In Mexico's Pacific Coast state of Sinaloa having the government as an enemy can do great things for your reputation. And so it was that a legendary bandit supposedly hung in 1909 is now a revered saint whose shrine draws thousands each year from as far away as Stockton, California. With his Robin Hood image, it was inevitable that Jesus Malverde would also become the patron saint of drug traffickers. PNS reporter Sam Quinones reports on his legend in this third of three parts on Mexico's narcoculture. Photographs illustrating the series are available through PNS - call George Gundrey at 415-243-4364.

CULIACAN, MEXICO -- Every third night Florentino Ventura sleeps outside, guarding the large blue shrine that honors belief in a lawless man.

His faith keeps him there.

The way Florentino tells it, he was 23 and working as an oyster diver in Mazatlan when he became entangled in his rope. He began to drown. Suddenly the face of the bandit Jesus Malverde appeared to him. He freed himself and came immediately to Malverde's shrine to give thanks. Now 34, he's been here ever since.

Sinaloa is one of those places where having the government as an enemy can improve one's reputation. This helps explain why thousands of people like Florentino Ventura have come to believe that Jesus Malverde, a bandit long dead, performs miracles.

All year long they come to his shrine in Culiacan, the capital city of the Pacific Coast state of Sinaloa, to ask for favors. They leave behind photos and plaques with grateful inscriptions: Lorenzo Salazar from Guadalajara; the Guicho Rios family from Mexicali; the Leon family from Stockton, California; and many more from the great Mexican diaspora in Los Angeles.

Over the last 20 years, Malverde has also become the patron saint for the region's many drug smugglers. "The Narco Saint," the press has dubbed him.

Mexican drug smuggling began in Sinaloa, and a "narcoculture" has existed for some time. Malverde is the religious side of the narcoculture. His most devout followers are 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.

According to the legend, Malverde was hung on May 3, 1909, for banditry -- but historians have found no evidence of his existence.

"If he lived, faith in him is a remarkable thing," says Sergio Lopez, a dramatist who has researched the 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, changing body of lore about the bandit. In some versions, he's a construction worker, in others a railway worker. Some say he was betrayed by a friend, who cut off his feet and dragged him through the hills to collect a 10,000 peso reward. Others have him shot to death.

Malverde's first miracle, according to one version, was returning a woman's lost cow.

Eligio Gonzalez, nicknamed "The Apostle of Malverde," tells 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 hung 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. He asked the bones of Malverde, which were still hanging from the tree, to find his mules again. He found them, so he put Malverde's bones in the box, and bribed the cemetery guard and buried him like contraband. No one knows where."

Malverde's shrine stands near the railroad tracks on the west side of Culiacan. Outside, people sell trinkets, candles, pictures and tapes of ballads. In glass cases, farmers have left corn. One man has left a baggie of hair with thanks to Malverde for surviving a prison term at San Quentin. There's a set of false teeth, a false leg, a large jar containing formaldehyde and an enormous shrimp -- a fisherman's thanks for a successful catch.

When in the 1970s the government decided to build new offices on the site of the shrine, opposition was so fierce officials had to provide land for a larger, roofed shrine nearby.

They say all of Culiacan turned out to see the demolition of the pile of pebbles that supposedly marked the place where Malverde was buried. They say, too, that the pebbles began to jump like popcorn and that the bulldozer operator had to get drunk to have the guts to roll over it and that finally the machine broke down when it touched the grave.