El Narco (49 page)

Terror. A cartel victim dumped in a Sinaloan canal. (Fernando Brito)

Peace in the future? Schoolgirls in Culiacán march against violence. They carry photos of innocent victims. (Fernando Brito)

Notes

Chapter 1: Ghosts

1
.
Comparison of FBI homicide statistics with Mexico City’s PGJDF homicide statistics.

2
.
Report entitled
Joint Operating Environment 2008
by the Virginia-based United States Joint Forces Command.

3
.
The phrase
smoke and mirrors
to describe the drug war was most famously used in the classic by Dan Baum,
Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure
(New York: Little, Brown, 1996).

4
.
Database released in December 2010 by Mexico’s Public Safety Department (Secretaria de Seguridad Publica) on deaths connected to organized crime.

5
.
Mexico’s 2010 census counted 112,332,757 residents.

6
.
Count of police deaths was first given by Public Safety Secretary Genaro García Luna on August 7, 2010, and updated in December 2010.

7
.
The International Monetary Fund in 2010 counted Mexico’s GDP at $1.004 trillion, the fourteenth-biggest economy in the world.

8
.
Forbes list of the world’s billionaires (2010).

Chapter 2: Poppies

1
.
The crossroads described is in the village of Santiago de los Cabelleros, municipality Badiraguato, Sinaloa.

2
.
The family home of Joaquin Guzmán is in the village of La Tuna, municipality Badiraguato, Sinaloa.

3
.
My Sinaloan history was helped by the work of Sergio Ortega,
Breve Historia de Sinaloa
(Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1999).

4
.
The Treaty of Guadalupe was signed on February 2, 1848, in Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexico. The new territory boundaries are described in Article 5, beginning, “The boundary line between the two Republics shall commence in the Gulf of Mexico, three leagues from land …”

5
.
The first detailed study on opium receptors was published in March 1973 by Candace Pert and Solomon H. Snyder.

6
.
David Stuart,
Dangerous Garden: The Quest for Plants to Change Our Lives
(London: Frances Lincoln Limited, 2004), 82.

7
.
Lo-shu Fu,
A Documentary Chronicle of Sino-Western Relations
(Tucson: Association for Asian Studies by the University of Arizona Press, 1966), 1:380.

8
.
The reference was in the government study
Geografía y Estadistica de la Republica Mexicana
, cited by Luis Astorga,
El Siglo de Las Drogas: El narcotráfico, del Porfiriato al nuevo milenio
(Mexico City: Plaza & Janés, 2005), 18.

9
.
The photograph described is of an opium den in Malinta Street, Manila, Philippines, and can be found in the Library of Congress, Washington, DC, Prints and Photographs, LC-USZ62-103376.

10
.
Edward Marshall, “Uncle Sam Is the Worst Drug Fiend in the World,”
New York Times
, March 12, 1911.

11
.
Edward Huntington Williams, “Negro Cocaine ‘Fiends’ New Southern Menace,”
New York Times
, February 8, 1914.

12
.
Document was sent by F. E. Johnson, Agent in Charge, September 16, 1916, cited by Luis Astorga,
Drogas sin Fronteras: Los Expedientes de una guerra permanente
(Mexico City: Grijalbo, 2003), 17.

13
.
Report filed by G. S. Quate, Deputy Collector of Department of Treasury, January 15, 1918, cited by Astorga,
Drogas sin Fronteras
, 20.

14
.
“Customs Agents in Gun Battle With Runners,”
El Paso Times
, June 16, 1924.

15
.
Manuel Lazcano,
Vida en la Vida Sinalense
, ed. Nery Cordova (Culiacán, Mexico: self-published, 1992), 38–39.

16
.
Ibid., 40.

17
.
“Todavia No Han Logrado Aprehender a ‘La Nacha,’”
El Continental
, August 22, 1933.

18
.
Vargas Llosa said the oft-quoted phrase in 1990 during a debate with Mexican writer Octavio Paz organized by
Vuelta
magazine.

19
.
Journalist Alan Riding writes a chapter on this metaphor in his classic work
Distant Neighbors: A Portrait of the Mexicans
(New York: Knopf, 1985).

20
.
Lazcano,
Vida
, 207.

21
.
Ibid., 202.

22
.
The letter from Anslinger to journalist Howard Lewis is cited in Astorga,
Drogas sin Fronteras
, 138–39.

23
.
Lazcano,
Vida
, 207.

Chapter 3: Hippies

1
.
The marijuana smoking of Diego Rivera and other Mexican artists is described in the work of muralist David Alfaro Siquieros,
Me llamaban el Cornelazo
(Mexico City: Biografias Gandesa, 1977).

2
.
Details of the Coronado Company case can be found in the court document,
The United States vs. Donald Eddie Moody
, 778 F.2d 1380, September 4, 1985.

3
.
Elaine Shannon,
Desperadoes: Latin Drug Lords, U.S. Lawmen and the War American Can’t Win
(New York: Viking, 1988), 33.

4
.
Oval Office Tape, May 13, 1971, between 10:32 A.M. and 12:20 P.M.

5
.
G. Gordon Liddy,
Will: The Autobiography of G. Gordon Liddy
(New York: St Martin’s Press, 1980), 134.

6
.
Richard Nixon speech, September 18, 1972.

7
.
Richard Nixon, Executive Order 11727—Drug Law Enforcement, July 6, 1973.

8
.
One of the first comprehensive reports of the Sicilia Falcon case was in a German article, “Die gefährlichen Geschäfte des Alberto Sicilia,”
Der Spiegel,
May 9, 1977). The case is also elaborated in detail through the work of James Mills,
Underground Empire
(New York: Dell Publishing Company, 1985).

9
.
The jailhouse book of Sicilia Falcon was entitled
El Túnel de Lecumberri
(Mexico City: Compañia General de Ediciones, circa 1977).

10
.
José Egozi is registered in Cuban Information Archives as a participant in the Bay of Pigs invasion. His code number was R-537. R-710.

11
.
Luis Astorga,
El Siglo de las Drogas
(Mexico City: Plaza & Janés, 2005), 115.

12
.
Shannon,
Desperadoes
, 63.

13
.
Fabio Castillo,
Los Jinetes de la Cocaina
(Bogotá: Editorial Documentos Periodisticos, 1987), 18–21.

14
.
CIA Declassified Docs,
Mexico: Increases in Military Antinarcotics Units
(declassified October 1997).

15
.
A vivid account of the plaza system in the 1970s is offered in Terrence Poppa,
Drug Lord: The Life and Death of a Mexican Kingpin
(New York: Pharos Books, 1990).

Chapter 4: Cartels

1
.
The phrase
banana republic
was coined in the 1904 book
Cabbages and Kings
by American writer O. Henry.

2
.
The early cocaine trade is well documented by the utmost authority on the issue, Paul Gootenberg, in
Andean Cocaine: The Making of a Global Drug
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003).

3
.
Interview of George Jung from prison with PBS
Frontline
(2000).

4
.
Pablo Escobar dressed up as Pancho Villa in an iconic photo, in which he wears a Mexican sombrero and ammunition belts. The photo is reprinted in James Mollison,
The Memory of Pablo Escobar
(New York: Chris Boot, 2009).

5
.
Documents from U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals,
U.S.A. vs. Matta Ballesteros
, No. 91-50336.

6
.
Billy Corben,
Cocaine Cowboys
(Miami: Rakontur, 2006).

7
.
Michael Demarest, “Cocaine: Middle Class High,”
Time
, July 6, 1981.

8
.
Official homicide statistics from Miami-Dade Police Department.

9
.
Photos of Félix Gallardo were published by his son on the Web site
www.miguelfelixgallardo.com
until the site was supended.

10
.
The infamous marijuana farm was on the El Bufalo ranch, near Jiménez and Camargo, Chihuahua, raided in November 1984.

11
.
Documents from U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals,
U.S.A. vs. Matta Ballesteros
, 91-50165 (argued and submitted January 4, 1993).

12
.
The prison diary was passed by Félix Gallardo to his son and published in Diego Osorno,
El Cartel de Sinaloa
(Mexico City: Grijalbo, 2009), 207–57.

13
.
The seizure was in Yucca, Arizona, on November 27, 1984.

14
.
U.S.A. vs. Matta Ballesteros
, No. 91-50336.

15
.
This incident is retold in Elaine Shannon,
Desperadoes
(New York: Viking, 1988), 213–14.

16
.
The Ronald Reagan speech was broadcast live on September 14, 1986.

17
.
The full version of the
Dark Alliance
series, along with dozens of files of audio and documentary evidence, has been rehosted on the Web site
www.narconews.com/darkalliance/drugs/start.htm.

18
.
The Senate Committee Report on Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy
is also known as the Kerry Report, as Senator John F. Kerry chaired the committee that prepared it.

19
.
CIA Report on Cocaine and the Contras
, paragraph 35. The report was released in 1998, during the attempted impeachment of Bill Clinton, burying the news that some basic truths of
Dark Alliance
were conceded.

20
.
The violence was reported in detail in B. Esteruelas, “Cinco muertos en una manifestación frente a la embajada norteamericana en Honduras,”
El Pais
, February 23, 1988.

Chapter 5: Tycoons

1
.
All the ballad lyrics quoted throughout the book are my own translations. If I don’t do the poetry justice—sorry!

2
.
Jesús Blancornelas, “Death of a Journalist,”
El Andar
(Fall 1999).

3
.
Official figures from the Office of the United States Trade Representative.

4
.
Diego Osorno,
El Cartel de Sinaloa
(Mexico City: Grijalbo, 2009), 184–85.

5
.
Jesús Blancornelas,
El Cartel
:
Los Arellano Félix, la mafia mas poderosa en la historia de America Latina
(Mexico City: Plaza & Janés, 2002), 46.

6
.
Ibid., 48.

7
.
Report entitled
Amado Carrillo-Fuentes
, from Operational Intelligence Unit of El Paso Intelligence Center, marked “DEA Sensitive.”