Narcoland

Narcoland:The Mexican Drug Lords and Their Godfathers

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Explosive, bestselling account of Mexico’s drug cartels and the government–business nexus that enables them

The product of five years of investigative reporting, the subject of intense national controversy, and the source of death threats that forced the National Human Rights Commission to assign two full-time bodyguards to Anabel Hernández, The Lords of el Narco has been a publishing and political sensation in Mexico.The definitive history and anatomy of the drug cartels and the “war on drugs” that has cost more than 50,000 lives in just five years, the book 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. Hernández reveals the complicity of Mexico’s government and business elite. At every turn, she names names—not just the narcos and their immediate accomplices, but also the politicians, policemen, functionaries, judges and entrepreneurs who have collaborated with them.
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 pharaonic spending on housekeeping at the presidential palace. All her previous books have also focused on corruption at the summit of power, under presidents Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón.

Reviews

  • Narcoland describes a disastrous 'war on drugs' that has led to more than 80,000 deaths in half a dozen years. This is a book that exposes how everything in Mexico is implicated in the 'narco system.'

    Roberto Saviano
  • Anabel Hernández, journalist and author, accuses the Mexican state of complicity with the cartels, and says the 'war on drugs' is a sham. She's had headless animals left at her door and her family have been threatened by gunmen.... Narcoland became, and remains, a bestseller: more than 100,000 copies sold in Mexico. The success is impossible to overstate, a staggering figure for a non-fiction book in a country with indices of income and literacy incomparable to the American-European book-buying market.

    Ed VulliamyObserver
  • The most remarkable feature of Anabel Hernández's brave and invaluable account of Mexico’s blood-drenched drug wars is that she survived long enough to write it... We would all be poorer without Hernández's determination to account for a civil conflict that has cost at least 60,000 lives. There could be no greater shame for Mexico should such a fearless and dedicated reporter come to any harm.

    Sunday Times