I'm Linda Pressley and this is assignment on the BBC World Service from the state of

Sinolua, home to one of Mexico's most powerful bloody drug cartels.

When we visit the city of Koolia Can, it's wide sunny boulevards aligned by trees in

bloom with intense yellow blossom.

It feels sleepy, quaint, until we reach a shopping street close to the cathedral.

So our driver is just pointing out the women sitting under individual parasols wearing

tight clothes generally, very long hair, a lot of makeup.

Some of them look so there wouldn't be strangers to a plastic surgeon's operating theatre.

And they're very young women.

Yeah, very young.

That's all a seasick amea, a Mexican journalist, and as we drive by, fists full of American

dollars, a wave debtors from manicured hands, tempting us to stop and change money.

It's like a retired block.

So the guy is here, you think, or the mind is right?

Yeah, it's quite a whereby, for exchange dollars.

But it's illegal it makes you guys, isn't it?

Yeah, it's very illegal.

And so the story here is that what happens is that the drug money that's made in the

United States obviously paid in dollars, the dollars come back to Sinola.

And this is one way that the money is laundered, the dollars are changed for pesos.

So this is money laundering, Kulia Canstalf.

It's the start of our journey for assignment, exploring Nako Koutura, Nako culture, and

...