The Cartel: A white-knuckle drug war thriller

Product Information

There’s only about a billion and a half reviews out there that are far superior to anything I could possibly barf out, so I’m going to keep this simple. As characters come out and you think: "what does this guy have to do with Mexico", "and this baby, what does she here? And second, now that I’ve actually read this I’m going to double-down on my statement last year of HOW IN THE FUCK DO PEOPLE GIVE THIS A PASS BUT GOT ALL ASSHURT ABOUT AMERICAN DIRT?

I think about dancing in the streets during Carnival in Brazil and looking down on the rest of civilization at Machu Picchu in Peru.Art Keller is a former CIA agent who got disgusted with running assassination missions in Vietnam and jumped to the newly formed Drug Enforcement Agency where he thought he might be able to do some good. There is the pre-human, foundational power of sinew, tooth and claw – the muscular, violent power of strength and speed in martial contest seen in modern use as military might but existing in a microcosm on any playground, gym or bar. More than that, power as currency – it is a neutral element, existing as a tool to be used for various reasons and in multiple contexts. It’s like something you’d see in a Hollywood movie, but this is still an epic crime story written in a unique style by one of my favorites.

Aún así, el ritmo imprimido a la historia te atrapa rápido y no puedes soltar el libro ni parar de sufrir sabiendo que no está nada alejada de la realidad. Winslow’s 2005 novel begins with a government operator in Vietnam who transfers his jungle skills closer to home to take the war against the communists to the war on drugs as a DEA agent.

L’inizio della sua vendetta è fin troppo liscio, bisognerà attendere una cinquantina di pagine per recuperare la tensione narrativa e il ritmo. Art gets assigned to Mexico where he meets the Barrera family who feeds him the intel to destroy most of the existing heroin trade and poppy fields. Winslow doesn’t seem to be looking for a paradigm change; instead, he wants interdiction done better. La columna central de la narrativa es la lucha entre Art Keller, el estricto agente de la DEA, y Adán Barrera, pongamos que es el Michael Corleone de los cárteles mexicanos.

The plot tells the lives of 3 or 4 main protagonists, some "good" and others "bad", but the balance is really very thin when it comes to drug trafficking and therefore even the policemen certainly cannot be defined as “good”.It aligns so many real and hypothesized events in history, with Winslow's well crafted fictional characters – that in essence he's just giving us all a history lesson. Don Wislow spiega come il commercio della droga sia un affare multinazionale in grado di coinvolgere mafia, CIA. The dramatis personae is almost a list of archetypes: the hard-charging, straight-edged DEA agent; the hard-charging agent's charmless boss; and the urbane drug lord who gradually gets his hands dirtier and dirtier. En definitiva, un gran libro, no sé si podré superar esta lectura durante este año, he puesto el nivel muy, muy alto. As I read it, pop culture artifacts as different as Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic, and the techno-thrillers of Tom Clancy popped into my head.

From the streets of New York City to Mexico City and Tijuana to the jungles of Central America, this is the war on drugs like you’ve never seen it.S. government and its agencies to support or destabilize political regimes in Latin America (a/k/a geopolitical meddling), from the mid-70s thru the late 1990s Most of the novel centers on a Mexican crime family, an honorable DEA agent who slowly loses his soul, and a few Mafioso from NY. Narcovaqueros, mafia al puro y clásico estilo italoamericano, con una jauría de irlandeses armados hasta los dientes, policías corruptos, tenemos un soplón con el sugerente y sincero sobrenombre de "Mamada" y también un santo milagroso, todo esto y más conforman el mundo de este thriller épico, coral y sangriento sobre la búsqueda de la redención y el poder. Quizás es que el autor es uno de mis favoritos, pero he leído novelas suyas que no llegan ni a la mitad del nivel que alcanza esta. I mean I even read the blurb and didn't think much of the premise, but still decided to give it a go. pero todavía es mas terrible la participación en esta "guerra" de las distintas agencias federales estadounidenses: CIA, DEA, FBI, Departamento de estado: ¿Es posible que la CIA utilizara la venta de drogas y a los narcos, para financiar la lucha paramilitar y gubernamental contra las guerrillas de izquierda en Latinoamérica, durante la guerra fría?