LOW DOWN Someone has a score to settle with the Gunsmith, and after a few attempts are made on his life, Clint Adams decides to lay low in Mexico until it blows over. But he's not the only gringo taking refuge in the sleepy seaside town of Laguna Niguel. With an old friend staying close by, and a man who is going by the name Father Flynn hanging around, everyone is keeping their secrets close and their heads down. But when it gets too quiet in Laguna Niguel, the sheriff knows it can only mean one thing: trouble. OVER 15 MILLION GUNSMITH BOOKS IN PRINT!
The tale of two American teenagers recruited as killers for a Mexican cartel, and the Mexican American detective who realizes the War on Drugs is unstoppable. “A hell of a story…undeniably gripping.” (The New York Times) In this astonishing story, journalist Dan Slater recounts the unforgettable odyssey of Gabriel Cardona. At first glance, Gabriel is the poster-boy American teenager: athletic, bright, handsome, and charismatic. But the ghettos of Laredo, Texas—his border town—are full of smugglers and gangsters and patrolled by one of the largest law-enforcement complexes in the world. It isn’t long before Gabriel abandons his promising future for the allure of juvenile crime, which leads him across the river to Mexico’s most dangerous drug cartel: Los Zetas. Friends from his childhood join him and eventually they catch the eye of the cartel’s leadership. As the cartel wars spill over the border, Gabriel and his crew are sent to the States to work. But in Texas, the teen hit men encounter a Mexican-born homicide detective determined to keep cartel violence out of his adopted country. Detective Robert Garcia’s pursuit of the boys puts him face-to-face with the urgent consequences and new security threats of a drug war he sees as unwinnable. In Wolf Boys, Slater takes readers on a harrowing, often brutal journey into the heart of the Mexican drug trade. Ultimately though, Wolf Boys is the intimate story of the lobos: teens turned into pawns for the cartels. A nonfiction thriller, it reads with the emotional clarity of a great novel, yet offers its revelations through extraordinary reporting.
A myth-busting, 100-year history of the Mexican drug trade that reveals how an industry founded by farmers and village healers became dominated by cartels and kingpins. The Mexican drug trade has inspired prejudiced narratives of a war between north and south, white and brown; between noble cops and vicious kingpins, corrupt politicians and powerful cartels. In this first comprehensive history of the trade, historian Benjamin T. Smith tells the real story of how and why this one-peaceful industry turned violent. He uncovers its origins and explains how this illicit business essentially built modern Mexico, affecting everything from agriculture to medicine to economics—and the country’s all-important relationship with the United States. Drawing on unprecedented archival research; leaked DEA, Mexican law enforcement, and cartel documents; and dozens of harrowing interviews, Smith tells a thrilling story brimming with vivid characters—from Ignacia “La Nacha” Jasso, “queen pin” of Ciudad Juárez, to Dr. Leopoldo Salazar Viniegra, the crusading physician who argued that marijuana was harmless and tried to decriminalize morphine, to Harry Anslinger, the Machiavellian founder of the American Federal Bureau of Narcotics, who drummed up racist drug panics to increase his budget. Smith also profiles everyday agricultural workers, whose stories reveal both the economic benefits and the human cost of the trade. The Dope contains many surprising conclusions about drug use and the failure of drug enforcement, all backed by new research and data. Smith explains the complicated dynamics that drive the current drug war violence, probes the U.S.-backed policies that have inflamed the carnage, and explores corruption on both sides of the border. A dark morality tale about the American hunger for intoxication and the necessities of human survival, The Dope is essential for understanding the violence in the drug war and how decades-old myths shape Mexico in the American imagination today.
The opening of free trade agreements in the 1980s caused major economic changes in Mexico and the United States. These economic activities spawned dramatic social changes in Mexican society. One young Mexican woman, Anay Palomeque de Carrillo, rode the tumultuous wave of these economic activities from her rural home in tropical southern Mexico to the factories in the harsh desert lands of Ciudad Juárez during the early years of the city’s notorious violence. During her years as an education professor at the University of Texas at El Paso, author Elaine Hampton researched Mexican education in border factory (maquiladora) communities. On one trip across the border into Ciudad Juárez, she met Anay, who became her guide in uncovering the complexities of a factory laborer’s experiences in these turbulent times. Hampton here provides an exploration of education in an era of dramatic social and economic upheaval in rural and urban Mexico. This critical ethnographic case study presents Anay’s experiences in a series of narrative essays addressing the economic, social, and political context of her world. This young Mexican woman leads us through Ciudad Juárez in its most violent years, into women’s experiences in the factories, around family and religious commitments as well as personal illness, and on to her achievement of an education through perseverance and creativity.
“Brutally honest... a deeply extraordinary and original work.” - SEBASTIAN JUNGER. With an estimated 250,000 people killed in 15 years, the Mexican drug war is the most violent conflict in the Western world. It shows no sign of abating. In this book, Dr Teun A. Voeten analyzes the dynamics of the violence. He argues it is a new type of war called hybrid warfare: multidimensional, elusive and unpredictable, fought at different levels, with different intensities with multiple goals. The war ISIS has declared against the West is another example of hybrid warfare. Voeten interprets drug cartels as ultra-capitalist predatory corporations thriving in a neoliberal, globalized economy. They use similar branding and marketing strategies as legitimate business. He also looks at the anthropological, individual level and explains how people can become killers. Voeten compares Mexican sicarios, West African child soldiers and Western jihadis and sees the same logic of cruelty that facilitates perpetrating ‘inhumane’ acts that are in fact very human.
This second Small Wars JournalEl Centro anthology signifies the important debate that this new forum, focusing on the crime wars and criminal insurgencies taking place in Mexico and other regions of the Americas, is helping to generate in U.S. defense and homeland security circles. The debate comes at a time when neither of the two major U.S. presidential candidates were willingly to candidly discuss this issue and at the end of the recent Felipe Caldern administration which saw over 80,000 dead, 20,000 missing, and 200,000 internal refugees stemming from gang and cartel violence during its tenure in Mexico. Dave Dilegge SWJ Editor-in-Chief
Over 3,100 total pages ... CONTENTS: The Nexus of Extremism and Trafficking: Scourge of the World or So Much Hype? Crossing Our Red Lines About Partner Engagement in Mexico Two Faces of Attrition: Analysis of a Mismatched Strategy against Mexican and Central American Drug Traffickers Combating Drug Trafficking: Variation in the United States' Military Cooperation with Colombia and Mexico Ungoverned Spaces in Mexico: Autodefensas, Failed States, and the War on Drugs in Michoacan U.S. SOUTHWEST BORDER SECURITY: AN OPERATIONAL APPROACH TWO WARS: OVERSEAS CONTINGENCY OPERATIONS AND THE WAR ON DRUGS WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED FROM THE WAR ON DRUGS? AN ASSESSMENT OF MEXICO’S COUNTERNARCOTICS STRATEGY THE DIVERSIFICATION OF MEXICAN TRANSNATIONAL CRIMINAL ORGANIZATIONS AND ITS EFFECTS ON SPILLOVER VIOLENCE IN THE UNITED STATES Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations: Matching Strategy to Threat THE IMPACTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON CITIZEN SECURITY BEHAVIOR IN MEXICO Combating Transnational Organized Crime: Strategies and Metrics for the Threat Beyond Merida: A Cooperative Counternarcotics Strategy for the 21st Century MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS AND TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS, A NEW ALLIANCE? THE EFFECTIVE BUSINESS PRACTICES OF MEXICAN DRUG TRAFFICKING ORGANIZATIONS (DTOs) DRUG TRAFFICKING AND POLICE CORRUPTION: A COMPARISON OF COLOMBIA AND MEXICO CRISIS IN MEXICO: ASSESSING THE MÉRIDA INITIATIVE AND ITS IMPACT ON US-MEXICAN SECURITY BORDER SECURITY: IS IT ACHIEVABLE ON THE RIO GRANDE? Borders and Borderlands in the Americas PREVENTING BULK CASH AND WEAPONS SMUGGLING INTO MEXICO: ESTABLISHING AN OUTBOUND POLICY ON THE SOUTHWEST BORDER FOR CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTON DRUG TRAFFICKING WITHIN MEXICO: A LAW ENFORCEMENT ISSUE OR INSURGENCY? USSOCOM’s Role in Addressing Human Trafficking Southwest Border Violence: Issues in Identifying and Measuring Spillover Violence National Security Threats at the U.S.-Mexico Border Merida Initiative: Proposed U.S. Anticrime and Counterdrug Assistance for Mexico and Central America COCAINE TRAFFICKING THROUGH WEST AFRICA: THE HYBRIDIZED ILLICIT NETWORK AS AN EMERGING TRANSNATIONAL THREAT ORGANIZED CRIME AND TERRORIST ACTIVITY IN MEXICO, 1999-2002 Is the Narco-violence in Mexico an Insurgency? THE USE OF TERRORISM BY DRUG TRAFFICKING ORGANIZATIONS’ PARAMILITARY GROUPS IN MEXICO An Approach to the 40-Year Drug War EXPLOITING WEAKNESSES: AN APPROACH TO COUNTER CARTEL STRATEGY MEXICO AND THE COCAINE EPIDEMIC: THE NEW COLOMBIA OR A NEW PROBLEM? EXPLAINING VARIATION IN THE APPREHENSION OF MEXICAN DRUG TRAFFICKING CARTEL LEADERS Drug Cartels and Gangs in Mexico and Central America: A View through the Lens of Counterinsurgency The COIN Approach to Mexican Drug Cartels: Square Peg in a Round Hole Counterinsurgency and the Mexican Drug War THE UNTOLD STORY OF MEXICO’S RISE AND EVENTUAL MONOPOLY OF THE METHAMPHETAMINE TRADE Competing with the Cartels: How Mexico's Government Can Reduce Organized Crime's Economic Grip on its People FIGHTING CORRUPTION IN MEXICO: LESSONS FROM COLOMBIA Defeating Mexico's Drug Trafficking Organizations: The Range of Military Operations in Mexico Drug Trafficking as a Lethal Regional Threat in Central America What Explains the Patterns of Diversification in Drug Trafficking Organizations Evaluating the Impact of Drug Trafficking Organizations on the Stability of the Mexican State
Illustrated with 180 photographs, paintings, and illustrations, Dark History of the Catholic Church reveals the corruption, scandals, murder and dark deeds behind the world’s oldest Christian faith.
