DRUG DOLLARS, KILLING FIELDS AND THE NEW POLITICS OF LATIN AMERICA

2 creases down spine. 377pp; 16pp col photog plates.

On a ranch south of Texas, a man known as the Executioner dumps five hundred body parts in metal barrels; in Sao Paulo, a mysterious prisoner orders hit-men to gun down more than forty police officers and prison guards; in southern Mexico, a meth maker is venerated as a saint while enforcing Old Testament justice on his enemies.

A new wave of drug war atrocities is making world news. From the Red Commando of Brazil to the Knights Templar of Mexico, the global landscape has become blood-soaked at the hands of cartels, who battle not only the government but also each other for territory and power. Innocent bystanders are the victims of shoot-outs, children are enlisted as hit-men and massacres take place in broad daylight, but how did it get to this? And why do these violent cartels exist?

In El Narco veteran Mexico correspondent Iona Grillio presented a penetrating analysis of Mexican drug cartels. Now he offers a detailed account of the rise to power of the most notorious gangs from Mexico, Central America’s Northern Triangle, Jamaica and Brazil. Moving between militia-controlled ghettos and the offices of top policy-makers, Gangster Warlords insightfully examines just what it means to be a warlord in the cartels’ world of drugs and extreme violence.

A Superb Report From the Front Lines of Narco-Violence. Independant.