CULIACAN, Mexico, July 10 (Reuter) In Mexico's rugged northwest, the heroes
are the bad guys.

The cult of crime is epitomised by a shrine in this druginfested city to
Jesus Malverde, a local Robin Hood who has become Mexico's patron saint of
criminals. His shrine was popular with Mexico's most notorious drug lord,
Amado Carrillo Fuentes, who died last week after undergoing plastic surgery
and liposuction in a Mexico City hospital.

``Amado Carrillo was a good man because he always helped the poor,'' said
20yearold Ricardo Villanueva, a homeless youth living on the railway tracks
behind the shrine. ``He used to come here to see Malverde and one of his
'pistoleros' (hitmen) gave me 200 pesos ($25).''

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has confirmed Carrillo
Fuentes' death although Mexican authorities were still awaiting the results
of DNA tests to be sure the corpse was not that of an imposter.

Guntoting police guarded the Mexico City morgue where the body was being
held, opening the lid of each coffin carried out to ensure the drug lord who
evaded capture during his life did not elude them in death as well.

But in Culiacan, the capital of his home state of Sinaloa, the legends about
Amado Carrillo were already being written. He may have died a bizarre death
without the bandithero glamour celebrated in folk songs and local mythology,
but he is remembered as a modern Robin Hood in a city with a tradition of
defying the law to help the underdog.

U.S. and Mexican authorities said Carrillo Fuentes, nicknamed ``Lord of the
Skies,'' made billions flying Colombian cocaine to the United States and
built one of the most brutal drug empires in Mexico.

His double standards also irked the parish priest in his home village of
Guamuchilito, some 25 miles (40 km) from Culiacan, who cast his hand over
fields of rich land farmed by the Carrillo family's numerous employees and
asked: ``Did he help them or did they help him launder money?''

``Amado is the modernstyle Robin Hood. He sold poisonous drugs to the young
to give money to others,'' the priest, Antonio Diaz Fonseca, said.

At the family ranch there were signs everywhere of the loyalty money can buy.

After the capo's death was announced on Saturday, a stream of mourners
entered the heavily guarded gateway, many wearing snakeskin boots and
Texanstyle cowboy hats. Some had marijuana leaves on their key chains or
printed on the tinted windows of their fourwheeldrive vehicles.

As funeral preparations were underway, trucks brought gravel, gardeners,
awnings, flowers and furniture all the trappings of a sendoff fit for
criminal nobility.

The last big family gathering was the wedding of Carrillo Fuentes' sister's
in January, when invitations were handed out like winning lottery tickets to
locals in nearby villages, the priest said. The party turned ugly when it was
invaded by the military and Carrillo Fuentes only just managed to slip away
in time after receiving a tipoff that a raid was imminent.

The fondness for outlaws is common in Sinaloa and drug traffickers have
become part of the folklore in a hardknuckle state where most of Mexico's
major capos were born. There is a saying here: ``The gringos sell us guns so
we can kill each other. We sell them drugs so they can drive themselves
crazy.''

At the shrine to Malverde, a Sinaloa outlaw who died from an arrowwound in
1909 after a life of robbing the rich to help the poor, scores of faithful
come to give thanks for miracles he was supposed to have delivered. Visitors
include everyone from local politicians and generals to exconvicts.

``He got me off heroin and saved me from a life in jail,'' 44yearold Juan
Molina said as he swept up trash around the kitsch chapel. ``I've been paying
him back ever since.''

Across Molina's chest was a crudely printed tattoo that sums up his life in
Culiacan. ``Music, marijuana, drugs and madness,'' it read.

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