In Mexico's northwest state of Sinaloa, better known as home to the chic resort of Mazatlan, drug smuggling is an accepted part of life. From ostrich-skin boots to shirts emblazoned with the portrait of a "narco saint" known as Jesus Malverde, people dress to imitate the "narcos" and talk with narcotrafficers "like it's the most common thing in the world." PNS correspondent Sam Quinones is a freelance reporter based for the last five years in Mexico City. This is the first of three reports on Mexico's narcoculture. Photographs illustrating the series are available through PNS - call George Gundrey at 415-243-4364.

CULIACAN, MEXICO -- With their tight jeans, large belt buckles, cowboy boots and hats, they look like country boys, just come down from the hills. In fact, these young men, standing at the stage at a "Los Tigres del Norte" concert, are college students, born and raised here in Culiacan -- a city of more than 700,000, capital of the Pacific coast state of Sinaloa.

Their costumes are a sort of tribute. The hills are where narcotics smugglers come from, and in Northwest Mexico drug smugglers are imitated, admired for taking their product across the border, and beating the authorities and gringoes against all odds.

The "narcoculture" has developed its own dress, music and attitudes -- even a cult surrounding the mythical bandit Jesus Malverde.

Narcofashion includes cowboy garb, gold chains, a finely pressed sports suit, often with snakeskin lapels. This is the "Chalinazo" style -- after Chalino Sanchez, a legendary singer of narco ballads murdered after a concert here in 1992, a case that is still unsolved.

Recently, the style has upgraded to included ostrich-skin boots -- an ostrich farm set up nearby -- and silk shirts, usually with wild designs in brown, beige and yellow. The originals were Versaces and went for 3,000 pesos ($375). Chinese imitations run about 200 pesos, double that for shirts with gold thread. Many shops stock shirts with Jesus Malverde, a sort of narco saint, or the Virgin of Guadalupe on the back -- or are adorned with marijuana leaves, AK-47s, cowboy hats and playing cards.

"They want to imitate the narcos. Narcos are the ones with the money," says Freddy Dominguez, manager of a downtown clothing shop.

At the core of all this is acceptance of drug smuggling as part of everyday life, an attitude most evident in these parts of Mexico, where providing gringos with drugs has been part of the economy for most of three decades.

"You can be talking with a drug trafficker and it's the most common thing in the world. You talk about it like you're talking about your girlfriend or a soccer game," says Daniel Valencia, a teacher.

And here there are legendary narcotraficantes -- Baltazar Diaz, gunned down in the streets of Mexico City, Lamberto Quintero who met the same fate in Culiacan, "El Borrego," immortalized recently in a song by Tucanes de Tijuana.

Some narcos never die. "They said 'El Cochiloco' (Manuel Salcido) was dead four times and he still kept coming back. People say he's still alive," says Armando Salcedo, who studies computer science at the university.

Sinaloa -- also home to the resort of Mazatlan -- is where drug smuggling began in Mexico. Marijuana and opium poppies grow nicely in these mountains and most major Mexican drug cartel leaders hail from Sinaloa -- though they usually live somewhere else.

"We've been living for more than 50 years with the drug trafficking culture," says Oscar Loza, president of the Sinaloa Commission for the Defense of Human Rights. "With a second and third generation living with drug trafficking, they begin seeing it as something natural, not something criminal -- just another economic activity."

This view is reinforced by the government's total lack of credibility among Sinaloans, especially those from the mountains where the U.S. and Mexico sponsored a series of ferocious military anti-drug sweeps in the 1970s. "Almost 2,000 villages disappeared," says Loza. "People abandoned their land, even their livestock. The cities grew at rates above three percent a year due to people coming down from the mountains."

Another ingredient is the government's inability, or unwillingness, to provide services in far-flung communities, leaving a vacuum the drug smugglers have been known to fill. Narcotraficantes have paved streets, built clinics, paid for operations. "When (drug lord) Miguel Felix Gallardo went to jail (in the mid-1980s), people were really sad," says Tomas Castillo, a dental student. "Here these guys aren't enemies, they're friends."

Add the government's consistent failure to combat drug-related crime and it's possible to understand both the mystique, and the social acceptance, of the "narcotraficante."

"Their kids go to school with us," says Valencia. "But since they have money, no one says anything. People know they (the narcos) are doing wrong, but they feel bad when something bad happens to someone who's helped people."

"People don't care where the money comes from if they've helped people," observes Armando Salcedo.