CULIACÁN, Mexico — Yudit del Rincón, a 44-year-old lawmaker, went before the state Legislature this year with a proposition: Let's require lawmakers to take drug tests to prove they are clean.

Her colleagues greeted the idea with applause. Then she sprang a surprise on them: Two lab technicians waited in the audience to administer drug tests to every state lawmaker. We should set the example, she said.

They nearly trampled one another in the stampede to the door, del Rincón recalled.

Del Rincón wasn't all that shocked. She was born and raised here in the Pacific Coast state of Sinaloa, home of the drug racket's top leaders, its most talented impresarios, and some of its dirtiest government and police officials.

Swaths of Sinaloa periodically become no-go zones for outsiders; the central government abdicated control long ago. By one estimate, 32 towns are run by gangsters.

In Culiacán, the capital, casinos outnumber libraries, and dealerships for yachts and Hummers cater to the inexplicably wealthy.

This is where narco folklore started, with songs and icons that pay homage to gangsters, and where kids want to grow up to be traffickers. How Sinaloa confronts its own divided soul offers insight into where the drug war may be going for Mexico, where more than 5,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence this year.

"The monster has lost all proportion," said del Rincón, who is a member of the conservative National Action Party.

A spunky woman with large eyes and hands that seem to be constantly in motion, del Rincón scans the tables at cafes where she meets people, making sure she knows who is within earshot; she lowers her voice when she names names. Her husband keeps tabs on her whereabouts throughout each day.

Such are the risks of speaking out.

"The narcos have networks meshed into the fabric of business, culture, politics — every corner of life."

Poppies and marijuana have been cultivated in the mountains of Sinaloa since the late 19th century. For decades, Mexican farmers harvested the crops, and entire dynasties of families dedicated themselves to the trade.

Except for one brutal crackdown in the 1970s, successive governments accommodated the drug trade, even as Mexico became a staging ground for Colombian cocaine headed to its biggest market, the United States.

Back then, one party ruled Mexico. The Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, controlled everything from the smallest of peasant groups to the presidency.

"The state was the referee, and it imposed the rules of the game on the traffickers," Sinaloa-born historian Luis Astorga said. "The world of the politicians and the world of the traffickers contained and protected each other simultaneously."

Slowly, the monopoly started to crack. Parties other than the PRI began to win elections, here and across Mexico. Different faces joined regional legislatures, while the PRI struggled to hold on. Del Rincón's PAN won the mayoralty of Culiacán and other posts across Sinaloa.

Finally, the PRI lost the presidency in 2000.

Political pluralism in Mexico may have made room for more firebrands like del Rincón, but it also fed a free-for-all among trafficking gangs, which began to splinter and compete. "The state was no longer the referee, and so the traffickers had to referee among themselves," Astorga said.

Gradually, law-abiding people learned a new code of conduct: Keep your head down, don't ask too many questions, keep away from the restaurants and luxury boutiques where gangsters hang out.

"Mexico was a time bomb for a long time, and now it is finally out of control — more guns, more money, more internal fights," said Marco Antonio Castrejón, a dentist whose grandparents settled in Culiacán about 60 years ago. Castrejón and his seven siblings worked hard, earned degrees and established legitimate professions, even as the men with guns and menacing swaggers took the streets.

About eight years ago, Castrejón kept his oldest son from leaving Culiacán. Generations of the family had stuck together here. It was important to stay, he advised.

But this year, when his youngest turned 17 and wanted to leave, the door was open.

"I used to be afraid to have my children away from us," said Castrejón, 48. "Now the greater fear is that they stay."

Pedro Rodríguez, 41, has been a police officer for half his life. He got into law enforcement straight out of the army. He thought the discipline he admired in the military would continue in the Sinaloa police force. And he liked the authority a policeman's uniform gave him.

That all changed several years ago, he said.

"It used to be, as a uniformed police officer, I could raise my hand in the road and stop an 18-wheeler," Rodríguez said. "Today the truck would run right over me."

More than 100 police officers have been killed in Sinaloa this year, most of them gunned down. Countless others have fled or taken bribes and changed sides. By some estimates, as much as 70 percent of the local police force has come under the sway of traffickers.

It is widely believed many legislators and other politicians are elected with the help of narcotics money. The exchange: veto power over the naming of top police commanders.

"Twenty years ago, we knew of the handful of big mafia dons, but they were discreet," Rodríguez said. "Today we are dealing with the apprentices, who want to get rich very fast, who commit enormous excesses, who want to be noticed."

When President Felipe Calderón took office two years ago, violence already had begun to surge. Calderón deployed the army days after his inauguration. The president, according to aides, was alarmed at the slayings that were sweeping the nation and the ability of traffickers to infiltrate politics.

But even among Calderón's supporters, there are complaints that the president underestimated the scope of the problem, dispatched an inadequately prepared army and is not fighting on the political and economic fronts. Consequently, the backlash has been bloodier than anticipated.

With plenty of money, the traffickers continue to protect themselves and buy their way into government, says Edgardo Buscaglia, an expert on organized crime who advises Mexico's Congress.

In the latest and potentially most explosive scandal, Sinaloan traffickers allegedly bought off senior anti-drug officials in Mexico City, acquiring inside information about Calderón's ground war on smugglers.

Buscaglia warns against the "Afghanistan-ization" of Mexico, in which rival kingpins gradually take over different states.

"If one criminal organization takes over one state and another criminal organization takes another, then you have the ingredients of civil war," Buscaglia said.

Buscaglia believes traffickers already control 8 percent of Mexico's municipalities, or about 200 cities and towns, based on his analysis of data such as arrest warrants issued for police, army detentions of elected officials and the presence of sanctioned criminal activity such as drug sales and prostitution.

Leading the pack with the most such municipalities was the state of Sinaloa, with 32.

Jesús Vizcarra Calderón, mayor of Culiacán, felt compelled late last year to deny rumors his considerable fortune came from Sinaloan traffickers. Vizcarra has been tapped by the governor of Sinaloa to be the PRI's candidate in next year's gubernatorial elections.

Sinaloa state Legislator Óscar Félix Ochoa denied criminal activity after his three brothers were arrested in June, allegedly holding nearly 40 pounds of cocaine, weapons and dollars. At the same time, the army discovered a safe house harboring gunmen implicated in the slaying of federal police, with more than $5 million stashed in a strongbox. The house had belonged to Félix Ochoa, the army said.

Del Rincón, the crusading legislator, used to lead the charge against Félix Ochoa. One day, someone sent a funeral wreath to her home with her name on it. She is more careful these days about attacking individuals, but she is more determined than ever to challenge a doped-up status quo.

"All society is contaminated," she said. "We are being held hostage. ... If we remain silent, where will we end up?"

After a lifetime struggling to keep her family safe from traffickers, del Rincón was dismayed when her son started dressing like the buchones — the young wannabes who emulate traffickers.

"If we don't dress like this, the girls won't even look at us," she recalled her son saying.

"It is fashionable to be a narco," del Rincón said, shaking her head. "It's status."

In the cemeteries of Sinaloa, many members of the new generation rest, having met premature death. Families spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to erect mausoleums that adulate the life that put their kin in these graves. The crypts are built with imported Italian marble, mosaics, crystal chandeliers, Corinthian columns and French doors.

In one, "Lupito" rests in peace with his AK-47; "Beta," "Payán" and dozens more take their journey to the afterlife amid statues of the Virgin Mary and accompanied by bottles of tequila, cans of Tecate beer and packs of Marlboros.

The average age of these men, all buried in the past few months, is less than 25.