Culiacán is a recurring waypoint in the novel’s network of cartel business and personal ties. It is Raúl Barrera’s hometown, a stop on Adán Barrera’s business journeys, the site of a seven-million-dollar withdrawal arranged by Pilar Méndez, and the place where Güero Méndez visits the tombs of his wife and children. The city matters less as a formally described setting than as a point where local familiarity, financial power, and mourning become visible in concrete actions.

A Hometown That Opens Doors

Raúl identifies Culiacán as his hometown when the group tries to obtain tickets to see the boxer Felizardo. He says he used to manage the fighter and can arrange access; he follows through with ringside seats and a visit to the dressing room after Felizardo knocks out Pérez in the third round. The introduction is not simply a celebrity encounter. Fabián observes that Felizardo treats Raúl as a friend but addresses Adán with deference. Adán offers a quiet congratulation and leaves quickly. In this small scene, Raúl’s personal connection gets the group inside, while the different reception of Adán hints at a wider hierarchy that local familiarity alone cannot explain.

The episode gives Culiacán a social texture through relationships rather than a street-by-street portrait. Raúl’s claim to belong there is expressed through a past working connection and the practical favor he can still secure. The resulting access carries the characters from the public spectacle of a boxing match into the more restricted space of the dressing room. For Fabián, that access also becomes a chance to notice how status operates: the same boxer’s manner changes according to whether he is speaking with Raúl or Adán.

A Stop on Business Routes

Culiacán also appears as part of Adán’s repeated business travel. When he is away, he makes a regular journey to Guadalajara to visit Tío and then goes to Culiacán carrying a briefcase of cash for Güero Méndez. The sequence places the city within a circuit of visits and deliveries linking figures who operate across different parts of the criminal organization. The evidence establishes Culiacán as a destination for this transfer, not as the location of a particular meeting or as the organization’s headquarters.

That distinction matters in a story where power is spread across people, territories, and practical arrangements. Elsewhere, the novel describes leadership and regional responsibilities being redistributed: García Abrego is to lead the Federación from the Gulf states, El Verde is to continue running Sonora, and Güero is to retain the Baja plaza. Against that broader arrangement, Adán’s cash delivery to Güero makes Culiacán a point along the route by which business is carried out, rather than proof that the city itself is a seat of cartel command. Its narrative function is logistical but not impersonal: the cash moves through a journey undertaken by Adán, whose frequent calls to his daughter Gloria during such trips also connect business travel to family life.

Money and Local Authority

Culiacán is the setting for a large cash withdrawal by Pilar Méndez. She takes seven million dollars from three different banks. Two managers hesitate and want to contact Señor Méndez before releasing the money; one even picks up the phone. Pilar insists that she is Señora Méndez, not a housewife spending an allowance. The manager puts the receiver back, and she gets the money.

The episode makes access to money a contest over recognition and authority. The managers’ initial impulse is to refer the decision to her husband, but Pilar’s insistence changes the terms of the encounter: she presents herself as someone entitled to act in her own name, and the withdrawal proceeds. The three-bank arrangement gives the transaction scale, while the managers’ brief resistance shows that the funds are not accessed without friction. Culiacán is therefore not just a backdrop to a transfer. It is where a private claim to status is tested against the cautious routines of financial institutions, and where Pilar’s persistence produces an immediate result.

Cemetery, Family, and Remembrance

Culiacán’s most intimate appearance is connected to death. In 1994, the narration notes that Adán has spent the day at cemeteries. The surrounding account sets that day against the Day of the Dead: Adán and Raúl are alive and celebrate at their new disco in Puerto Vallarta, while Güero makes a pilgrimage to Jardines del Valle cemetery in Culiacán. There he visits an unmarked crypt with carved marble columns, bas-relief sculptures, and a dome decorated with frescoes of two angels. Inside are the tombs of his wife and children; colored photographs are displayed in glass cases.

The account names Claudia and Güerito as the children whose images and graves belong to this family memorial. The crypt’s elaborate decoration contrasts with its description as unmarked: the family’s loss is given a carefully made, enduring place, even as its location is not publicly identified by a marker. In the wider sequence, the living brothers’ celebration and Güero’s cemetery pilgrimage occur alongside one another, making Culiacán part of a contrast between survival and remembrance. The city’s role here is not commercial. It holds the physical focus of Güero’s grief and gives his family’s absence a specific setting.

Narrative Significance

Across these appearances, Culiacán brings several forms of power into the same narrative geography without reducing them to one another. Raúl’s hometown ties secure access to a boxer; Adán’s journey carries cash for a business associate; Pilar’s withdrawal tests who can command substantial funds; and Güero’s visit returns the story to family loss. The city is associated with recognizable institutions and acts—boxing, banks, a cemetery, travel—rather than with an extended description of its streets or civic life.

That limited but repeated presence is significant. Culiacán links public relationships to private consequences: the favor Raúl can call in is social, the money Pilar secures is financial, and the graves Güero visits make the cost of the cartel world personal. The novel does not present these scenes as a single uninterrupted local storyline. Instead, the city recurs at different points in characters’ routes, allowing its importance to accumulate through what they do there and what they carry away.