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.
“An investigative magnum opus.”
—Los Angeles Times “A riveting story ... an incredibly brave journalist.”
—NPR Morning Edition “This is a book that you read twenty-five pages at a time and then take a break from, shaking your head in disbelief that everything it contains could really have occurred. That it did only makes Hernández’s undertaking all the more necessary.”
—Barnes & Noble Review“Rigorous, disturbing narrative of how drug cartels infiltrated Mexican society’s highest levels ... Essential reading for a serious understanding of how the war on drugs is destroying the social fabric of South American nations.”
—Kirkus Reviews “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.”
—Sunday Times “Braving the wrath of drug traffickers and government officials alike … Hernández has exposed the corruption at the heart of the drug war that has killed over 80,000 of her compatriots since 2006.”
—Nation “Anabel Hernández 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 nonfiction book in a country with indices of income and literacy incomparable to the American–European book-buying market.”
—Ed Vulliamy, Observer“Anabel Hernández exposes the most murderous drug organization in Mexico, the Mexican government. Of course, this level of corruption is only possible thanks to the moral and financial support of the leaders in Washington. Here’s the story the media never has the time to tell you.”
—Charles Bowden author of Murder City: Ciudad Juárez and the Global Economy’s New Killing Fields “Jaw-dropping reading.”
—Independent “While many Mexican politicians and officials merely pretend to fight the drugs producers, Anabel Hernández has taken a genuine stand in favour of the rule of law and decency in her society. [
Narcoland] is in itself an important statement. She deserves our respect and admiration for making it.”
—Spectator“A searing indictment of a war on drugs Hernández believes was a sham from the start.”
—Financial TimesFrom the Hardcover edition.
