Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords and Their Godfathers Read Free

distribution, and sale of every class of drug.
    This book is the result of five grueling years of research. Over this time I gradually became immersed in a shadowy world full of traps, lies, betrayals, and contradictions. The data I present is backed up by numerous legal documents, and the testimony of many who witnessed the events first-hand. I met people involved in the Mexican drug cartels. I spoke to police and army officers, US government officials, professional hit men, and priests. I interviewed figures who know the drug trade inside out, and have even been accused of protecting it, as happened with General Jorge Carrillo Olea—a former governor of the state of Morelos and secretary of the interior, who gave me an exclusive interview for this book.
    I read avidly the thousands of pages of evidence in the case of “El Chapo’s escape.” Through the dozens of statements given by cooks, laundry workers, inmates, detention officers, and prison police commanders that make up the proceedings of penal case 16/2001, I learned of Guzmán’s passion for painting landscapes, how much he missed his mother, his “romantic” side, his brutality as a rapist, his need for Viagra, his taste for candy and volleyball, but above all his infinite capacity to corrupt everyone and everything in his path. Similarly, hundreds of sheets of official documents allowed me to confirm that in 2001 El Chapo did not escape from Puente Grande in that famous laundry cart: instead, high-ranking officials took him out, disguised as a policeman.
    I also obtained recently declassified CIA and DEA documents on the Iran-Contra affair—something nobody seems to remember anymore—which is what turned Mexican drug traffickers from humble marijuana and poppy farmers into sophisticatedinternational dealers in cocaine and synthetic drugs. I retrieved files eliminated from the archives of the federal prosecutor’s office, referring to the businessmen who, in the early 1990s, sheltered in their hangars the planes of El Chapo, Amado Carrillo Fuentes, and Héctor El Güero Palma. Today, these eminent entrepreneurs are the owners of hotel chains, hospitals, and newspapers. I found a different account of the air crash that killed the former interior secretary, Juan Camilo Mouriño, on November 4, 2008, which suggests that the crash was not an accident but an act of revenge by drug barons for agreements not kept.
    In similar fashion, I discovered the identity of the businessmen who appear as the owners of a company supposedly run by Ismael El Mayo Zambada, which operates out of a hangar in Mexico City International Airport and transports drugs and money, with both the knowledge and consent of the Communications and Transport Secretariat and the airport administration.
    The story of how Joaquín Guzmán Loera became a great drug baron, the king of betrayal and bribery, and the boss of top Federal Police commanders, is intimately linked to a process of decay in Mexico where two factors are constant: corruption, and an unbridled ambition for money and power.
    Semi-illiterate peasants like El Príncipe, Don Neto, El Azul, El Mayo, and El Chapo would not have got far without the collusion of businessmen, politicians, and policemen, and all those who exercise everyday power from behind a false halo of legality. We see their faces all the time, not in the mug shots of most wanted felons put out by the Attorney General’s Office, but in the front-page stories, business sections, and society columns of the main papers. All these are the true godfathers of Narcoland, the true lords of the drug world .
    Often the protection given to drug barons continues until they commit a major blunder, are ratted out by others anxious to take their place, or simply cease to be useful for business. Now there also exists the option of voluntary retirement, like that taken by Nacho Coronel or Edgar Valdez, La Barbie. There will always be substitute candidates for support to continue the