Today’s issue of The New York Times has a fascinating article on the interior design sensibilities of alleged Mexican drug lords.
Drugs, like oil, can produce piles of cash in a hurry. And in several Mexican cities, there are massive homes with domes that have an Arabian flourish. The desert mansion of Amado Carrillo Fuentes — a drug lord famous for transporting cocaine in jumbo jets, and for dying after botched plastic surgery in 1997 — has even been called the Palace of 1,001 Nights, after the book of Middle Eastern and South Asian stories that included Aladdin.
Conspicuous consumption, fueled by meth and coke profits and a strip club aesthetic, results in an El Narco world upholstered in fine Corinthian leather, animal prints, gaudy swaths of velveteen and automobiles in aspic.
What happens when the deal goes wrong and money can’t buy you out of some serious bad karma? These photos tell the tale. Graveyards of the Dope Gods.
More photos after the jump…
