Checkpoints
One, two, three pick ups blocking the way. Almost always green and armed, other times they're the white and black of “Los Harfuch.”
They usually stake out on major avenues without warning, choking traffic, driving drivers to despair.
Sometimes they pop up instantly on some unknown street. They set up orange cones, wave fluorescent flags. At night, they blind you with their flashlights.
The government insists they work. They call them “checkpoints,” a euphemism. “They stop the ones who shouldn't be stopped, let the suspects go free,” people complain, and rightly so.
They're already part of the urban landscape in Culiacán now, going on two years of appearing and vanishing with little explanation.
Nobody likes them, but we all accept them with resignation: they're the message of law enforcement's presence, the painful reminder that we're still at war.