NYT publishes pictures of mansions in Mexico of trafficker drugs

THERE are precious few real estate secrets in the United States. Web sites have turned nearly every neighborhood into a big open-house, with slide shows, video tours and price histories, while celebrities, from A-listers to D-listers, regularly open their doors to TV cameras and magazine photographers. But here in Mexico, only vacation properties receive such treatment. The homes where well-heeled Mexicans actually live are usually surrounded by gates or walls that guard residents' privacy and protect against intruders. And none are more hidden than the homes owned by the country%u2019s drug lords. These are the palaces of legend. In Mexican novels, and in movies, the houses of the illicitly rich and infamous are louche, luxurious affairs, with toilets made of gold, mounds of cocaine or cash lying around and furniture of thronelike proportions. In the public imagination, what might be called "narquitecture" or “narco style” is all gaudy excess — part “Real Housewives,” part “Scarface,” part conquistador. In reality, only some of this is true. As a Mexico correspondent for The New York Times, I often spend my time trying to understand shadowed worlds, from illegal immigration to drugs, and the more I%u2019ve tried to figure out how the country%u2019s criminal networks work, the more I%u2019ve wondered about the people who run them: where do they live, and what is their home life really like? It%u2019s not necessarily the kind of article you can report by knocking on doors, though I did do some of that in Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez, in cases where I could find the addresses of well-known incidents, and drug figures who had been arrested. I also enlisted officials at Mexico%u2019s federal auction agency to help me get into several seized homes around Mexico City, all of them recently occupied by people with known or suspected ties to organized crime (and in Mexico, that usually means drugs). Because the authorities had secured the premises just hours after the residents departed — while much of my tour took place months or even years later — I often felt as if I were sneaking around in the Mexican version of Pompeii: under layers of dust, the sense of day-to-day life was immediately apparent. Altogether, the homes I toured were a mixture of stereotype and dissonance. The design and the items left behind pointed to the ridiculous and the banal, with touches that were confounding or tragic. There were obvious signs of young men making and spending too much too quickly, but there were also signs of family life, danger, boredom and a conspicuous desire to appear sophisticated. In a country as transparent as a blackout curtain, the drug dealers%u2019 homes ultimately provided a reality check — a rare window into the illicit and personal world of Mexico%u2019s criminal culture.

• 2012-01-19T17:01:46+00:00
• Duration: 03:57

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