Download or read book Manhunters written by Steve Murphy and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2019-11-12 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the first time, legendary DEA operatives Steve Murphy and Javier F. Peña tell the true story of how they helped put an end to one of the world’s most infamous narco-terrorists in Manhunters: How We Took Down Pablo Escobar—the subject of the hit Netflix series, Narcos. Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar’s brutal Medellín Cartel was responsible for trafficking tons of cocaine to North America and Europe in the 1980s and ’90s. The nation became a warzone as his sicarios mercilessly murdered thousands of people—competitors, police, and civilians—to ensure he remained Colombia’s reigning kingpin. With billions in personal income, Pablo Escobar bought off politicians and lawmen, and became a hero to poorer communities by building houses and sports centers. He was nearly untouchable despite the efforts of the Colombian National Police to bring him to justice. But Escobar was also one of America’s most wanted, and the Drug Enforcement Administration was determined to see him pay for his crimes. Agents Steve Murphy and Javier F. Peña were assigned to the Bloque de Búsqueda, the joint Colombian-U.S. taskforce created to end Escobar’s reign of terror. For eighteen months, between July 1992 and December 1993, Steve and Javier lived and worked beside Colombian authorities, finding themselves in the crosshairs of sicarios targeting them for the $300,000 bounty Escobar placed on each of their heads. Undeterred, they risked the dangers, relentlessly and ruthlessly separating the drug lord from his resources and allies, and tearing apart his empire, leaving him underground and on the run from enemies on both sides of the law. Manhunters presents Steve and Javier’s history in law enforcement from their rigorous physical training and their early DEA assignments in Miami and Austin to the Escobar mission in Medellin, Colombia—living far from home and serving as frontline soldiers in the never ending war on drugs that continues to devastate America.

Download or read book Los narcos gringos written by J. Jesús Esquivel and published by GRIJALBO. This book was released on 2016-05-13 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: La investigación periodística que faltaba para completar el mapa del narcotráfico. J. Jesús Esquivel, autor de La D.E.A. en México, ha conseguido develar los entresijos del narcotráfico en Estados Unidos al sumergirse en la lectura de incontables expedientes judiciales, además de entrevistar a informantes clave. De San Francisco a Nueva York y de la línea divisoria hasta Chicago, Los narcos gringos describe con minucioso detalle los ingeniosos trucos de que se valen los brokers, los artífices del tráfico de estupefacientes, para llevar sus mercancías al interior de la Unión Americana y lavar el producto de su labor ilícita que hacen llegar a los cárteles mexicanos, el verdadero poder de la ecuación. A lo largo de la frontera entre México y Estados Unidos, una de las más extensas y complejas del mundo, tiene lugar uno de los comercios más perniciosos, aunque con implicaciones desiguales para una y otra nación: mientras de un lado se queda la sangre y la violencia, en el otro imperan la logística, los prejuicios raciales y la insaciable avidez de los consumidores; todo envuelto por un manto de corrupción. Relatos y retratos insólitos -algunos dignos de llegar a las pantallas cinematográficas, como el del inolvidable Don Henry Ford Jr.- desfilan por estas páginas para cuestionar mitos como la despenalización y el perdón presidencial a delincuentes, presentando en cambio un panorama demoledor sobre la adicción y el alcance de los intereses que buscan satisfacerla. Los narcos gringos no usan camisas de seda italiana o botas de pieles de animales exóticos, tampoco gruesas cadenas de oro y mucho menos relojes caros con incrustaciones de diamantes. El prototipo del narco gringo es una persona común y corriente que viste un pantalón de mezclilla, camisa o camiseta, que no usa anillos ni conduce autos caros.

Download or read book El Narcotraficante written by Mark Cameron Edberg and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2004-02-01 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the late 1970s, a new folk hero has risen to prominence in the U.S.-Mexico border region and beyond—the narcotrafficker. Celebrated in the narcocorrido, a current form of the traditional border song known as the corrido, narcotraffickers are often portrayed as larger-than-life "social bandits" who rise from poor or marginalized backgrounds to positions of power and wealth by operating outside the law and by living a life of excess, challenging authority (whether U.S. or Mexican), and flouting all risks, including death. This image, rooted in Mexican history, has been transformed and commodified by the music industry and by the drug trafficking industry itself into a potent and highly marketable product that has a broad appeal, particularly among those experiencing poverty and power disparities. At the same time, the transformation from folk hero to marketable product raises serious questions about characterizations of narcocorridos as "narratives of resistance." This multilayered ethnography takes a wide-ranging look at the persona of the narcotrafficker and how it has been shaped by Mexican border culture, socioeconomic and power disparities, and the transnational music industry. Mark Edberg begins by analyzing how the narcocorrido emerged from and relates to the traditional corrido and its folk hero. Then, drawing upon interviews and participant-observation with corrido listening audiences in the border zone, as well as musicians and industry producers of narcocorridos, he elucidates how the persona of the narcotrafficker has been created, commodified, and enacted, and why this character resonates so strongly with people who are excluded from traditional power structures. Finally, he takes a look at the concept of the cultural persona itself and its role as both cultural representation and model for practice.

Download or read book Dead Biker written by Jerry Langton and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2012-02-08 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sometimes, you make bad choices. Sometimes, bad choices are made for you. Ned "Crash" Aiken thought he had made a clean break. He had turned on his biker brothers in the Sons of Satan and entered the FBI's witness protection program, only to end up in a different kind of prison, one of mediocre work and cheap apartments. He then fell in with the Russian mob, learning their brutal code first-hand and fleeing their organization when the stakes got too high. Between the FBI, the Sons and the Russians, there are a lot of people who want to get their hands on the innocent-looking ex-drug trafficker. Now he's in Mexico, trying to go straight and stay alive. But Mexico isn't like the United States. It isn't even like it used to be in its heyday as a playground for wealthy gringos to vacation or college kids to party on the cheap. Ned is no stranger to drugs, violence and brutality, and what he sees in Mexico he can only try to ignore. But even while Ned tries his best to mind his own business, he is forced back into the underworld against his will. He finds himself at the mercy of a cartel and its notorious leader, and now the game is just about survival. But how can you play the game when there are no rules? From the author of the best-selling Gangland, a searing read about the Mexican cartels, Dead Biker is a disturbing story about immense power and indiscriminate brutality, and lives held hostage in more ways than one.

Download or read book Pablo Escobar and Colombian Narcoculture written by Aldona Bialowas Pobutsky and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2020-03-18 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the years since his death in 1993, Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar has become a globally recognized symbol of crime, wealth, power, and masculinity. In this long-overdue exploration of Escobar’s impact on popular culture, Aldona Bialowas Pobutsky shows how his legacy inspired the development of narcoculture—television, music, literature, and fashion representing the drug-trafficking lifestyle—in Colombia and around the world. Pobutsky looks at the ways the “Escobar brand” surfaces in bars, restaurants, and clothing lines; in Colombia’s tourist industry; and in telenovelas, documentaries, and narco memoirs about his life, which in turn have generated popular interest in other drug traffickers such as Griselda Blanco and Miami’s “cocaine cowboys.” Pobutsky illustrates how the Colombian state strives to erase his memory while Escobar’s notoriety only continues to increase in popular culture through the transnational media. She argues that the image of Escobar is inextricably linked to Colombia’s internal tensions in the areas of cocaine politics, gender relations, class divisions, and political corruption and that his “brand” perpetuates the country’s reputation as a center of organized crime, to the dismay of the Colombian people. This book is a fascinating study of how the world perceives Colombia and how Colombia’s citizens understand their nation’s past and present. A volume in the series Reframing Media, Technology, and Culture in Latin/o America, edited by Héctor Fernández L’Hoeste and Juan Carlos Rodríguez

Download or read book The Beast written by Oscar Martinez and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2014-06-03 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Economist and Financial Times “Best Book of the Year” “Harrowing” true stories from two years of immersion reporting on the migrant trail from Chiapas to Arizona—an “honorable successor to enduring works like George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier” (New York Times) One day a few years ago, 300 migrants were kidnapped between the remote desert towns of Altar, Mexico, and Sasabe, Arizona. A local priest got 120 released, many with broken ankles and other marks of abuse, but the rest vanished. Óscar Martínez, a young writer from El Salvador, was in Altar soon after the abduction, and his account of the migrant disappearances is only one of the harrowing stories he garnered from two years spent traveling up and down the migrant trail from Central America and across the US border. More than a quarter of a million Central Americans make this increasingly dangerous journey each year, and each year as many as 20,000 of them are kidnapped. Martínez writes in powerful, unforgettable prose about clinging to the tops of freight trains; finding respite, work and hardship in shelters and brothels; and riding shotgun with the border patrol. Illustrated with stunning full-color photographs, The Beast is the first book to shed light on the harsh new reality of the migrant trail in the age of the narcotraficantes.

Download or read book Mysteries of Love in Space 2019 1 written by Andrea Shea and published by DC Comics. This book was released on 2019-01-30 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sometimes love can make you feel like youÕre from another planet...but what if you actually were? Join Superman, The New Gods, Green Lantern, Starro, Hawkgirl and even the Teen TitansÕ new sensation Crush for eight tales of romance that will whisk you to the moon and back!

Download or read book Transnational Encounters written by Alejandro L. Madrid and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-09-29 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through the study of a large variety of musical practices from the U.S.-Mexico border, Transnational Encounters seeks to provide a new perspective on the complex character of this geographic area. By focusing not only on norteña, banda or conjunto musics (the most stereotypical musical traditions among Hispanics in the area) but also engaging a number of musical practices that have often been neglected in the study of this border's history and culture (indigenous musics, African American musical traditions, pop musics), the authors provide a glance into the diversity of ethnic groups that have encountered each other throughout the area's history. Against common misconceptions about the U.S.-Mexico border as a predominant Mexican area, this book argues that it is diversity and not homogeneity which characterizes it. From a wide variety of disciplinary and multidisciplinary enunciations, these essays explore the transnational connections that inform these musical cultures while keeping an eye on their powerful local significance, in an attempt to redefine notions like "border," "nation," "migration," "diaspora," etc. Looking at music and its performative power through the looking glass of cultural criticism allows this book to contribute to larger intellectual concerns and help redefine the field of U.S.-Mexico border studies beyond the North/South and American/Mexican dichotomies. Furthermore, the essays in this book problematize some of the widespread misconceptions about U.S.-Mexico border history and culture in the current debate about immigration.

Download or read book El Narco written by Ioan Grillo and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2012-01-16 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘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 - and sheer horror beggar the imagination of journalistic witnesses. Cartel gunmen have attacked schools and rehabilitation centers, and murdered the entire families of those who defy them. Reformers and law enforcement officials have been gunned down within hours of taking office. Headless corpses are dumped on streets to intimidate rivals, and severed heads are rolled onto dancefloors as messages to would-be opponents. And the war is creeping northward, towards the United States. 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 and 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 - and 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.

Download or read book Violence Coercion and State Making in Twentieth Century Mexico written by Wil G. Pansters and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2012-05-30 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mexico is currently undergoing a crisis of violence and insecurity that poses serious threats to democratic transition and rule of law. This is the first book to put these developments in the context of post-revolutionary state-making in Mexico and to show that violence in Mexico is not the result of state failure, but of state-making. While most accounts of politics and the state in recent decades have emphasized processes of transition, institutional conflict resolution, and neo-liberal reform, this volume lays out the increasingly important role of violence and coercion by a range of state and non-state armed actors. Moreover, by going beyond the immediate concerns of contemporary Mexico, this volume pushes us to rethink longterm processes of state-making and recast influential interpretations of the so-called golden years of PRI rule. Violence, Coercion, and State-Making in Twentieth-Century Mexico demonstrates that received wisdom has long prevented the concerted and systematic study of violence and coercion in state-making, not only during the last decades, but throughout the post-revolutionary period. The Mexican state was built much more on violence and coercion than has been acknowledged—until now.

Download or read book Hunting El Chapo written by Andrew Hogan and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The DEA agent who caught El Chapo recounts the high-stakes, seven-year manhunt in this “cinematic . . . captivating first-person account” (USA Today). Once a smalltown Kansas deputy sheriff, Andrew Hogan landed a job with the Drug Enforcement Administration, never imagining that he would eventually be put on the trail of Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera a.k.a. El Chapo: the leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel and Public Enemy Number One in the United States. Six years later, Hogan links up with agents from Homeland Security Investigations to infiltrate Chapo’s intricate and sophisticated underworld network . . . But who can they trust with their intel? Will the details of their top secret operation leak back to Chapo before the hunt even begins? Hunting El Chapo follows Special Agent Hogan from the investigation’s beginnings to leading a white-knuckle manhunt through the cartel’s stronghold of Sinaloa. Andrew Hogan and Douglas Century’s cinematic crime story follows every beat of the relentless search, taking the reader behind the scenes on one of the most dangerous counter-narcotics operations in the history of the United States and Mexico.

Download or read book Narcoland written by Anabel Hernández and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2013-09-10 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This “investigative magnum opus” offers a jaw-dropping history of Mexican drug cartels as it transports readers to the frontlines of the ‘war on drugs’ in Latin America (Los Angeles Times). “A riveting story . . . [from] an incredibly brave journalist.” —NPR The “war on drugs” has so far cost more than 60,000 lives. Hernández explains in riveting detail how Mexico became a base for the mega-cartels of Latin America and one of the most violent places on the planet. At every turn, Hernández names not just the narcos, but also the politicians, functionaries, judges, and entrepreneurs who have collaborated with them. In doing so, she reveals the mind-boggling depth of corruption in Mexico’s government and business elite. Hernández became a journalist after her father was kidnapped and killed and the police refused to investigate without a bribe. She gained national prominence in 2001 with her exposure of excess and misconduct at the presidential palace, and previous books have focused on criminality at the summit of power, under presidents Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón. The product of 5 years’ investigative reporting—and the subject of intense national controversy—Narcoland is a publishing and political sensation in Mexico.

Download or read book El Chapo written by Noah Hurowitz and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-10-31 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A stunning investigation of the life and legend of Mexican kingpin Joaquín Archivaldo “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, building on Noah Hurowitz’s revelatory coverage for Rolling Stone of El Chapo’s federal drug-trafficking trial. This is the true story of how El Chapo built the world’s wealthiest and most powerful drug-trafficking operation, based on months’ worth of trial testimony and dozens of interviews with cartel gunmen, Mexican journalists and political figures, Chapo’s family members, and the DEA agents who brought him down. Over the course of three decades, El Chapo was responsible for smuggling hundreds of tons of cocaine, marijuana, heroin, meth, and fentanyl around the world, becoming in the process the most celebrated and reviled drug lord since Pablo Escobar. El Chapo waged ruthless wars against his rivals and former allies, plunging vast areas of Mexico into unprecedented levels of violence, even as many in his home state of Sinaloa continued to view him as a hero. This unputdownable book, written by a great new talent, brings El Chapo’s exploits into a focus that previous profiles have failed to capture. Hurowitz digs in deep beyond the legends and delves into El Chapo’s life and legacy—not just the hunt for him, revealing some of the most dramatic and often horrifying moments of his notorious career, including the infamous prison escapes, brutal murders, multi-million-dollar government payoffs, and the paranoia and narcissism that led to his downfall. From the evolution of organized crime in Mexico to the militarization of the drug war to the devastation wrought on both sides of the border by the introduction of synthetic opioids like fentanyl, this book is a gripping and comprehensive work of investigative, on-the-ground reporting.

Download or read book The Economics of Violence written by Gary M. Shiffman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-30 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do we understand illicit violence? Can we prevent it? Building on behavioral science and economics, this book begins with the idea that humans are more predictable than we like to believe, and this ability to model human behavior applies equally well to leaders of violent and coercive organizations as it does to everyday people. Humans ultimately seek survival for themselves and their communities in a world of competition. While the dynamics of 'us vs. them' are divisive, they also help us to survive. Access to increasingly larger markets, facilitated through digital communications and social media, creates more transnational opportunities for deception, coercion, and violence. If the economist's perspective helps to explain violence, then it must also facilitate insights into promoting peace and security. If we can approach violence as behavioral scientists, then we can also better structure our institutions to create policies that make the world a more secure place, for us and for future generations.

Download or read book The Only Road written by Alexandra Diaz and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-10-04 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PURA BELPRÉ HONOR BOOK ALA NOTABLE BOOK “An important, must-have addition to the growing body of literature with immigrant themes.” —School Library Journal (starred review) Twelve-year-old Jaime makes the treacherous and life-changing journey from his home in Guatemala to live with his older brother in the United States in this “powerful and timely” (Booklist, starred review) middle grade novel. Jaime is sitting on his bed drawing when he hears a scream. Instantly, he knows: Miguel, his cousin and best friend, is dead. Everyone in Jaime’s small town in Guatemala knows someone who has been killed by the Alphas, a powerful gang that’s known for violence and drug trafficking. Anyone who refuses to work for them is hurt or killed—like Miguel. With Miguel gone, Jaime fears that he is next. There’s only one choice: accompanied by his cousin Ángela, Jaime must flee his home to live with his older brother in New Mexico. Inspired by true events, The Only Road is an individual story of a boy who feels that leaving his home and risking everything is his only chance for a better life. The story is “told with heartbreaking honesty,” Booklist raved, and “will bring readers face to face with the harsh realities immigrants go through in the hope of finding a better, safer life, and it will likely cause them to reflect on what it means to be human.”

Download or read book The Fire Next Door written by Ted Galen Carpenter and published by Cato Institute. This book was released on 2012-10-09 with total page 55 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the Mexican government initiated a military offensive against its country’s powerful drug cartels in December 2006, some 50,000 people have perished and the drugs continue to flow. In The Fire Next Door, Ted Galen Carpenter boldly conveys the growing horror overtaking Mexico and makes the case that the only effective strategy for the United States is to abandon its failed drug prohibition policy, thus depriving drug cartels of financial resources.

Download or read book A Massacre in Mexico written by Anabel Hernandez and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2018-10-16 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On September 26, 2014, 43 male students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College went missing in Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico. On route to a protest, local police intercepted the students and a confrontation ensued. By the morning, they had disappeared without a trace. Hernández reconstructs almost minute-by-minute the events of those nights in late September 2014, giving us what is surely the most complete picture available: her sources are unparalleled, since she has secured access to internal government documents that have not been made public, and to video surveillance footage the government has tried to hide and destroy. Hernández demolishes the Mexican state’s official version, which the Peña Nieto government cynically dubbed the “historic truth”. As her research shows, state officials at all levels, from police and prosecutors to the upper echelons of the PRI administration, conspired to put together a fake case, concealing or manipulating evidence, and arresting and torturing dozens of “suspects” who then obliged with full “confessions” that matched the official lie. By following the role of the various Mexican state agencies through the events in such remarkable detail, Massacre in Mexico shows with exacting precision who is responsible for which component of this monumental crime.