Badiraguarto, Sinaloa isn’t a place on most tourists’ bucket-list… unless, that is, unless you have an hankering to visit the hometowns of Horatio Alger type stories of the poor boy from the small Town who by pluck and luck works his way up from humble fruit vendor to one of the world’s most famous transportation and logistics experts, overseeing at its height, a multi-billion (some say trillion) dollar industry.. but never forgot his home town, and was always good to his mother. I mean, of course, local hero(?9 Joaquin Guzman Loera.

It’s most important local industry being, shall we say, a bit on the dangerous side, and for which the local producion is desperately sought… perhaps it’s no surprise that the patron Saint of the desperate and those in danger… Saint Jude… Judas Taddeo in Spanish… might be called upon to watch over the affairs of the small (population, about 7000) community buried in the Sierra Madres.

Watch over it, he will… an 18 meter (60 feet for the metrically challenged) statue… by Cuilican scuptor Fidel Chaidez…. after a year of work was delivered yesterday in two long flatbed trucks. The instrallation will tower over the community, perhaps bringing in a few religious tourists, or at least, one hopes…will take a bad town and make it better… better… BETTER, .

Photo of sculpture in progress (Euro EsEuro).

(Noreste)