MEXICO'S UNSUCCESSFUL DRUG WAR, PAINFULLY PRESERVED AND HIDDEN

MEXICO CITY - At their best, museums are glorious cultural repositories,
reflecting the highest flowering of human creativity, ingenuity and art. But
not everything in every culture is glorious, and there are museums for those
aspects, too, which is why, hidden from the public, there is an institution
here devoted to Mexico's dark side, the Museum of Drugs.

It is a place that leaves those who manage to get inside shaking their
heads and lamenting the long, spirited but largely unsuccessful war
this country has waged to control illegal narcotics.

Run by the Mexican military and open only to graduating cadets and
select guests, the Museo de los Enervantes presents the drug war in
all its ugliness and complexity. There is a room devoted to the
ancient roots of drug use in Mesoamerica, like the use of
hallucinogenic peyote and mushrooms by the Maya and Aztecs, and
displays that show all the military does to try to stem the tide,
uprooting marijuana plants and uncovering hidden caches of cocaine and
heroin.

"You eradicate in one place and you continue on, and when you go back
they're growing it again," said Maj. Mario Ayala Lopez, who insisted
that his face not be shown in any photographs, an atypical request for
a museum curator but a reality in present-day Mexico, where the drug
violence knows no bounds.

To give young cadets a sense of what they will be hunting for once
deployed into the field, drugs themselves are on display, real-life
samples under glass of everything from methamphetamines, which are
manufactured in huge quantities in Mexican laboratories, to heroin, to
marijuana, which is grown in fields hidden away in the countryside.
The museum itself could not be more secure, located on the top floor
of the Defense Ministry.

Along the halls, there is a farmworker mannequin propped up under a
tree with a rifle in his hands, guarding a field of poppies and
marijuana. Around his neck is a pendant of Jes=FAs Malverde,
considered the patron saint of outlaws. Nearby is a board with nails
sticking into it, a makeshift trap set to injure anyone, but
especially soldiers, who might creep near.

In a display case are actual notes that soldiers have recovered in
raids on fields growing the precursors for the drugs that will be
smoked, snorted or injected. The handwritten messages are pleas from
the farmers to the soldiers to leave their fields alone in exchange
for a little cash.

Getting the drugs to the biggest market on Earth, the United States,
requires ingenuity, and there is an entire room devoted to that.
Drug-filled shoes, beer crates and even a drug-filled surfboard are on
display. There is a doughnut sprinkled with poppy seeds that were to
be used to make heroin, and a doll that was stuffed with drugs and
then handed to a child to carry.

A model of a woman who was apprehended in Tijuana shows her with a
protruding stomach, which was caused not by pregnancy but by a package
containing several pounds of tightly wrapped cocaine. A photograph
features another female trafficker, this one with cocaine surgically
implanted in her buttocks. She died after one of the packages burst
upon her arrival at Mexico City's airport.

Toward the end of the tour the museum, which opened in 1985,
introduces the people who have turned Mexico into the prime
trafficking country in the hemisphere. There is a model of a
stereotypical trafficker wearing fancy cowboy boots, a big belt buckle
imprinted with a marijuana plant and plenty of jewelry.

On the wall is a photograph of a trafficker's child, a baby dressed in
camouflage surrounded by dozens of shotguns. "There are generations
that grow up in this culture," Major Ayala said. "For them it's normal."

Farther on are some of the vestments recovered during drug raids, like
a bulletproof trench coat and a protective polo shirt, both designed
by Miguel Caballero, a Colombian clothing designer who runs a pricey
boutique not far away.

Traffickers have plenty of money to spend, and this museum gives a
taste of some of their buying habits. There is a gold-encrusted
cellphone recovered from Daniel Perez Rojas, a founder of the Zetas, a
paramilitary group, and plenty of weaponry decorated with precious
metals and stones. A Colt pistol recovered from Alfredo Beltra Leyva,
a leader of the feared Sinaloa cartel who was arrested in January,
bears the oft-repeated revolutionary quotation, "I'd rather die on my
feet than live on my knees."

There is another Colt pistol encrusted with emeralds that once
belonged to Joaquin Guzman Loera, the leader of the Sinaloa cartel and
probably the most wanted trafficker of all. It was marked with the
initials ACF, for Armado Carrillo Fuentes, who once led the Juarez
Cartel but died while undergoing plastic surgery in 1997. The gun was
probably a gift from Mr. Carrillo to Mr. Guzman, the curator
speculated, and thus a sign of an alliance between their rival cartels.

Nowhere is the word "guerra," or war, featured in the museum, because
the Mexican military considers its counternarcotics mission to be
something different from that. "We don't use that term," said Major
Ayala, who was wearing his dress uniform as he strode formally through
the museum.

At the museum entrance, though, is a shrine that features the names of
570 Mexican soldiers who have died fighting illegal drugs as far back
as 1976. In the last two years, since President Felipe Calderon has
sent soldiers on more antidrug missions than any of his predecessors,
67 names have been added to the list.

And, sadly, there is plenty of room on the wall for more.