By SAM QUINONES
Copyright 1997 Special to the Chronicle
CULIACAN, Mexico -- Every third night, Florentino Ventura can be found sleeping outdoors, guarding the large, blue shrine that honors his belief in a lawless man.
It is Ventura's faith that keeps him there.
In the summer of his 23rd year, when Ventura was working as an oyster diver in Mazatlan, he became tangled in his rope underwater. He wrestled with the cord and began to drown.
Suddenly, the face of the bandit Jesus Malverde appeared to him. Ventura finally freed himself, rose to the surface and immediately came to Culiacan, to the bandit's shrine, to give thanks.
Now 34, Ventura's been here ever since.
Along the way, he gave up his law studies and a political career. "The Mexican political system is useless," he says. "It is false, pure lies."
He found more truth in Jesus Malverde.
Ventura is one of thousands of people who have formed a sort of cultlike following that believes the bandit -- who may have been real or may have been myth -- works miracles to this day.
All year long, they come to his shrine to ask for favors and thank him for those they think he's granted. They leave behind photos and plaques with grateful inscriptions: the Lopez family from Guamuchil; Lorenzo Salazar from Guadalajara; the Guicho Rios family from Mexicali; the Leon family from Stockton, Calif.; and many more from the great Mexican Diaspora in Los Angeles.
The Pacific Coast state of Sinaloa, home of the commercial city of Culiacan, 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 be good for a reputation.
So maybe it's not so hard to understand how thousands of people could come to believe that Jesus Malverde, a renegade long dead, performs miracles in their lives.
But the faith in the bandit gets even stranger.
Over the last 20 years, Malverde has also become the patron saint for the region's many drug smugglers. The press has dubbed him "The Narco-saint."
The transformation was a simple one. Mexican drug smuggling began in Sinaloa. Here, smugglers are folk heroes, and a "narco-culture" 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 now represents the religious side to the narco-culture.
Legend has it that Jesus Malverde was a bandit who rode the hills near this capital of Sinaloa around the turn of the century.
They say Malverde robbed from the rich and gave to the poor, a Mexican Robin Hood. In 1909, so they say, the government hanged him from a tree and left his body to rot.
Historians, however, have found no evidence that Jesus Malverde ever lived.
"If he lived, faith in him is a remarkable thing," says Sergio Lopez, a dramatist from Culiacan who has researched the Malverde phenomenon. "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 live is a rich and fluidly changing lore about the bandit.
In some versions, he's a construction worker. Most have him beginning a life of crime after his parents died of hunger. Some versions say he was 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.
The governor who wanted him arrested, Francisco Canedo, may have actually invented the Malverde legend to keep in check the abuses by his more brutal hacienda owners, Lopez says. But there's a story that Canedo challenged Malverde to rob him. Malverde, as a construction worker, reportedly gained entrance to the mansion, stole the governor's sword and wrote on a wall, "Jesus M. was here."
His 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 (hanged) 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," Gonzalez said. The friend "asked the bones of Malverde, which were still hanging from the tree, to find his mules again. The friend 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. Nearby are Malverde Clutch & Brakes, Malverde Lumber and two Denny's-like cafeterias, Coco's Malverde and Chic's Malverde.
Outside the shrine, people sell trinkets, candles, pictures and tapes of ballads to the bandit. A plaster bust of Malverde can cost up to $8. Inside 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.
In glass display cases, farmers have left corn. One man has left a plastic bag of hair with thanks to Malverde for helping him survive a prison term at San Quentin. There's false teeth and a false leg.
A fisherman has left a large jar containing formaldehyde and a shrimp easily weighing a quarter- pound as thanks for a successful catch.
Faith in Malverde is a private affair. There is no ceremony at the shrine.
A constant stream of people arrive, place candles near one of the busts, sit for a while, bless themselves, touch Malverde's plaster head, and leave. Some are poor. Others arrive in shiny trucks and cars, looking very middle class.
Gloria, a housewife, arrived from Guadalajara. She spent all night, 11 hours, on the bus to get here and brought with her a collage of photos of her five children, mother and husband.
Her only reason for the trip was to visit Malverde's shrine. Then she was right back on a bus home for another 11 hours.
"Three years ago, some friends of mine told me about Malverde," she said. "A great faith was born in me. You know that faith moves mountains.
"He helped me a lot. My son was drinking a lot. Now he's studying car transmissions."
Says Florentino Ventura, sitting near the shrine: "He's the saint for whoever believes in him, not just narcos."
Sam Quinones is a free-lance journalist based in Mexico City.
Unbelievable..