El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency - Hardcover

Grillo, Ioan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1608192113 ISBN 13: 9781608192113

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2011

Synopsis

The world has watched stunned at the bloodshed in Mexico. Thirty thousand murdered since 2006; police chiefs shot within hours of taking office; mass graves comparable to those of civil wars; car bombs shattering storefronts; headless corpses heaped in town squares. And it is all because a few Americans are getting high. Or is it? The United States throws Black Hawk helicopters and drug agents at the problem. But in secret, Washington is confused and divided about what to do. Who are these mysterious figures tearing Mexico apart? they wonder. What is El Narco?

El Narco draws the first definitive portrait of Mexico's drug cartels and how they have radically transformed in the last decade. El Narco is not a gang; it is a movement and an industry drawing in hundreds of thousands from bullet-ridden barrios to marijuana-growing mountains. And it has created paramilitary death squads with tens of thousands of men-at-arms from Guatemala to the Texas border. Journalist Ioan Grillo has spent a decade in Mexico reporting on the drug wars from the front lines. This piercing book joins testimonies from inside the cartels with firsthand dispatches and unsparing analysis. The devastation may be south of the Rio Grande,El Narco shows, but America is knee-deep in this conflict.

About this title

Review:

Grillo's clear-eyed, sobering account has authority and a flair for colourful anecdotes, making for disturbing but riveting reading (Metro)

A superb report form the front lines of narco-violence (Independent)

[A] shining example of dogged, impassioned and courageous reporting ... compelling ... his pace is furious, like driving at top speed along a wild mountain track in a pickup and there is no doubting his expertise, his compassion or his grit (Daily Express)

It is hard enough to report the facts of Mexico's crazy death spiral of drug violence. Ioan Grillo goes much, much deeper. He explains why El Narco threatens the soul of this beautiful country. He tells us how we got here (William Booth, bureau chief for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean Washington Post)

A fascinating and terrifying account (Sydney Morning Herald)

Heartbreaking ... El Narco is a fine work of journalism (Irish Times)

Remarkable (Houston Chronicle)

Puts a human face on the bloodshed (Boston Globe)

First-hand research over ten years, in which the author sometimes put his life at risk, and a tight focus on Mexico alone, make for an account which is vivid, disturbing, and sometimes brutal (Irish Examiner)

In these vivid and engrossing books, Ioan Grillo proves himself a master of reportage, exploring territory few journalists have tread before him, and exposing the homicidal and hypocritical nature of America's battlefields (Irish Examiner)

Book Description:

The gripping account of the out-of-control drug wars that have brought chaos to Mexico- and are now spilling into the United States.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1608192113
• ISBN 13: 9781608192113
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 336