In drug trafficking hub, artist is in demand

With a gilded, 4-foot statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe tucked under his arm, Jose Espinoza clambers up the Italian-marble staircase, past the Jacuzzis and gigantic Corinthian columns, to a domed chapel inside the ornate mansion of a particularly successful Sinaloa "farmer."

Espinoza installs the Virgin in her niche on an elaborate cedar altarpiece that he carved by hand, a la early Baroque. Around her dance rosy-cheeked, feather-winged angels that Espinoza has painted on the walls and ceilings, an enveloping palette of pale blue skies and cottony clouds. Jesus Christ and God the Father are there too.

The multimillion-dollar mansion is one of many in this strangely wealthy city that Espinoza has been hired to adorn in recent years. Given Sinaloa's well-earned reputation as the cradle of Mexican narcotics trafficking, it is little wonder who is footing the bills.

"I don't probe," says Espinoza, 51, a broad-shouldered man with a helmet of silver hair, bushy black eyebrows and a hearty laugh.

Espinoza is known as one of the region's finest artists. He might also be called home decorator to the narcos.

In his case, though, it's not curtains or carpeting he's supplying but room-length murals, gold-leafed ceilings and Grecian cornices. His work provides a peek into the lifestyles of the rich and criminal.

Their death-styles too.

Here in the Sinaloan capital of Culiacan, Espinoza also specializes in painting religious imagery on the opulent mausoleums that serve as the final resting places for hundreds of traffickers slain in Mexico's raging war on drug cartels.

The architectural excesses, in the fast-growing cemeteries and in the mansions that have popped up on the slopes of this hilly city, might not be surprising in Bel-Air or the Hamptons. But Sinaloa is -- judged by its official economy -- one of the poorest states in a poor country.

Most of the real money in Sinaloa, of course, is in the vast illegal network that has been producing and shipping marijuana and heroin to the U.S., and taking in billions of dollars in profit, for generations.

In one mansion where Espinoza works, the vaulted doorway is big enough to drive a Brink's truck through. A row of caryatids (columns formed entirely by the sculpted body of a woman) flanks one side.

Another manse is so tall the owner demanded (after construction was almost complete) that an elevator be installed. Once that place is finished, water will spout into the pool through the mouths of chiseled stone tigers.

In another home, you can lie in the Jacuzzi and observe Espinoza's depiction of the Birth of Venus gracing the domed ceiling.

"It's very contemplative," he says wistfully. "Some of the houses are so big, you lose perspective."

Local wags sometimes call the style "narc-itecture."

Carrara marble in earth tones coats children's bathrooms; one walk-in closet the size of an auditorium has a crystal central island of drawers for easy spotting of jewels and other accessories. Once, Espinoza spent a year installing pure ebony railings and fixtures in a hillside residence that vaguely resembles the Pantheon.

In a sprawling hacienda, Espinoza painted room after room with portraits of Spanish flamenco dancers, their lacy red-and-black costumes soaring 20 feet toward the ceiling. The owner's wife was a fan of flamenco. Joke on them: The dancers' faces are his nieces'.

But these aren't clients you can really joke with. You never dispute a payment or make excuses for missed deadlines or say something like, "But you didn't ask for hand-woven Sardinian lace."

Actually, they tend to be longer on the money and shorter on the taste it would require to know anything about Sardinian lace. Still, it's a delicate business. You don't challenge, you don't question, you brace yourself for the demands and complaints, especially from the narcos' wives, who can be shrilly exacting.