Contrabando: Confessions Of A Drug-smuggling Texas Cowboy - Rilegato

Ford, Don Henry, Jr.

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0938317857 ISBN 13: 9780938317852

Casa editrice: Cinco Puntos Pr, 2005

Riassunto

The growing, processing, transporting and selling of illegal drugs is the world's second largest industry behind the manufacture and sale of arms. As a young man, Don Henry Ford, Jr. found his niche in this business as a smuggler, transporting marijuana across the Rio Grande.
Contrabando tells the story of how and why he got into the business. Ford writes about, among others, his wild friend the blonde-haried, blue-eyed Arnold Kersh, a hell-raising pusher in the Texas Panhandle, who went through his short life at a "high-speed wobble:" and Dick Graham, a bankrupt farmer who was so angry at the conspiracies of the government and the World Bank that he started "repossessing" farm equipment and selling drugs to get even.
But the crucial part of Contrabando tells about Ford's brief time in the little town of Piedritas 75 miles south of the U.S./Mexico Border. Piedritas was Ford's home for a year when he escaped a U.S. prison, and it was the home of Ford's good friend Oscar Cabello, a mid-level Mexican narcotraficante.
Oddly enough, the reader - besides learning about the dangerous business of smuggling drugs across the Rio Grande - will learn how to cook delicious brisket Mexican-style and the secrets of making home-made tortillas and refried beans: how to butcher and barbecue a goat; and how to plant and grow a bumper crop of marijuana.

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Recensione:

"Don Henry is a warrior; and he's the real deal. He's a wonderful writer; and he carries some secrets in his back pocket some people wish he wouldn't bring out. Bring it, Mr. Ford." —Luis Alberto Urrea

"Don Ford snaps out, 'I thought [the drug smuggling] was a way to break the chains. I didn't want to shoot or kill anyone or have a violent overthrow of the government. I just wanted to steal a little wealth.' " —Charles Bowden

"[Ford] sees that continuing war as a farce, a squandering of tax dollars and human lives. That, Ford says, is why he’s speaking out about his experiences...The book is an unflinching document of high times and high terror in the dope trade, of getting caught just after Congress passed the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 the opening shot in the war on drugs but before that act was implemented." —Austin-American Statesman

"The really remarkable thing about Ford and his book isn’t so much the experiences he’s had...but rather the humanity and philosophical distance he maintains while having them. His sympathy for the plight of the working poor and disenfranchised, regardless of class, color, or country; his distaste for the indifference of the rich and the laws that favor them; his ability to step back and view the larger universe of the war on drugs, and his role in it, through the lens of a class-conscious, homegrown philosophy: They all mark him as a decent man." —The Austin Chronicle

"Don Henry Ford, author of Contrabando: Confessions of a Drug-Smuggling Texas Cowboy, said Mexico's drug economy has multiplied since the 1980s, when he smuggled marijuana. 'The money is just too big now,' he said." —Dallas Morning News

"Ford persevered for a number of reasons. 'I knew most of the people involved would not like what I had to say. The thought occurred that I might endanger myself and others. But I knew all of us had been damaged from our involvement in this business and that others are now in similar situations and must know the reality of this business,' he wrote. Ford thinks his story is worth telling in light of the ever-increasing war on drugs." —The Monitor

"Don Henry Ford, Jr. shows us first-hand what it was like smuggling dope across the Rio Grande. Lucky he's not dead. Reading this book will make you so high, you'll need a stepladder to scratch your ass." —Kinky Friedman

"Macho adventures aside, Ford also describes a life of double-crosses and dead friends, of battered whores and dirty cops, of ruined marriages and lost kids...He writes with remorse, loss and sadness...Contrabando is the real thing, a drug book by a smuggler who lived to tell the tale." —San Antonio Express-News

"Ford, 48, retraces his life as a marijuana smuggler in the Big Bend region in Contrabando: Confessions of a Drug-Smuggling Texas Cowboy. Ford describes Contrabando as a story about victims and survivors in the multibillion-dollar illicit drug trade, a story about ordinary people along the border who often get squeezed into smuggling or dealing drugs in poor towns like Balmorhea, Texas." —El Paso Times

"Contrabando is not written in the erudite prose of a commercial-media slickster who observes life from a perch. But it is a gritty work of nonfiction drawn from the gut of a cowboy who has lived his story."—Narco News

"All in all, I’m glad I know his story, since if I didn’t get it for Ford, from the voice on the edge, I-we- on the inside wouldn’t get it all, and this story 'about a world gone mad' is one we need to know." —Outlander's Voice

L'autore:

Don Henry Ford, Jr. grew up in West Texas on the ranches of his father and grandfather. His dream was to become a rancher and farmer, but as a young man, he became a drug smuggler and was eventually busted and sent to prison. He was incarcerated for 10 years. He now is a writer and a rancher, raising race horses in Seguin, Texas. Infamous journalist (GQ, Esquire, Harper's, etc) and non-fiction author of Down by the River: Drugs, Money, Family and Murder (Simon & Schuster); Juarez: A Laboratory of the Future (Aperture); Blues for Cannibals: Notes from the Underground (North Point Press); etc. Lives in Tucson, AZ.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Cinco Puntos Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0938317857
• ISBN 13: 9780938317852
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 237