Narcoland: A review on drug trafficking in Mexico and the history of how it began.

Through NetGalley and Verso Books, I was given the opportunity to read and review an advanced copy of Narcoland, which will be published on September 10, 2013. This book was written by Anabel Hernandez, an investigative journalist, that currently resides in Mexico.The original edition was released in 2010, and the translated version (with a few updates) is what will be released in 2013 in the states.

I was expecting this book to be more along the lines of what is currently going on in Mexico and the current cartels that are controlling the drug trafficking. What Ms. Hernandez delivers is that and much more than expected. The book was a little hard to get into because there were so many individuals that were involved in the trafficking that it took a couple chapters to begin to remember which one was which. Once I did, the pieces began to fit in together quite well. Hernandez does an incredible job of giving a very thorough background into how drug trafficking began and how it has exploded into the problem that it is right now.

Hernandez has does an incredible job with quoting her sources and specifying which ones asked not to be credited. Unfortunately she has written in the updated version that many of those sources have been murdered and/or are missing. She lists documents and their numbers in which they were filed with the different agencies in the government. She names all of the individuals who were involved; whether they were businessmen, government officials, the police, the American government, and even the President of Mexico, she does not hold back. She speaks regarding all of the assassinations and why many of them occurred. She speaks of the problems between the cartels and that much of the murder is due to the fighting of the different territories in Mexico. She explains very clearly how the drugs have been able to be trafficked into the United States for so many years, a lot of it to do with the American government assisting them in many cases, as well as an incredible amount of paying off government officials to allow traffickers to cross.

I would highly recommend this book to anybody that is looking to gain a better knowledge of the problems with drug trafficking in Mexico and what appears to be a problem with no solution in the near future. I definitely enjoyed learning more of how all of this began and how in the last 20 years it has turned into the problem that it has. It was definitely a book that I enjoyed reading and would absolutely read it again (especially now having an understanding of who is who in that field).