and one in the bedroom. I bless myself every time I'm at the foot
> of the stairs." Last time they operated on her, Dona Tere paid for two
> hours of music to be played to Malverde. "Rich, poor, sick, not sick --
> everyone comes here," she says. "When they come here and pay for music
> to be played people here say it must have gone well for them on their
> trip (sending drugs to the U.S.). I don't know. It's their own private
> business. I don't ask. But I'll tell you. More people come here than go
> to church. If you go to church asking for food, the priest will give you
> advice, but if you come here asking for food, you'll get food."
> There was a time not so long ago when the Malverde shrine was a funky
> thing, awash in the artifacts of Mexican working-class life. You'd see
> piles of baby pictures and faded out-of-focus Polaroids of men in cowboy
> hats, and poorly spelled thank-you notes in twisted handwriting. There'd
> be slats of cardboard warping under the weight of pasted plastic flowers
> and photo collages of extended families. One man had left a baggie of
> hair, thanking Malverde for allowing him to survive a term in San
> Quentin. There were artificial limbs, and corn cobs and a lot of
> photocopies of recently obtained passports. Fishermen would leave large
> jars containing enormous shrimp in formaldehyde -- thanks for a
> successful catch. Gonzalez remembers two different men -- one left a
> pistol, the other an AK-47 rifle. But that's been changing lately.
> Families have built glass enclosures - essentially, shrines within a
> shrine. Malverde has gone a little more high-class. There isn't as much
> room any more for all those piles of homemade thank-yous and photo
> collages.
> Still, faith in Malverde remains above all a private affair. There is no
> ceremony here. A constant stream of people arrive, place a candle near
> one of the busts, sit for a while, bless themselves, touch Malverde's
> head, and leave. Some are poor. Others arrive in shiny trucks and cars,
> looking very middle class. Jesus Gastelo, a rugged, aging farmer, enters
> in sandals and a shirt buttoned halfway up his plump torso. In his arms
> is his newborn son, Sergio, now 13 days old. Gastelo lights a candle.
> "I'm really old," he says. "How old do you think I am?" Gastelo is 64,
> once widowed, and he's just fathered his eighth child, this with his new
> wife, a woman of 31. A lot to thank Malverde for. "I've believed in
> Malverde since I was a little boy," he says, dropping his index finger
> to his knees, as an indication of how tall he was at the time that faith
> began.
> Back then, faith in Malverde didn't get the press it gets today. It
> centered around a pile of stones and pebbles, which is now about 50
> yards away and across two streets. "It was just a pile of rocks and
> stones, like a grave," says Gastelo. "It was where they say he was
> hung." Believers will tell you the reason there are so many of them is
> that Malverde answers faith like Jesus Gastelo's. But there are other
> reasons. One of them is Eligio Gonzalez, a 50-year-old
> jack-of-all-trades who wears his "Apostle of Malverde" tag with pride.
> The other is a bright idea the state had in the late 1970s. Government
> officials decreed they would build new state offices where people
> congregated to pay tribute to Malverde. Opposition to the idea was
> fierce. Newspaper columnists opined over the idea. "The protest lasted
> two years," says Gastelo. Finally, state officials were forced to
> provide land where the shrine now stands. They say all of Culiacan
> turned out for the demolition of the pile of stones and pebbles. They
> say, too, that stones began to jump like popcorn and that the bulldozer
> operator had to get drunk to have the guts to roll over it; they say the
> machine broke down when it touched the grave. Finally, though, the job
> got done. The massive state government building now sits over Malverde's
> original tomb. The tomb itself was moved across the street from the
> shrine, at the corner of Insurgentes and 16 de Septiembre streets.
> Researchers say it was during these years that the media christened
> Malverde as The Narcosaint. In the late 1970s, Sinaloa was embroiled in
> the great military strike against the region's drug smugglers that was
> known as Operation Condor, during which the army went through the hills
> attacking drug smugglers and innocent ranchers with equal vigor; the
> state lost an estimated 2,000 hamlets and villages during those years as
> people abandoned homes, land and livestock and streamed from the hills
> to the cities. "The press, sharing the same view as the authorities, or
> perhaps so as not to be left behind when the graft was being handed out,
> added their two cents," says Luis Astorga, a researcher of the
> narcoculture who lived in Culiacan during this time. "They labeled
> Malverde as the ´Narcosaint.' The drug smugglers, due to their social
> origin, had inherited the belief in Malverde. But the media gave it a
> kind of yellow slant. They were really the ones who made Malverde into
> the drug smuggler's saint, forgetting how old the belief in him really
> was."
> Today the pile of pebbles signifying Malverde's tomb now shares a vacant
> lot with Tianguis Malverde - Malverde Market -- a consignment car lot
> where Victor Manuel Parra and Marco Antonio Osuna will try to sell your
> used vehicle in exchange for a commission for themselves. The pebbles
> sit in the middle of the lot, surrounded by weeds and Suburbans, Nissan
> pickups, Monte Carlos and dented Volkswagens. Atop the pile is an iron
> cross, a weather-beaten bust of Malverde, now for some reason encased in
> a rusty bird cage. Like many parts of Sinaloan life, the car-mart
> depends largely on drug money. In the fall, marijuana growers are
> tending their crop and about to harvest. So sales at the lot are slow,
> this being October. The men say they are biding their time until
> December and January, when the growers will have sent their loads north
> and have money to burn. So they have more than enough time to talk about
> Malverde and the tomb of stones they work around every day. "He'd rob
> from the rich and give to the poor. This is where they say he was hung,"
> says Parra. "(The owner) wanted to build on this site, but he couldn't
> get rid of it. The soul of Malverde wouldn't permit it. They brought in
> machinery, but the machines broke down."
> The truth, it turns out, is more mundane. Jose Carlos Aguilar, the lot's
> owner, says he wants to build a high-rise hotel or office building on
> the sight, but hasn't been able to find funding or a suitable partner.
> Still, if he did build on the site, Aguilar says he'd leave aside a
> corner of the building, or maybe a section of the hotel lobby, for the
> bandit's tomb. "You can't be inflaming people's sensibilities," he says.
> The building dispute with the state government may have distressed many
> of Malverde's believers. But the faith emerged from it energized and
> publicized. Eligio Gonzalez has built and added to the new shrine. Now
> it has what it lacked before: a true focal point. Gonzalez is protective
> of the faith's image. "All this stuff about the narcosaint, they say it,
> but he's for people from all walks of life," he says. Gonzalez is a
> small man with leathery skin and sandals. He says the outlaw Malverde
> cured him of gunshot wounds in 1973. But he punctuates his speech with
> the words "God first," so no one gets the wrong idea. "If it weren't for
> God, Malverde couldn't do anything," he says.
> He spends his days driving through outlying villages selling newspapers
> and Pepsi-Cola. Pepsi-Cola, in turns out, is a stalwart Malverde
> sponsor. Local distributors often give Gonzalez discounts so he can sell
> the soda at concerts and dances and keep the profits for Malverde. Once,
> during a large encampment of campesinos outside the state building that
> lasted two months, he sold 4,000 cases of Pepsi. Not surprisingly, Coke
> products are scarce at the shrine. With the money Gonzalez feeds his
> family and the leftovers go to Malverde. Money taken in donations and
> sales at the shrine go to help with burials - more than 9,500 so far --
> wheelchairs for the crippled and cots for the poor. Nor was faith in
> Malverde hurt when Gonzalez recently won a raffle recently -- a
> Volkswagen Golf car was the prize -- which he promptly sold. Proceeds,
> he says, went to buy more cots, coffins and blankets for poor families.
> (He's said to have won the national lottery 12 times.)
> Gonzalez is a controversial figure in Culiacan. Local reporters wonder
> slyly what else he might be doing with the money. There have been
> reports that Gonzalez hasn't shared royalties from cassettes sold at the
> shrine with a crippled man who wrote ballads to Malverde. But if this is
> the case, Gonzalez doesn't seem to be getting rich. He has no phone and
> his clothes are humble.
> "Thanks to God and Malverde there's something for everyone," he says.
> "Not much, but something. Little by little we've built this. Before it
> was just tiny. People have put in a lot of faith. If there's no faith,
> there's no miracles."
>
> True Tales from Another Mexico will be published in Janaury 2001. To
> order, call 1-800-249-7737. Or write: University of New Mexico Press,
> Order Dept., 3721 Spirit Drive SE, Albuquerque, NM 87106-5631.
>