cover image El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency

El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency

Ioan Grillo. Bloomsbury, $26 (336p) ISBN 978-1-60819-211-3

Grillo, a seasoned reporter on the Mexican narcotics industry, offers a propulsive account of the blood-soaked machinery of "El Narco," the shadowy complex of drug cartels, street gangs, and paramilitary death squads that have littered Mexican streets with bodies and AK-47 shells. He tracks the violence that has surged in the vacuum left by the demise of the one-party government's byzantine but delicately balanced system of corruption, painting a grim portrait of the corrupt police, soldiers, and officials who, figuring they can't beat the crime, make a tidy fortune by joining it. Rife with tales of torture, decapitation, and mass kidnappings, the book levels an unflinching eye on the smugglers lauded as folk heroes in popular narcocorridas, or drug ballads, as the author talks to street thugs and assassins in their prison cells and luxury condos. Examining the trade's gunslinging culture, the motivations behind the continual ramping-up of violence, and some potential solutions to the problem, Grillo argues that America's hard-line rhetoric has failed%E2%80%94and that if a game-changing alternative is not implemented, the Mexican state could also fail. Given the savage chaos Grillo shows us in the country's streets and barrios, his arguments are as perceptive as his high-octane reportage. (Nov.)