Gangland: The Rise of the Mexican Drug Cartels from El Paso to Vancouver - Brossura

Langton, Jerry

Brossura

ISBN 10: 1118008057 ISBN 13: 9781118008058

Casa editrice: Harpercollins Canada, 2011

Riassunto

A frightening look at Mexico's new power elite—the Mexican drug cartels

The members of Mexico's drug cartels are among the criminal underworld's most ambitious and ruthless entrepreneurs. Supplanting the once dominant Colombian cartels, the Mexican drug cartels are now the major distributor of heroin and cocaine to the U.S. and Canada. Not only have their drugs crossed north of the border, so have the cartels (in 2009, 230 active Mexican drug cartels have been reported in U.S. cities). In Gangland, bestselling author Jerry Langton details their frightening stranglehold on the economy and daily life of Mexico today—and what it portends for the future of Mexico and its neighbours.

Offering a firsthand look from members of law enforcement, politicians, journalists, and people involved in the drug trade in Mexico and Canada, Gangland sheds a harsh light on the multibillion dollar industry that is the drug trade, the territorial wars, and the on-the-street reality for the United States, with the importation of narco-terrorists. With the unstinting realism and keen analysis that have made him an internationally respected journalist, Langton offers the bleak prospects of what a collapsed government in Mexico might lead to—a new Mexican warlord state not unlike Somalia.

• Details the emergence of the Mexican drug cartels—the transformation of middlemen who ferried drugs from Bolivia and Colombia to the U.S. and Canada into self-styled entrepreneurs
• Describes how the growth of the cartels led to violent territorial wars—with Felipe Calderon declaring war on the cartels in 2006
• Offers a frightening look at how much the incursion of the drug cartels has affected American life and business—Wachovia and Bank of America have been found guilty of laundering cartel profits

An unflinching examination of the world's most lucrative—and deadliest—drug cartel, Gangland lets readers explore, with brutal clarity, the newest front on America's latest war.

Su questo libro

L'autore:

Jerry Langton is a journalist and the author of several books, including the national bestsellers Fallen Angel: The Unlikely Rise of Walter Stadnick in the Canadian Hells Angels and Biker: Inside the Nefarious World of an Outlaw Motorcycle Gang. Over the past two decades, Langton's work has appeared in The Toronto Star; The Globe & Mail; National Post; Maclean's; The Daily News of New York City; The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J.; American Banker and dozens of other publications.

Dalla quarta di copertina:

A STARTLING LOOK AT MEXICO'S NEW POWER ELITE—THE MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS

Mexico's war against narcotics and the criminal syndicates that traffic in them not only looks bad on the surface, but compared to Colombia in the '80s and '90s, the situation is even more desperate and terrifying. Since mirroring the policies that Nixon and successive US presidents pioneered, and enacting its own War on Drugs, Mexico's rates of rape, torture, murder and assassination have skyrocketed, as has the business of illegal narcotics. Juárez, what used to be a rollicking party town for Americans and Mexicans alike, now has a murder rate that exceeds both Baghdad and Kandahar—combined.

Gangland is a first-hand examination of the rise of the Mexican drug cartels, and traces their origins, evolution, and how they've grown in lock-step with the failed narcotics policies of North America. Warring amongst themselves as much as with the authorities, the cartels have earned their reputation for violence and intimidation with daylight gun battles, corpses hung from overpasses and coolers full of severed heads. Their power has escalated thanks to a police force that's often seen to be corrupt or incompetent, a government barely in control of itself, and military personnel serving within their own borders who must cover their faces to keep their families safe from the long, ultraviolent arm of the cartels. Stuck in the center of this maelstrom are the vast majority of Mexican citizens seeking only peace, prosperity and security, and finding little to none in their homeland.

Two questions dominate Mexico's drug war: Who's in charge, the government or the cartels? And how deeply have the cartels infiltrated the United States and Canada? One thing is clear: the War on Drugs has failed, and soon, so may Mexico.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Harpercollins Canada
• Data di pubblicazione: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1118008057
• ISBN 13: 9781118008058
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero edizione: 1
• Numero di pagine: 276