' War' is no exaggeration in discussing the bloodshed that has terrorized Mexico in the past decades. As rival cartels battle for control of a billion-dollar drug trade the body count- 23 000 dead in five years
- & sheer horror beggar the imagination of journalistic witnesses. Cartel gunmen have shot up schools & rehabilitation centers & murdered the entire families of those who defy them. Reformers & law enforcement officials have been gunned down within hours of taking office. Headless corpses are dumped on streets to intimidate rivals & severed heads are rolled onto dancefloors as messages to would-be opponents. & the war is creeping northward. El Narco is the story of the ultraviolent criminal organizations that have turned huge areas of Mexico into a combat zone. It is a piercing portrait of a drug trade that turns ordinary men into mass murderers as well as a diagnosis of what drives the cartels & what gives them such power. Veteran Mexico correspondent Ioan Grillo traces the gangs from their origins as smugglers to their present status as criminal empires. The narco cartels are a threat to the Mexican government & their violence has now reached as far as North Carolina. El Narco is required reading for anyone concerned about one of the most important news stories of the decade.