Drug lords’ tombs are monuments to opulence

livemint.com:

food. The celebration will be extravagant in Jardines del Humaya (Humaya Gardens), which is the country’s most visually spectacular burial ground. It is in the north-western state of Sinaloa, a hub of Mexican drug gangs, which started off growing marijuana before turning to cocaine trafficking and, more recently, fentanyl.

Humaya Gardens hosts a “who’s who" of dead narcos. Many were members of the Sinaloa cartel, formerly run by Joaquín “El Chapo" Guzmán, who inspired a television series and now festers in an American prison. The cemetery itself looks like a swanky nouveau-riche development.

(Some refer to this flashy style of architecture as “narcdeco".) The multi-storey, multi-plot mausoleums are larger than most Mexican homes. Many are gaudy. There is a mini Taj Mahal and an imitation Greek temple.

Some have cupolas; others boast angels or statues of saints. There is a lot of marble and some stained glass. At least one has bulletproof-glass windows.

Rumour has it that some of the mausoleums cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to build. The tombs are as luxurious inside as outside. Many have air conditioning, water and Wi-Fi—incentives for relatives to visit.

Some have bedrooms or benches outside to bask in the sun. The main chamber features a photo of the dead—almost always a young man. Many pose with guns; one has a display of knives in the tomb.

Around them sit knick-knacks, from teddy bears to bottles of tequila. Throughout history wealthy and powerful people have erected impressive tombs: consider the pyramids for Egyptian pharaohs and the Taj Mahal, where the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan and his wife are buried. “Like the real Taj Mahal, these are monuments to a person," says Juan Carlos Ramírez-Pimienta of San