El Narco: Mexico's Parallel State

American Rattlesnake ^ | November 29, 2011 | Gerard Perry

[OddLane]

Last night I had the pleasure of attending the latest installment in the Half King’s weekly reading series. It’s only fitting that the guest of honor that evening was intrepid, English-born, Mexico City-based journalist Ioan Grillo, since the bar is owned by renowned journalist and documentarian Sebastian Junger. Junger is probably best known for his reporting from war zones, specifically Afghanistan, and there is a plaque in the bar honoring his former collaborator on the film Restrepo, the late English photojournalist Tim Hetherington.

Mr. Grillo was there in order to share some anecdotes and observations related to his newly released book, El Narco, an in-depth analysis of the sociological and political reasons behind the rise of what he described as a “parallel state” built upon drug-financed and cartel-derived institutions.

His talk was particularly timely, given a report just published in the Los Angeles Times which examines the connection between international banking institutions and those seeking to launder money from illicit sources within Mexico. The systemic nature of the narco problem, its global scope, and the duration of the fight against its symptoms-if not causes-was vividly illustrated by Grillo, who in an hour-long discussion ranged from the impact of drugs on his birthplace of Brighton, England, to the wholly ineffectual attempt to impound heroin being trafficked over the Mexican-American border through Operation Intercept, to the 13 individuals that were involved in this book, including five who contributed materially to its creation, who were killed during or after the writing of El Narco.