Summary of Ioan Grillo's El Narco

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 I spoke to Gonzalo in a prison cell he shares with eight others on a sunny Tuesday morning in Ciudad Juárez. He had spent seventeen years working as a soldier, kidnapper, and murderer for Mexican drug gangs. In that time, he took the lives of many, many more people than he can count.
#2 I visited a jail block mass before I sat down with Gonzalo. The pastor, a convicted drug trafficker, mixed stories of ancient Jerusalem with his hard-core street experiences, using slang and addressing the flock as the homeys from the barrio.
#3 The path from policeman to villain is not uncommon in Mexico. Major drug lords, such as the 1980s Boss of Bosses Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, began as officers of the law.
#4 The Mexican Drug War is a perfect example of how criminal insurgency can spread across the world. The conflict can be everywhere and nowhere, with millions of tourists sunning themselves on Cancún’s Caribbean beaches oblivious that anything is amiss.

Sujets

• Jérusalem
• Organized Crime
• True Crime

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 27 avril 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669393733
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Ioan Grillo's El Narco
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

I spoke to Gonzalo in a prison cell he shares with eight others on a sunny Tuesday morning in Ciudad Juárez. He had spent seventeen years working as a soldier, kidnapper, and murderer for Mexican drug gangs. In that time, he took the lives of many, many more people than he can count.

#2

I visited a jail block mass before I sat down with Gonzalo. The pastor, a convicted drug trafficker, mixed stories of ancient Jerusalem with his hard-core street experiences, using slang and addressing the flock as the homeys from the barrio.

#3

The path from policeman to villain is not uncommon in Mexico. Major drug lords, such as the 1980s Boss of Bosses Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, began as officers of the law.

#4

The Mexican Drug War is a perfect example of how criminal insurgency can spread across the world. The conflict can be everywhere and nowhere, with millions of tourists sunning themselves on Cancún’s Caribbean beaches oblivious that anything is amiss.

#5

The Mexican Drug War is a conflict between the government and the cartels, but who are these cartels, and how did they get that way. The traffickers are mysterious figures who make $30 billion smuggling cocaine, marijuana, heroin, and crystal meth into the United States every year.

#6

El Narco has entrenched itself in these communities over a century. It is a whole way of life for a segment of society. The drug lords are iconic heroes, celebrated by dwellers of Mexico’s cinder-block barrios as rebels who have the guts to beat back the army and the DEA.

#7

I traveled to Mexico in 2000, the day before Vicente Fox was sworn in as president, ending seventy-one years of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party. The country was optimistic and celebrating, but the same system that promised hope was weak in controlling the most powerful mafias on the continent.

#8

The Mexican Drug War, which took place during Calderón’s presidency, claimed thirty-four thousand lives in four years. This is a low-intensity conflict compared to other countries, but it is a serious threat to the Mexican state nonetheless.

#9

I spent years interviewing narcos and their victims, and I tried to understand how the Mexican Drug War began and where it was headed.

#10

The last on the list, Julian Aristides Gonzalez, gave me an interview in his office in the sweaty Honduran capital. The square-jawed officer chatted about the growth of Mexican drug gangs in Central America and the Colombians who provide them with narcotics.
Insights from Chapter 2

#1

The pink poppy is not a whole opium crop, but just a few plants grown by a woman outside her village shop. These flowers are beautiful, but they also grow in the mountains where Mexico’s earliest drug traffickers grew opium more than a century ago.

#2

The Sierra Madre Occidental stretches 932 miles from the U. S. border at Arizona deep into Mexico. It is a big and wild enough terrain to hide an entire army, as Pancho Villa proved when he fled U. forces after raiding Columbus, New Mexico, during the Mexican Revolution.

#3

Sinaloa has similarities to other criminal hot spots. It is a small state that can be quickly moved into, and has four hundred miles of Pacific coastline where contraband has been smuggled in and out for centuries.

#4

Mexico suffered years of civil strife after the Spanish Crown was banished, allowing bandits to flourish in Sinaloa and elsewhere. The Mexican-American War in 1848 gave the United States control of a huge chunk of territory that would help it become a superpower.

#5

The Sinaloan gummers, who harvest the poppies and release the drug, are known as gomeros in Spanish. The poppy’s medicine is released when you scrape the buds with a knife, and it has incredible effects. But it also releases its infamous side effect: the consumer feels a euphoric numbness.

#6

The magical properties of opium are due to its effects on the brain’s thalamus, which registers pain. When people eat or smoke opium, it stimulates groups of molecules called receptors in the central nervous system, and they feel euphoria.

#7

The Chinese first saw the sour side of the poppy in the eighteenth century, when they began to see addiction among their laborers. The Chinese brought opium poppies, gum, and seeds on their long journey over the Pacific. The arid Sierra Madre provided an ideal climate for the Asian poppies to flourish.

#8

The drug war is a late-blooming policy that has always been plagued by discord and misinformation. While some Americans use drugs in dark dens, many get hooked from doctors’ prescriptions.

#9

The Chinese had grown into a community that spread from Sinaloa up to cities on Mexico’s northwest border. They had built a network that could harvest the poppies, turn them into gum, and sell the opium to Chinese dealers on the U. S. side.

#10

The Mexican-American border was ideal for trafficking, as it was long and stretchable. It also had many small Mexican towns that were easy to cross. The first American probe into Mexican traffickers was opened in 1916 when a special agent in charge of customs at Los Angeles sent a report to Washington with dynamite implications.

#11

The opium trade was a low priority for American law enforcement in the 1920s, as police were more concerned with alcohol. Mexican border cities were popular for their brothels and table-dance clubs, and entrepreneurs smuggled liquor to America’s speakeasies.

#12

As the drug trade expanded, Mexican villains began to take over the Chinese opium business. This was fueled by racial tensions against the Chinese, who were seen as immoral and filthy.

#13

As the drug trade expanded in Mexico, so did the corruption. La Nacha, a woman from Durango, is reported to have been the first famous female mobster in Mexico. She was a talented businesswoman who sold heroin out of her home in Juarez.

#14

The Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, was founded in 1929 by General Plutarco Elias Calles. It was a truly Mexican organization, and it aimed to embody the nation. It relied on corruption to keep its system running smoothly.

#15

The Sinaloan opium trade certainly bloomed in the 1950s, as Sinaloans became known for production of the mud. Even their baseball team was named the Gummers.